Redstate

Horrific? Are you serious? I don't think a post like that will get you banned, but it does make you look ridiculous. A horrific speach. Yeah Right.

Maybe horrific wasn't the right word. There was no leadership, no confidence in his speech. It struck me that he was asking for nothing more than one last try of a strategy that has already failed.

Let me put it this way--will this speech steel the confidence of the bulk of Americans who want this effort to succeed but have lost confidence? Can anyone realistically say they feel better about our chances of success after this speech than the did before? I, for one, feel a great deal worse.

To attempt to tie this to the GWOT without any substantial comments on Afghanistan (where the true allies of Al Qaeda are gaining strength) is especially shameful.

What makes somebody a "true ally of Al Quada", other than not being in Iraq?

And they've regained control of significant portions of Afghanistan. I really wish the President would have said something about turning the tide there.

What defines somebody as being a true ally of Al Queda? In fact, what defines somebody as being Al Queda?

You really do think like a liberal - fighting sovreign nation states, neat little pockets of territorial sovreignty, an identifiable enemy, - let's just round up the bad guys... Hello, they are f***ing cockroaches. It's not about Afghanistan or Iraq, the Taliban or Al Queda. How come liberals cannot see the big picture. So Obtuse.

Do you think Afghanistan is irrelevant in the GWOT? If we succeed in Iraq (and I'm highly doubtful we'll succeed at least in the sense that the President articulated tonight--Iraq is at least a half century away from becoming a stable democracy) and fail in Afghanistan, will we really be any safer than we were on Sept. 10, 2001?

We're well off topic here but I've been hoping a liberal would show up to explain this to me.

Al Queda and Afghanistan were never synonymous with each other. And Al Queda was never synonymous with Muslim terrorism either.

Al Queda is multinational in scope, and Muslim terrorism is a multi-headed beast of which Al Queda is only one head. The Iranians have been behind a great many terrorist attacks on us over the years, and are still attacking us today in Iraq. It strikes me as odd and misguided to suggest that fixing Afghanistan is the magic key to solving our problems. It was a handy base for Bin Laden to use, nothing more.

In my view, Afghanistan has been for a long time a critical front in the GWOT. When in power, the Taliban (aside from itself being a brutal, horrific regime) provided bases for Al Qaeda which directly led to 9/11.

We rightly eliminated the Taliban, and there was a real chance for success there. And I think the fact that Al Qaeda has been greatly diminished is a consequence of that success. But we are failing to finish the job in Afghanistan, and its central government is in danger of failing.

I think there are similar reasons to be concerned with Somalia and Sudan, among other places. Failed states are a terrorist's best friend.

It's OK. Really.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.

A reasonable question deserves a reasonable answer. Sometimes in the course of human events a situation has to "evolve", to "percolate" so to speak. All the parties have to reach some tipping point before something will be done, and not all the parties reach that point at the same time. From the sound of information coming out of Iraq today, Maliki and company may well have finally reached that tipping point --- with a no small prodding from the President I submit.

Do I wish they had gotten here sooner? Of course. But remember that the Iraqi leader are poeple whose life long experience is in a society far more chaotic and violent than anything Americans would ever countenance. When you spend your life in a society where you could be, and often were, picked up off the street and fed into a shredder on a whim; where tens of thousands of people simply disappeared every year; where young girls who attracted the attention of the wrong people found themselves picked up, raped and discarded; where the suppression of whole ethnic groups was the norm; you might be forgiven for having a higer tolerance for chaos than most Americans.

------------
PS Making statements like "if this gets me banned, so be it..." around here is a bit like waving a red cloth at the bull. Don't tempt fate.

John
----------
Why would God create something like whiskey? To keep the Irish from ruling the world of course.

One big difference now is that the Dems have Congress. They can't play all sides of the field, spew rhetoric and hide behind the MSM. They will have to take a stand. Inevitably, actually voting on some solid positions will alienate a large portion of the public. They will a) let the presdient have his way, which will boost his image and the mission or b) once and for all come out and vote for cutting off funding forthe troops and vote for mandatory tabled withdrawal, which will make them look defeatist. It's not enough to just bitch, complian, appease the Kossites, bait moderates and run as moderate, prudent responsible Patriots. Their jig will soon be up and I think the POTUS will benefit.

One big difference now is that the Dems have Congress. They can't play all sides of the field, spew rhetoric and hide behind the MSM.

Really? They won Congress almost three months ago and have held it officially several days now. I see all sides of the field being played, all types of rhetoric spewed, and the MSM doing a good job of blocking for the Dems. Maybe the line won't hold forever, but when you have effectively poisoned the public with unanswered propaganda you start with a huge lead with a short time left on the clock.

President Bush could have healed the blind tonight and the minority I expect watched would have believed there was a conspiracy between him and the publishing industry.

Don't get me wrong, I hope you are right, but my guess is the Dems neither put up nor shut up for the next two years on Iraq, and fairly soon more GOP defectors will be found among the Hagels and Brownbacks.

If they do nothing, the President will be partly vindicated. The liberal hype machine will have no mouthpiece in the Democratic party because the Democrats will have done nothing differently themselves. They will have to come out and actually offer legislation and vote on cutting funding and basically quitting. Giving these hard options, I think the public will get back in line behind Bush.

But I agree that they will do nothing, but make symbolic protests. They won't dare quit because they know the long term consequences will be terrible for the US and the image of teh Democratic party. I think they are going to start eating their own real soon.

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I would look forward to hearing from Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore. Every day the Dems do nothing of significance is another day their blood will continue to boil.

Only if the Iraqi government does it part.

That's the unknown here. If the Iraqis don't do as promised, then what? Our men and women in uniform can only do so much, if they do not have the Iraqis pulling their own weight don't go after the Maddi Army and the other private army's in Iraq, why are we staying?

That's the what the military leaders who President Bush have been saying, but that's not what the President or his State Department want to hear. State and the President have backed the current Iraqi government, they have no alternative.

The future of Iraq is not in the Presidents hands at this point.

_______________________________
Another South Park Republican spouting off !

Sadly, Steve, I believe you've hit the nail on the head. This "new" plan, just like the old one, assumes that there is a central government that is committed to ending the sectarian violence and capable of acting vigorously in support of that objective.

I just don't see the evidence for that belief. On the contrary, all the evidence I see suggests that the government is dominated by Shia partisans, whose principal purpose is not to end the civil war, but to win it.

Watching the speech I have a better opinion of it than listening to it.

Veritas magna est et praevalet.