Redstate

"Conspiracy reasons" to think that the Kennedy family's relationship with Chavez was something surprising or unanticipated: in my view, and in the view of most of the people who did the official forecasts, this hurricane season was supposed to be at least as bad as last year's. Given Joseph P. Kennedy II's relationship with Hugo, and thinking a little about what the "conventional wisdom" was about the hurricane season this year, it would have seemed like a good bet for Joe.

Think about it: at this point, I'm quite sure that many people in the Democratic Party were betting that Algore's predictions would have come more true than not, and that we'd be looking at $4-5/gal. gasoline prices in the Northeast. I think they seized on Gore's prediction and decided to bet quite a bit of their reputation on it.

Unfortunately for them, it hasn't worked out that way. And if the rest of the hurricane season continues the way it has until this point, it will not work out that way.

But I can reasonably conjecture that the Kennedy family was thinking it was going to have its "biggest year ever" supplying cut-rate, below-market crude oil to northeastern energy consumers with the full cooperation of Hugo Chavez. Then Hugo came off as a fool and a thug at the U.N., and there was -- all things considered -- quite a bit of backtracking to do.

Just to follow up on this point, would it be possible to say that we're winning the GWoT because we're focusing the terrorists on Iraq?

Just asking.

"I'm kind of old-fashioned. I like to engage my brain before my mouth." Donald Rumsfeld

Yep.

Are the terrorists so inept that they can only concentrate on one thing at a time? Do you think that they're so distracted by Iraq that they've forgotten about other targets? Heck, some folks who have cut their teeth in Iraq are taking their deadly expertise back to Afghanistan.

Besides, I wonder how the Iraqis would feel about being used as terrorist bait. Assuming you're right, and Iraq is keeping the terrorists distracted, that's not exactly a moral policy on our part.

I'm willing to bet a substantial amount of money that you are one of the crowd complaining that we "took our eyes off the ball and went after Iraq and Saddam Hussein even though he had nothing to do with 9/11 when we should have been concentrating our efforts in Afghanistan where Bin Laden is.

So in other words, our military is so inept we are unable to fight a two front war against stone age participants, but said stone age participants are deadly experts able to resist and survive, even improving their recruitment efforts in spite of regular killings at the hands of our inept military.

I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful 100 percent.

Our military is more than capable of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and even soon Iran. All these negative reports are just whining from liberal CIA and retired Military Officers. Closet Liberals all.

We must stay the course.

Tell me, does your information on the upcoming invasion of Iraq come from Gary Hart (that master of intrigue), or do you have some magical divining device that beams future events directly into your tin-foil hat?

n/t

The UN? The Arab League? FRANCE?!?!

The Iranians must never obtain a nuke. No arab anywhere must have nukes. Right now all I see is Iraq Part II where the UN goes into a song and dance but in the end says, "No Mass"!!!

I am sure we can easily crush these Iranian deadbeats with superior American Technology. They will surrender so fast that I doubt it will even last a week.

I expect them to hold out at Least 2, maybe 3, months.

And the "Republican Guard" may last as many as 8-10 months.

"Always be honest with yourself even if you are honest with no one else...
...It helps you keep track of your lies..."
--Myself

no Arab state should have nukes. Nor should any current Persian state. I would have like to have prevented the technology from getting to the Pakistanis as well, but too late for that.

I assume your "arab" comment was merely a typo, and that you know Iranians are not Arabs and that, in fact, there is a world of difference between Iranian and Arab that go back centuries. Also, I don't know where you get your optimism that an Iranian war would not last past a week, given the Iranians have a better military than the Iraqis did, and a more challenging terrain, and a greater ability to disrupt the flow of oil.

