Jack & Jill Politics

markg8,

Your characterization of our mission actions in Iraq and of the Iraqi sentiment towards the US is breathtakingly warped.

Surrender, defeat and isolationism is not without consequence and hardly provides for the benign scenario you describe. You possess a dazzling naivete.

Iran would grow more powerful, the chances of a radical Shiite state being created in Iraq would also increase. Such a state would oppress its own citizens and pose a regional threat. Sectarian violence would spiral out of control, killing millions of Iraqis, both Sunni and Shiites. Many Iraqis would be forced to flee their homes as radical militias would seek to create homogenous regions. Shiite terrorist groups like Hezbollah would likely find safe haven and support.

Abandoning Iraq, therefore, means watching from the sidelines while Iraqis are slaughtered and neighboring states — including Iran — divide the spoils.

If such a scenario were to take place, Iran — the main sponsor of terrorism and a home to numerous al-Qaeda leaders — would grow in power and become the leader of the region. It would become easier for Iran’s government, which denies the Holocaust and has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel and the United States, to obtain nuclear weapons. The West would also find its options to affect Iran’s behavior increasingly limited. In response to the growth of Iran’s power, countries in the region like Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Gulf states would seek nuclear weapons (in fact, many of these states already indicate that they plan to develop nukes). Already, Iran’s leadership has expressed willingness to share its nuclear technology with other rogue states like Syria and Venezuela.

If we continue to stay and achieve victory, the success of democracy in Iraq threatens nearby tyrannies and empowers those fighting within them. Iraq as free, self-governing ally in the region would prove a powerful deterrent to Iranian expansion.

We must finish the job by completing the training of Iraqi security forces, supporting Iraq’s new democratic government, begin the disci­plined reduction of American forces, and turn the future of Iraq over to the only people who can ensure the nation’s long-term success—the Iraqis.

I am happy to ‘wrap myself in the flag.’ I taking pride in our country as beacon of freedom, opportunity, and generosity. We are a force for good in this world. While not without faults, we are ever vigilant and strive to maintain and perfect the ideals upon which this country was founded and by which we have succeeded in creating the most free and prosperous nation on Earth.

Religion and patriotism are not Obama’s major problems, his policies are.

Craig,

That was beautiful and the music was perfect.

Obama T-Shirts — a new shirt is added everyday!

chica dificil,

I am not sure what type of reaction or response you hope to illicit with your comment but let me say this:

Yes PTSD is real, serious, treatable and not necessarily a chronic, nor debilitating anxiety disorder.

Feel free to ask any questions here, as I am open to sharing my own experience in overcoming PTSD.

Brig. Gen. HR McMaster on what has changed in Iraq:

1) Iraq’s communities have largely stopped shooting at each other. That has been an achievement of the physical security efforts of our forces and I would highlight very courageous and determined Iraqi security forces who took extraordinary risk to make that happen and have fought in a determined way to make that happen.

2) Political accommodation at the local level has placed some social pressure on the Iraqi government to move in the same direction or key actors within the Iraqi government who represent portions of the communities who were fighting each other.

3)The effect on Iraqi society, the third thing that has changed I think, is a rekindling of hope.

4)The fourth big thing is Al-Qaeda is on its way to defeat. And this has had a big effect.

5)Point number five would be the militias are increasingly discredited, its linked to the point made earlier just like Al-Qaeda was rejected from the communities in which they were operating, we are now seeing militias rejected by the populations in which they had been operating.

6)the sixth thing is, no big surprise, the exposure of Iranian activity and Iran’s true intentions.

7)Point seven is that U.S. intentions are much more clear to Iraqis. Iraqis were confusing our activities with our intentions as we left them behind and their neighborhoods were taken over by terrorists and militias who were victimizing the people in those neighborhoods. So people were thinking, you know, maybe America wants us to fail.

8)The eighth thing – Iraqis understand their responsibilities.

9)There is a real commitment across all these communities to battle it out on the political battleground rather than at the end of a gun.

10)The tenth thing I would say is Iraqi security forces continue to reform and expand and there’s a slower degree of improvement in the area of rule of law which is, as you know has been a problem from the beginning but there have been some noble efforts there and some efforts that could be scaled up in that area.

Truly a tour de force presentation that all who wished to be fully informed must read.

http://www.aei.org/events/filter.,eventID.1722/transcript.asp

truthseeker, I do believe that you are right.

(for instance, notice all the spam JJP is receiving today. Gotta scroll right through it to get to the real stuff.)

Craig & Truth

The spammers are freaking after that bombshell Scott McClellan dropped yesterday. This will hurt McCain in the general bigtime.

anon 6:22

lol

Are you rejecting and denouncing poor Scott?

Truth

Isn’t it great!

Craig,

I hate the scrolling, I wish they would find their own place to meet and just leave me out of it.

d,

Poor baby. It’s those old anti-Bush people, isn’t it? lol

Team Hillary has the dirt on Obama; should she fire the bullet?

An original story at:

http://jon8332.typepad.com/force_for_good/2008/05/fretting-whethe.html

Truthseeker

I read that story – the writer put it into perspectve. I hope those mofos get it.

I also followed the link to the Holocaust Museum and went on from there to other stories about that time.

Viewing the pictures of the bodies that were piled up and the mass graves and even the pictures of the emaciated prisoners brought me to tears – I actually cried.

I can’t believe that they could speak the words work camp as if that so how diminished the impact of the evil that the people in those camps (or even in that country) endured.

Dispicable.

I didn’t know Henry Ford was an anti-semite. I wonder what led his company to pay blacks an equal wage during very racial times?

I also wonder why it took the United States so long to help? Hitler was annihilating jews for ten years before any country helped.

Ms. Martin,

Tweety said he’ll be working on Saturday, so that means MSNBC will be covering it.

Obama Rules:

Every criticism or fact-check of Obama is a ‘smear.’

But it’s not that easy to ignore Auschwitz.

It’s one of the most emotionally charged words in any language, for anyone who is aware of what happened there, and few educated people aren’t.

Perhaps that is why Obama chose to invoke it in the first place.

The word is significant in the context of the Obama campaign for two reasons.

First, because it has such emotional connotations, particularly for Jews, with whom Obama has had trouble closing the deal, it looks like he’s pandering to them. I’m not saying that he is, but it has that appearance.

Auschwitz was the site of the deliberate extermination of Jews (as well as Catholics, Gypsies, homosexuals, and others deemed “unworthy of life” by the Nazis) and one might cynically think that an attempt to say that one of his family members was responsible for the liberation of the camp would give that constituency a warmer feeling for him, despite his many foreign policy advisors who clearly are not fans of the state of Israel (e.g., Zbig).

It is of concern because it reveals a profound ignorance of history and/or geography.

Anyone familiar with the history of World War II knows that Auschwitz was in the occupied country of Poland.

Furthermore, anyone familiar with that history knows that American troops never advanced past the River Elbe, in Germany, and that the Soviet forces advanced all the way across Poland and into eastern Germany. Which is why there was an East Germany.

No one, in other words, familiar with that history, would imagine that an American soldier, under Patton, had contributed to the “liberation” (scare quotes because the Soviets never liberated anyone–they only enslaved them) of Auschwitz.

Obama didn’t know this. Nor, apparently, did anyone on his staff, since he had been spouting the same fable since 2002 and no one had bothered to correct him. Or if they had, they were ignored. I’m not sure which is worse.

Given his unfamiliarity with Jack Kennedy’s less-than-successful negotiations with Khrushchev, it makes one wonder what else he doesn’t know.