Breathtaking Ignorance
This morning, "Fox News Sunday" played a clip of Congressman John Murtha -- he of the "slow bleed" strategy -- asserting the following about U.S. troops leaving Iraq:
People tend to say, 'Well, if we leave, there's going to be chaos.' I don't believe that. 78% of the Iraqis say that's not going to happen. 78% of the Iraqis say it'll be -- we're the ones that [sic] are causing this. And Al Qaeda is gonna be -- Al Qaeda is gonna disappear. (empahsis added)
Yes, and the sun will shine every day, the birds will sing, and children will laugh and sing as they frolic with rainbows.
What does it say about the Democratic Party that they have lionized and admired a person displaying such profound ignorance and naivete?
People tend to say, 'Well, if we leave, there's going to be chaos.' I don't believe that. 78% of the Iraqis say that's not going to happen. 78% of the Iraqis say it'll be -- we're the ones that [sic] are causing this. And Al Qaeda is gonna be -- Al Qaeda is gonna disappear. (empahsis added)
Yes, and the sun will shine every day, the birds will sing, and children will laugh and sing as they frolic with rainbows.
What does it say about the Democratic Party that they have lionized and admired a person displaying such profound ignorance and naivete?
posted by LadybugUSA at 8:56 AM
12 Comments:
What does it say about the Republican Party that they have lionized and admired a person displaying such profound ignorance and naivete as to assume we would be greeted as liberators and then prematurely declare Mission Accomplished?
Hmm?
Many Iraqis do now consider us liberators. I guess it depends on what source your prefer to listen to. And wasn't the mission to overthrow Hussein and wasn't that mission accomplished? And wasn't that banner put up by someone from the ship and not the Bush admin?
According to John Burns, New York Times reporter, "The American troops were greeted as liberators. We saw it." Read more here.
And wasn't it Bush who had an overly simplistic view of what we were up against in Iraq to the point that he dispatched cronies and campaign donors to rebuild the kind of vital infrastructure needed to stabilize the country? Instead of seasoned foreign service officers and world-class experts in the various areas, he sent punks and loyalists. An antiabortion activist was sent to run the health minisrty in Iraq, one of several moronic failures.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600193_pf.html
Greg I must say Carol and Marshall are right on this one. They are right that Iraqi people in the south and in Baghdad flocked to US armor greeting the Americans as liberators and that a part of the mission was to overthrow Saddam Hussein al Tikriti.
However, this is just a portion of the Truth of the matter. We need not delve into the details that mire those with divergent opinions about this war's purpose. To do so is to give the opposition a safe harbor upon which to stand on talking points in defense of their party leader. This not how arguments or wars are won.
What is missed by both Carol and her loyal ally Marshall is that Iraq is a construct of British Mandate policy forged by British military power and Sunnite brutality after the Great War and strengthened after the Second Terran World War. Anyone who has read University of London scholar Charles Tripp's noted work "A History of Iraq" would grasp the major reasons why Iraqis, especially the Shi'i would greet any liberator, Russian, Iranian, American as the greatest Hope Allah could bring to them. They would see this for they knew that even if the liberators stayed for a generation the Shi'a would be able to take advantage of the situation and rain down revenge upon a minority which tortured them and held them in bondage in an imaginary nation state for almost 90 Terran years.
Much like many of President George W Bush's 10h00m EDT news conferences in the middle of the week are done for the benefit of the Arab and Persian media IRNA, IRIB, Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, Al Manar, New TV and Al Iraqiya the Mission Accomplished event on the carrier was a stunt for the American people that was supposed to be the legacy event of the Bush White House. Had the plan been to topple Saddam Hussein, capture him and bring him to the ICC in The Hague hand over Iraq to the Iraqi people and depart with a renewed mission of finding capturing and killing Osama bin Laden, Bush would have been hailed by history as a man of vision. But that was not the plan and the person or persons responsible for hanging the Mission Accomplished banner knew this as well as you and I do.
They wanted a series of images they could show the American people that meant "strength" and "power" and "victory" that they could use for the 2004 Presidential election. Had the war gone well been better strategized from the onset and more combat elements been sent in during the fall of 2003 as many military generals in the Pentagon suggested anyone running against Bush in 2004 would have had nothing to run on and any negative reference to the Iraq War would have been shouted down. Bush truly would have had a mountain of political capital to sit upon for his last four years.