Don't get me wrong. I want to stay the course in Iraq. We're in this for the long haul. However, you're really telling me that any intelligence report that mentions that perhaps the war in Iraq has made jihadism worse is due to liberal whining, and any commenter who makes arguments in this vein is wearing a tinfoil hat? This is an intelligence estimate. There are differing views even within the IC on the future of Iraq, and the consequences of invasion versus if we had not invaded. I may be in the camp that the Iraq war will lead to future issues with bleedout back into the Arabian Peninsula and beyond, but I've heard good arguments on both sides and am willing to listen even more closely on the off-chance that my current beliefs are because I'm part of the government 'group-think'. When we dig our heels in and insist on one side or another just based on our political views, we're doing our arguments a disservice. One can be a hearty supporter of our troops, as I am, yet still academically argue that perhaps the war had some unforseen negative consequences. It's whether the positives outweigh the negatives which is in question.

Truer words ever spoken...

But not true of those Americans who disagree with Bush's policies. I want us to beat the terrorists, because we're better than they are. I just don't think that Bush's strategy is effective.

A Very old saying:
"Got any better ideas?"

"Always be honest with yourself even if you are honest with no one else...
...It helps you keep track of your lies..."
--Myself

I just think you guys are stuck in a Cold War mindset where you feel the need to squabble with the enemy over the control of nation states. Like I've said elsewhere in this thread, nation states don't really matter in the big picture.

We're fighting organizations so diffuse as to be little more than philosophies. Infiltrate them, track them, shoot them in the back of the head in the middle of the night. Just don't bomb cities, because that only makes more of them.

we don't have the ability, read personnel, to infiltrate them.

And you obviously haven't noticed, or just don't care to admit it, that terror organizations cannot exist without the support of nation states. Take away Hezbollah's funding by Iran and 95% of the problems in Lebanon will go away immediately. Stop funding Hamas and the PA, make them become an economically viable state and problems on Israel's other border will pretty much go away.

AQ is a greatly reduced threat today because they can't openly consort with the government agencies in Afghanistan, get intel, get weapons, get access to people and agencies to assist in planning. They are reduced to loading up a car with Semtex and planting in a location where they will kill some civilians.

As long as those "small organizations" can be effectively funded by nation-states, they can wage terror. When the $$ is cut off, when the intel is cut off, their ability to do anything but hide in a cave is eliminated.

I may be "stuck in a Cold War" mentality, but you and yours are stuck in a mentality that thinks the League of Nations will be our savior and that peace is possible if only we will talk together. That is just stuck on stupid.
_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

...then at least criticize him for something he said.

you and yours are stuck in a mentality that thinks the League of Nations will be our savior and that peace is possible if only we will talk together.

Does brundlefly look like a complete peacenik? He's talking about a focus on special ops over a focus on military might. I may disagree with him on some points, but at least he's not pulling out a straw man.

I took the implication from his True of our enemies, perhaps. post. In the particular comment I responded to, you're right that he seems to be advocating SpOps wet work. In the whole of his comments, I draw the inference that he stands with Murtha, etal. I could be wrong, but I don't think so.

_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

..unless you're talking about him saying that we're better than the terrorists. But this isn't my fight, since it wasn't my comment. The reason I brought it up is that I would hope the denizens of RedState in particular and Republicans in general continue focusing on winning arguments as opposed to degenerating into name-calling.

Argue with enough logic and cohesion, and I'm the type to begin listening even when I'm completely recaltricant

Are you saying that the media are not the propaganda and intelligence arms of the terrorists? I think you'll have a hard time making that stick.

Whether or not the original poster implied that the media is or is not a "propaganda arm" of the terrorists does not speak to his being or not being a peacenik who believes in the League of Nations. You took something he said, fast forwarded it to an immense logical leap, and then presented a false ad hominem against him in a discussion about the merits of our military strategy of overwhelming force vs. infiltration.

Any more discussion on this point, I fear, will end in a thoroughly hijacked thread, so I suggest we leave it.

Just don't bomb cities, because that only makes more of them.

Is there a single instance of somebody becoming a terrorist because his city was bombed and his family killed? Just one would do. Because not a single notable terrorist of recent memory has fit that profile.

There are.

