Rusted Sky

to the President's speech the other day, and oddly enough it didn't have anything I didn't already know.

There's not much of a point in going over it item by item. I'll freely admit that I think the calls of the Democrats for Bush to establish a timetable for a pullout of our forces in Iraq is the rankest opportunism. It'd be like telling a bunch of crack dealers that the police which have been infesting their neighborhood and ruining business for the last few months will be shifted over to another portion of the city on such and such a date. They lay low, because they know that it's business as usual once the cops leave.

And now the Democrats want us to have a pullout date.

I won't go into what happened in Viet Nam after the US pulled out. For a while, as long as there was sufficent support from the US the South Vietnamese held their own and even advanced a bit - then the Democrats cut the logistics cord.

South Viet Nam fell to the Communist North.

At a rough guess, based on the two million people who managed to escape and their reports, about a million, million and a half people were killed when the North took over.

Admittedly, I'm stretching a comparision here - there's no massive political movement looking to take over Iraq and Afghanistan - but there's the Islamic jihadist movement that'd love to impose their version of proper Islamic behaviour on those countries again, and you've got something of a nutcase running Iran who'd just love to try a takeover if we pulled out. (And who's fueling the 'insurgents' in Iraq with money and supplies.)

Either way you look at it, you're looking at tens of thousands - maybe hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis dead if we pull out. The terrorists, having won a victory, would attempt to consolidate and increase their attacks. Cutting off the fledgling Iraqi army from the moral and logistic support of the US (ande you know that'd be the next step, once the Dems managed a pullout) would leave it tottering. And there's too many bad actors in that neighborhood who would love to see that government fall.

I'm not a geopolitcal expert by any means, but anyone who's read much on the Arabic cultures comes quickly to understand the advantages of negotiating from a position of strength. We've 'won' over there - projected our force, freed Afghanistan, freed Iraq from slavery to Saddam. We've demonstrated we're strong, and we'll kick ass if forced.

But now the Democrats are screaming we should retreat. How do you think that'd play with the new government over there? THEY certainly aren't ignorant of history, as leading Democrats seem to be. THEY know without the .assistance of the US military they're well and truely screwed, and they see the Dems trying to turn this into a replay of Viet Nam - with a 'Peace With Honor' scenario - and the promise of future violence when funding's cut. Oh, it might be two or more election cycles, but the Dems HATE with a blind fury what Bush has managed to accomplish. And I don't think there's a Democratic leader that wouldn't gladly jettison the people of Iraq if it meant a gain of ten to twenty points in the polls.

So ask yourself - what's in the better interest here? Bug out of Iraq for short-term political gain and watch it all descend into a godawful mess that'll need to be cleaned up in a generation or two - and at a cost in lives that'll make the 2k expended to date (a number seen as insupportable by the Democrats) seem like a drop of blood in the dust? Or stay the course, get Iraq strong and on it's feet, and have them as an ally (along with Afghanistan) in that area, putting pressure on the other bad actors there?

BTW, take a look at this blog.

The Will to Exist ? Blog Archive ? Pulling out early and other lunacy

I watched Bush speaking on television last night. It was my first day off since arriving in theater one month ago.
Please, America, listen to the man.

The moment anyone puts a timetable on coalition forces leaving, we’ve lost the war. You can’t put a timetable on the good guys unless you can put one on the bad guys too. That’s ridiculous. You can’t put an exact timetable on training up the new Iraqi military and police forces. It would be irresponsible.

No one wants American troops to keep dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. I know, because I’m one of those troops and I would prefer not to die here. On the other hand, and this is what you won’t hear from most mainstream media, if I do die over here, I’ll do so with few regrets. I wouldn’t be dying for a lie, as so many minstrels of misery and mischief keep spouting.

It’s sad that so many Iraqis and others are dying over here. However, when you discover you have cancer the treatment is always the same - attack it at the source. You don’t wait for it to spread. And when is the last time you heard a doctor putting a limited timetable on cancer therapy? I can picture it in my mind. “Mr. Smith, we have seen some progress with your tumor. It’s shrinking. But we need to move on now. The timetable for treating you has passed. Good luck.”

That’s what some people are trying to tell Iraq just as hope is looming on the horizon. And that disgusts me.

Except, of course, how to lose gracefully, and how to ignore the screams of folks being slaughtered who needed your promised support, only to have it pulled away at the worst possible time. It would completely ruin our image in the ME - it'd show we don't have the stomach for a fight, and show we're untrustworthy as an ally of any sort.

It took us 40 years to face down Communism. And now we're facing the same sort of threat with Islamic fundamentalism - only we can nip it essentially in the bud. It's not easy, and it's not painless - and it must be done and there's no one else who can do it.

We either pay a little now, bleed a little now - or cut and run and abandon the gains we've made and then pay a lot and bleed a lot later. Think of 9/11, only with a nuke. We pull out - and it's a question of when, not if.

But hey, if it'd hurt Bush, some consider that's a small price to pay.

J.