Now in a political struggle he seeks military means to get not out of Iraq but out of the responsibility for the war. People like Carol and Marshall, Greg, would love to see the Congress begin to de-fund the war effort and be able to point to Democrats and call them haters of the soldiers and traitors in the war on terror. That is the GOP's only standing point now the hope that people like Murtha will gain enough support that the Democrats take ownership, read responsibility for the outcome in the eyes of the American public, of the Iraq War's conclusion from the GOP seat of power in the White House and the leader of the GOP before January of 2008. If this war is still a millstone around the necks of GOP Presidential candidates when Congress comes back in the early winter of 2008, before the primaries that kick off what will be the most raucous and exciting American political season in a century, you will see great cohorts of truly conservative minds both on television and in print assailing President bush for his stubbornness. To know when the end is near look for David Gergen making public visits to the White House with members of the Saudi royal family followed by also public meetings with Henry Kissinger.
To appreciate history of human beings Greg, one must look at all sides of the stone. To be partisan and to choose only one aspect for examination is childish folly and leads to disasters like the quagmire in Iraq where those steeped in pride having broken a nation fabricated out of greed into its original and natural ethnic elements fails to recognize this crystal clear historical reality.
Qu'ul cuda praedex nihil!
I did not say that!
Somehow someone else is posting under my name.
- Greg
Back on topic:
What it says about the Democratic Party is either they collectively have no clue or, worse, they collectively don't care.
My name is Greg also.
And what I have said is relevant if Carol is going to make the same broad generalizations about Democrats' perceptions of reality.
Carol hasn't given a single reason why she thinks 26 million Iraqis would accept al Qaida.
Perhaps if the Iraqis have become radicalized by the US invasion, they might join al Qaida's jihad but there isn't any evidence that they would. And they seem quite preoccupied with their own failed state and internal power struggle.
So it appears Carol is just smearing another war hero and can't support it with a single logical argument.
Where did Carol say that the Iraqis would accept AQ? I believe the feeling is that AQ would have a freer hand in dispatching their plans. They would accept AQ as they did Sadam; by having it shoved down their throats.
As to cav,
They Shiites were the oppressed, so of course they'd be seeing us as liberators. Is this big news to you? Same goes for the Kurds. You can fall back on what some generals might have believed about troop strength, but not all felt the same. Others saw more troops as more targets. But nevermind that. They're just on Bush's side so they're opinion doesn't count. I find it amazing that all these armchair quarterbacks are so certain "more troops" is the ultimate answer, as if even with more troops, the unexpected would not occur. But here's a little history for you, bud: We've been a target for Islamic scumbags since the Jefferson administration. There's nothing new under that sun. What we do in this front of the greater WOT looms large in the perception of the enemy. Anything short of total control of Iraq by Iraqi forces will be seen as weakness and a sign to keep on keepin' on. To appreciate the history of these "human beings" is what is being done by those who maintain we must achieve our goals.
Marshall Arts,
So you are saying they will accept Al Qaeda's radical fundamentalism over their own theology which they seem more then willing to fight to the death over. And they will accept that same fundamentalism before they would accept democracy?
This doesn't make sense? And keep in mind the best estimate is that there are a total of 700 to 1,000 terrorists (freedom fighters) from various groups. So these 700 to 1,000 people can do what 150,000 US soldiers and 300,000 trained Iraqi forces can't do?
Are you saying Al Qaeda can win hearts and minds while Bush can't?
Earth,
What the hell are you reading? Certainly not MY comments. As you may or may not recall, and I'm thinking it's the latter, Sadam and his party and sect were somewhat outnumbered by the Shiites and Kurds. Did the Shiites and Kurds "accept" Sadam's ideology and leadership, or were they forced to? Are you trying to say that another smaller yet more aggressive and heavily armed force couldn't do the same, or make ready a path for another despot? Get a clue. Quickly.
Greg:
1. We WERE greeted as liberators. But the Democrats were quick to flush that down the memory hole and restore the proper attitude to the Al Qaeda "Freedom Fighters"! You have to give the Democrats credit here. I took a lot of work to destroy the perception that the U.S. was doing a good thing in Iraq, what with all those millions of Iraqis risking their lives - multiple times - to vote and all.
2. No. Bush has said ALL ALONG this would be a very long and difficult war. It's the Democrats who have this unrealistic, overly simplistic view that we can overthrow an evil, entrenched, brutal dictator and walk away with no messy aftermath to deal with. They never seem to want to address the results of their foolish policies, do they?
3. World class experts?!?!? I'm sure you're referring to the likes of John Kerry, Al Gore, Madeleine Albright, et al, right?
4. Are you saying a pro-abortion activist would have made a better choice to run the ministry of health?
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