However, that doesn't mean you're not generally right. You said notable terrorist in your last sentence, which is correct. Most who become terrorists to avenge family death are not the type to be the terrorist leaders, recruiters, and movers and shakers. They'd be the suicide bombers.

In addition, I would still think "avengers", with the notable exception of Palestinian terrorism, are a minority of those who choose to become terrorists. The root causes of terrorism are more often 1.)lack of democracy, civil liberty, and rule of law, 2.) failed or weak states 3.) rapid modernization 4.)historical antecedents, and then, trailing in my estimation down at 5.) religious extremism.

Your link does not say what you say it does.

Example;"In May 2002, Jihad Titi, a young man in his twenties from the Balata refugee camp near Nablus, collected the shrapnel from a shell that killed his cousin, the Fatah commander in the camp, in an IDF operation."

I don't think that avenging your cousin the Fatah commander is quite the same thing as avenging your innocent sister. This Titi character was already in bed with the terrorists. So I'll stand by my claim that terrorism is not born when the West bombs civilians.

If the root causes of terrorism are as you say (lack of democracy, civil liberty, etc) then bringing these things to the region, by force if neccessary, is the correct response, right?

Here's another one. Again, I do generally agree with you, especially considering I have to pull teeth to get an acceptable link :-) However, I was taught in my line of work, in a similar vein, to never use the word "unprecedented".

Now, on the other hand, one can consider "revenge" to be the motivation of a terrorist if we're not just talking revenge for a family member. It would be easier to find a terrorist who at least states that his motivation is revenge for a government's action within a particular country, or revenge "for Palestine", or to cite an American case, revenge for the Branch Davidian standoff (one possible Timothy McVeigh motivation, although there are arguments for and against this). In that sense, we could conceivably argue that bombing cities creates terrorism, although I'm not a big fan of that line of thought.

But as I've said elsewhere on this thread, if bombing civilians created terrorists then Japan and Germany in the late 1940's should have been teeming with them. It's just not empirically true, even if a few counter-examples can be found.

I was just being contrary.

that if we go "all clock an ddagger on them" they start having all sorts of strange "accidents", you will be in the forefront of the people demanding that we stop assasinating them and start arresting them and giving them trials.

John
---------
True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whisky, I don't know.
P.J O'Rourke

Let me be really clear about this. Our enemies are sitting in the editorial caves at the NYT, WaPo and LaT. Our enemies are huddled in the halls of Congress, in conversations led by Kennedy, Durbin, Murtha, etal.

Our enemies in the homeland, you included, have so far failed to offer one alternative plan that either doesn't look like what the Administration is doing now or isn't simply unworkable (withdraw over the horizon - 5,000 miles from Iraq).

Please be kind enough to jot some specifics of your strategy that will be better than Bush's. Also, you could give some specifics relating to the strategy of "those Americans" to whom you refer.

_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

"Let me be really clear about this. Our enemies are sitting in the editorial caves at the NYT, WaPo and LaT. Our enemies are huddled in the halls of Congress, in conversations led by Kennedy, Durbin, Murtha, etal.

"Our enemies in the homeland, you included..."

Again: wow. You disgust me. Ignored.

...enemies of whom? America? The Bush administration? Are you seriously saying that someone who disagrees with our war strategy is an enemy?

Let me take a stab at answering this question. Let me start by saying you've asked a difficult question. In fact, what follows is what I want to see, but something that we cannot currently do. Does that mean we can't criticize the administration's strategy? No. Here's why.

What I want to see is more focus on Afghanistan/Pakistan, where the remnants of the top al-Qaida leadership are still sitting and planning attacks on our home soil. (Yes, although there are individual affiliate groups also planning attacks, that does not mean that al-Qaida central leadership have abandoned the strategy of a spectacular attack on American soil).

What I want to see more resources and intelligence on Algeria, where the GSPC has just allied itself with al-Qaida. On Tunisia. On Egypt. On Somalia. On Indonesia and the Philippines. All places where affiliate groups, often with the help of Afghanistan war graduates, are planning attacks on US troops and allied interests.

