You Know, This Would Have Been Much More Helpful
October 13, 2007
Had the speech been made, oh, when he was commanding the forces. At this point, its kind of redundant, except for the part about the media killing our soldiers, which has been, oddly, scrubbed out of the Associated Press version of events, and buried in all the others.
As Allah says,
We can’t win without our allies, who are deserting us, but we must continue on to achieve victory, which is impossible because we lack a grand strategy, so we should probably start reducing troop levels and let the Iraqis take over, except that this is “the greatest challenge of our lifetime†and we owe it to our soldiers to win, which is why our leaders must come up with a plan that rises above partisanship, which is never, ever going to happen with the public trending Democratic and 60-65% already demanding withdrawal and an election a year away. It’s like saying, “Victory is within reach — if only the American people were completely different.â€
Fantastic. Thanks dude. Give us a call when you’ve got constructive criticism.
Posted in Uncategorized
October 13th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
The general couldn’t say this when commanding the troops. That’s part of being in the military. I would hope he would have said all this to the civilian leadership while he was serving.
If he did, well, that confirms what many of us (on both sides) dislike about the Bush Administration.
October 14th, 2007 at 12:50 am
Hold on, are you sure that was General Sanchez and not Captain Obvious?
October 14th, 2007 at 11:01 am
I don’t know what my award for “Best Comment Of The Week” is, but Brandon, I think you’ve earned it.
October 14th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
I am sure Sanchez has no ax to gring.
Sarcasm off
October 14th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
or even an ax to grind
October 16th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
There is no right answer at this point. We walked into a maze of horrors, and we’re lost inside, and there is no path out of the maze. Any solution offered has a big potential downside, little upside, and there’s no way of telling until you try it which you get. Adding to the fun, our answer to this point has been to do the exact same thing we’ve been doing, which is small spikes in the troop levels, then reducing them, leaving the same undermanned force that’s essentially been there for what will soon be five years.
We are at a point where we have to try something different. With the agreements that we’ve made with Qatar and Kuwait, we could withdraw the forces to those nations and see how things play out. That will likely result in a bloodbath, and it sounds horrible to even say this, but it’s already going on, just at a slower rate.
Another choice, little talked about, is breaking up the nation. Iraq was thrown together by the British after the Ottoman Empire split up post-World War I, and so there’s always been a sort of fracture there. A situation like what the Soviet Union did in 1991, breaking up into the CIS, where they had autonomy but shared certain things, might be best. Let the Kurds create their Kurdistan in northern Iraq and we’ll have friends for life there. The Shia can have Basra and that area, and the Sunnis can have the western provinces such as Anbar. Baghdad would become an independent city where the groups could meet, run by a troika of a Sunni, a Shia, and a Kurd, serving almost as a city-state. This might be the best chance for peace, or I’m just crazy.