However, if I were in charge right this second, would I follow my own recommendations? No. In fact, I'd be doing exactly what the Bush administration is doing now: focusing on Iraq. Why? Because that's the most urgent and short-term interest, because of the overwhelming problem of bleedout.

Have we created this problem of bleedout? Yes. Little terrorist whippersnappers that we would never have cared about and would have been able to take care of by taking care of the network infrastructure in Saudi, in Yemen, in Oman, are now big problems because we gave them one big terrorist sandbox in which to play. And now we can't take care of the original problem.

It's like a surgeon who needs to do brain surgery accidentally stabbing the patient in the heart. Can we criticize the surgeon for now focusing on the heart? Absolutely not. He's doing what he has to do. Can we criticize him for making a mistake that may cause the patient to die anyway of a brain aneurysm? Absolutely.

I'm a Republican, a conservative, and I voted for the President over that douchebag Kerry. Just because I have a background in these matters and disagree with a policy does not make me an enemy of either America or the Republican party.

...the 'half' being your resentment of being tarred with that particular brush; but I must note that the conclusion of the first phase of the Gulf War made the second phase of it inevitable. We had to keep troops in SA, lest Hussein try again - and we couldn't move those troops out. That, coupled with our guarantee of the Kurds - an action that I wholeheartedly endorsed when it happened, and endorse today - meant that Iraq had to be resolved before we could do anything else. Couple that with a sudden post-9/11 reassessment of what constitutes an acceptable risk, and, well...

Moe

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.

I don't know what I would have done, especially when we consider the Kurd issue. I just wish out of the three or four very good pretexts for war given by the President, the final bad one about al-Qa'ida/terrorism wasn't included. But then we get into a discussion of whether Iraq was involved with al-Qaida and we quote Steven Hayes vs. Peter Bergen and tempers flare and I just got back to posting on RedState and don't want a big brouhaha, see? :->

It is important to correctly identify the enemy and you have done so. Now the challenge is "what is in it for them for us to loose" the jihadis are going to cut their heads off first.

John
---------
True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whisky, I don't know.
P.J O'Rourke

What are the qualifiers for "winning". What do we win? We have already lost. Nobody wins in war. So what is the context for a "Win" in Iraq. What do we look for to know we've "Won"?

http://devine-gamecock.townhall.com
www.race42008.com
"Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face." - Ronald Reagan

??

nothing

what did we win in 1783? 1814? 1865? 1917? 1945? 1952? 1991?
no more taxation without representaion and quartering of British troops in our homes

no more British ships blockading our ports

no more states leaving the union and no more slavery

allied friends living in freedom rather than being forced to serve a nation that would seek to dominate us

a free south korea

the survival of the free world
the prevention of the elimination of the Jews
two great future allies for Liberty

the freedom of half the world that libed in communist slavery
nukes no longer aimed at the US poised for a crisis
tarding partners
saved military spending

2003
removal of regime that killed over 500,000 political enemies found in mass graves and started 2 wars that killed milions

elimination of safe haven for terrorists
elimination of rich oil state sponsor of terrorism

freedom for 25 million former slaves 80% of whom are purple fingered allies against the enemies of freedom
4000+ dead al qaida
bases from which to eleimnate iranian threat

all victories have won us our pride in the people we've freed to seek God rather than being slaves to tyrants

These victories define what causes us to shed a tear upon hearing the 1814 ode to the Star Spangled banner

be proud of what we are doing in Iraq
and know that the prooof of victory is saddam in jail and 80% purple fingers bonded with us against evil

people that can speak and not be hearing the knock at the door

people that, LIKE US in 1776, are fighting for their freedom, rather than cowering under saddam's thumb

put your thong on now

http://devine-gamecock.townhall.com
www.race42008.com
"Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face." - Ronald Reagan

and thats the problem Whats the plan man?

http://devine-gamecock.townhall.com
www.race42008.com
"Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face." - Ronald Reagan

man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of every American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril—with a growing evil—powerful and remorseless.

That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the “secret information.” It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s -- questioning their intellect and their morality.

That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.

It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions — its own omniscience -- needed to be dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.

Most relevant of all — it “knew” that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused.

That critic’s name was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

History — and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England — have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty — and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.

Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.

Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards.

His government, absolute -- and exclusive -- in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.

It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.

But back to today’s Omniscient ones.

That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely.

And, as such, all voices count -- not just his.

Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience — about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their “omniscience” as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes?

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?

The confusion we -- as its citizens— must now address, is stark and forbidding.

But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note -- with hope in your heart — that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.

And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a “new type of fascism.”

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that -- though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.

Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow.

But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed: “confused” or “immoral.”

Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”

And so good night, and good luck

It is to our deep national shame—and ultimately it will be to the President’s deep personal regret—that he has followed his Secretary of Defense down the path of trying to tie those loyal Americans who disagree with his policies—or even question their effectiveness or execution—to the Nazis of the past, and the al Qaeda of the present.

Today, in the same subtle terms in which Mr. Bush and his colleagues muddied the clear line separating Iraq and 9/11 -- without ever actually saying so—the President quoted a purported Osama Bin Laden letter that spoke of launching, “a media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government.”

Make no mistake here—the intent of that is to get us to confuse the psychotic scheming of an international terrorist, with that familiar bogeyman of the right, the “media.”

The President and the Vice President and others have often attacked freedom of speech, and freedom of dissent, and freedom of the press.

Now, Mr. Bush has signaled that his unparalleled and unprincipled attack on reporting has a new and venomous side angle:

The attempt to link, by the simple expediency of one word—“media”—the honest, patriotic, and indeed vital questions and questioning from American reporters, with the evil of Al-Qaeda propaganda.

That linkage is more than just indefensible. It is un-American.

Mr. Bush and his colleagues have led us before to such waters.

We will not drink again.

And the President’s re-writing and sanitizing of history, so it fits the expediencies of domestic politics, is just as false, and just as scurrilous.

“In the 1920’s a failed Austrian painter published a book in which he explained his intention to build an Aryan super-state in Germany and take revenge on Europe and eradicate the Jews,” President Bush said today, “the world ignored Hitler’s words, and paid a terrible price.”

Whatever the true nature of al Qaeda and other international terrorist threats, to ceaselessly compare them to the Nazi State of Germany serves only to embolden them.

More over, Mr. Bush, you are accomplishing in part what Osama Bin Laden and others seek—a fearful American populace, easily manipulated, and willing to throw away any measure of restraint, any loyalty to our own ideals and freedoms, for the comforting illusion of safety.

It thus becomes necessary to remind the President that his administration’s recent Nazi “kick” is an awful and cynical thing.

And it becomes necessary to reach back into our history, for yet another quote, from yet another time and to ask it of Mr. Bush:

“Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

http://devine-gamecock.townhall.com
www.race42008.com
"Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face." - Ronald Reagan

http://devine-gamecock.townhall.com
www.race42008.com
"Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face." - Ronald Reagan

The ultimate determinant in the struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas-a trial of spiritual resolve: the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish and the ideals to which we are dedicated.-Reagan

http://devine-gamecock.townhall.com
www.race42008.com
"Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face." - Ronald Reagan

nothing was won in those wars, its all just an illusion. Nobody ever wins in a war. :-)

John
---------
True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whisky, I don't know.
P.J O'Rourke

when all else fails, trot out the old "nobody wins in war" nonsense. Kumbayah.

John
---------
True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whisky, I don't know.
P.J O'Rourke

However, you're really telling me that any intelligence report that mentions that perhaps the war in Iraq has made jihadism worse is due to liberal whining

It matters greatly what kind of time frame you measure whether "perhaps the war in Iraq has made jihadism worse". It's impossible to empirically prove how many violent jihadists there would be if we had left Saddam in power, but I accept the possibility that the liberation of Iraq has resulted in more active terrorists and supporters now than would otherwise be so. Don Rumsfeld himself has posed that question. And maybe the prevailing opinion in the National Intelligence Estimate is that at this moment there are more jihadists because of the Iraq war.

Those factual assessments should be distinguished from the spins pushed by the leakers a la "The Iraq war has made jihadism worse." If some government employees, sworn to keep those secrets, feel compelled to commit a crime by leaking info from the NIE before the declassified version is released, surely they have an axe to grind, right? They don't do it because they think the reporter is enjoyable company, but because the unelected government employees don't like the policies that resulted from our elections.

Any time a country decides to actively engage the enemy after previously putting up with low grade warfare, that leads to an escalation in violence from the enemy in the short term (where the "short term" can be many years). The typical reason for incurring heavier losses in the short term is the assesment that the long term cost of the pre-war trend is even greater.

An essential appeal of violent jihadism is the belief in its inevitable victory. Without that belief, it presents no more appeal to the discontented than Marxism in the third world after the Berlin Wall fell. (Let's not forget how recently Marxist revolutionaries were viewed as the ascendant force, even President Carter said history was on their side.)

Various jihadists have made it clear they view Iraq as the central front of their war against our evil machinations. Defeating us in Iraq would immensely promote the belief in their invincibility, thus many more recruits. The triumph of an Iraqi political consensus against violent jihadists, increasingly able to defeat them with less of our help, would be a crushing blow to the jihadists' precious myth.

The terrorists know how high the stakes are in Iraq, so it makes obvious sense that they and their sympathizers know that now is the time to throw everything into the fight in Iraq and everywhere else. This results in more violence now than would be the case if we were only pursuing a less ambitious strategy against them, but sometimes it's the right strategy to do what the enemy fears most and will resist most fiercely.

perhaps the war had some unforseen negative consequences.

Perhaps? We can be absolutely sure it did, just like any other war against a serious enemy.

It's whether the positives outweigh the negatives which is in question.

I agree completeley this is how the Iraq war has to be evaluated, including the costs of action vs. the costs of inaction. Even if you disagree with me about it being a net positive to get into this war in the first place, the relevant calculation now is between the net costs of losing the war in Iraq vs the net costs of winning the war in Iraq.

The relevant calculation now is between the net costs of losing the war in Iraq vs the net costs of winning the war in Iraq.

Which is why I also openly mock many skeptics of the war. We can debate the past, but the path now is obvious...we're in this war, and if we pull out (or if we lose, which I find highly unlikely), the consequences would be extremely far-reaching. We cannot give al-Qaida or associated jihadists any type of victory that allows them to believe the US is weak and will bow to political pressure, or that they can kick out another world superpower. It wouldn't appease them; it would whet their appetite.

Thank you for cogent argument. It's one of the more convincing I've heard on the other side of the Iraq issue...not that I haven't heard it before, but it does serve to reassure me about the possible positive long-term consequences of the war.

...is a closet liberal. Interesting.

The jihadist infrastructure is so distributed as to be more of a school of thought than anything else. Invading, and hence bringing chaos to, Iraq not only pissed off a lot of fence-sitting potential terrorists, but gave them a space to run free.

The terrorist threat is not nation states. It's the mob. These are people who are poor, who are pissed, who are seduced by an apocalyptic worldview. You can invade any country you want, you can bomb every town into oblivion, but you will not stop this movement that way. That will only add fuel to the fire.

Yes, these "stone age" types CAN fight a multi-front war, because all they need are cheap explosives or boxcutters. And their networks are so distributed as to be almost non-existent. We, on the other hand, are mounting ridiculous, overseas adventures, with heavy, heavy tech, and spending billions on it. Billions that we can't afford, by the way.

We are ponderous. They are agile. We need to be agile, and our leaders are stuck in a distinctly un-agile, Cold War mindset.

I never said our troops are inept, by the way. That has nothing to do with it.

mounting ridiculous, overseas adventures, with heavy, heavy tech, and spending billions on it.

We might need to be more agile, but we do have agility built into our special ops operations and the "heavy, heavy tech" is doing its share of the job as well.

I can't call our overseas adventures, if by that you mean Iraq, "ridiculous". There were legitimate pretexts to war, including enforcing international law (whether or not Saddam had WMD. His actions portended a sort of reverse showboating that spoke to a threat that the US needed to take out.

The thing is, I disagreed pragmatically with the costs/benefits of taking that threat out. I believed, and not just in hindsight, that the WMD threat was still years off, but the direct consequences of invading on another pretext that I believed to be incorrect, terrorism, would just spell more problems for our nation.

My main problem with some of my conservative peers is that any argument to that effect is considered a liberal talking point. However, I do heartily agree that the media is looking for something, anything, to use as a pointy stick with which to repeatedly poke the Bush administration without any serious reporting on the other side of the issue.

"fewer jihadists will leave Iraq determined to carry on the fight elsewhere."

To tell the truth, I'm surprised that's in the NIE, because I definitely would have said otherwise, even with stability in Iraq. I'm wondering if things have changed in the past couple of months...I'm thrilled to see that positive outlook.

For starters, few, if any, Jihadis currently leave Iraq to fight elsewhere because the fight is Right There.

When we win in Iraq and get the job done, fewer will leave Iraq to leave elsewhere, because everything that we all agree makes Jihadis Jihadis will be greatly reduced if not eliiminated within Iraq. People don't leave their businesses to blow themselves up. People enjoying the benefits of a good economy are far less likely to blow themselvs up because "The Evil Westerners are stealing from us!" Everything that the Iraqis will have will be bacause America stepped in and didn't give up on them. How do you turn that into "America is Satan's handmaiden!"?

"Always be honest with yourself even if you are honest with no one else...
...It helps you keep track of your lies..."
--Myself

My comment got erased 1/2 way through so this one will be (mercifully) shorter.

The problem we're worried about are foreign fighters, not indigenous fighters. Iraqi stability doesn't mean a business that they can run. These are the people who have already given up on that life, who have already left their home countries to fight in a war in a foreign land, who will return, yes as fugitives, but also as returning heroes to their sympathizers. These are the people who believe the fight isn't over, that fighting home country and Western interests in Saudi Arabia and Yemen is part of the entire endgame. These are the people who would have loved to fight in their home countries, but didn't have the connections, knowledge, and motivation to do it correctly until they 'joined up' and got all three in droves.

Now, as I said, Iraqi stability will have those effects,but it's a heck of a lot better than a coalition defeat or withdrawal from Iraq, which will lead to those effects but much more of the connections, motivations, still-intact infrastructure, and hero status.

Are so few and far between right now that they aren't a significant threat. We smashed the heck out of them after getting all that intel from Zarqawi's HQ when we killed him.

What we're dealing with now is Indigenous Iraqi terrorists. Most notably Muqtada Al Sadr.

And in all cases of the enemy combatants in Iraq, Very few of them are surviving to take their experience elsewhere.

"Always be honest with yourself even if you are honest with no one else...
...It helps you keep track of your lies..."
--Myself

I'd like more firsthand accounts on Iraq from people With bias. Or, rather a Specific bias. I want the Iraqis on live TV telling us what they think of our efforts. I want their rich and poor and urban and and rural and suburban people all talking to us.

"Always be honest with yourself even if you are honest with no one else...
...It helps you keep track of your lies..."
--Myself

American politicos to shut up.

"Always be honest with yourself even if you are honest with no one else...
...It helps you keep track of your lies..."
--Myself

I want them to tell the truth. And as of now the amount of truth issuing from the left side of the aisle can be measured in a thimble.

John
---------
True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whisky, I don't know.
P.J O'Rourke

They tell you what you dont want to hear...?

http://devine-gamecock.townhall.com
www.race42008.com
"Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face." - Ronald Reagan

I also thank you. I know people who have volunteered for two, even three/four tours of duty in Iraq because it just what they do and it never fails to humble me.