The Observation Deck

while I look forward to the day when we can completely hand the reigns over to the Iraqi government, right now they seem like the teenager who just got his learners permit and immediately wants to take the family car on a cross country road trip by himself.

I swear, though, I read and heard all about a story that said "Mission Accomplished" years ago. Was that a dream? hmmmmmm.............

Ed, that was "Mission Accomplished", this will be more like "Mission Completed". But just like with movies, the sequal is never as good as the original. I can already see the next in the trilogy... "Mission Accomplished 3: Return of the Jihad".

Hopefully, within a few years,...Iraqs police and military and government will be as effective at preventing sectarian warfare as they were before America invaded.

ryan costa wrote:Hopefully, within a few years,...Iraqs police and military and government will be as effective at preventing sectarian warfare as they were before America invaded.

haha like the Taliban being back in power in Afghanistan after our "success" there?

Bill Call wrote:

Justine Cooper wrote:I don't need sights for reality, it is all around us every day.

Then don't look at this:


Slightly Smaller Link

OK I wasn't going to look but the "cucumber" in it had me curious. That just tells you how nuts they are and ok they have some "cucumber" envy because they are less endowed. Not that much more wacky than our Catholic Church being against birth control on some level, and then protesting against abortions and single mother housing.

So we are going to "tame" these savages in their own surroundings and I think we should be worrying about the people with cancer in this country who can now longer get the health care they need because Metro can't do it anymore. We can't tame others' beasts and should be protecting and rebuilding our own country. We just should never have been there.

How is Afghanistan going by the way?

American troops are great. Nearly all Units will complete nearly all day to day missions nearly all the time. This only doesn't happen when they are ambushed by insurgents or hit by improvised explosive devices or suicide bombers.

There just ends up being no shortage of Iraqis and insurgents that need killing. The number of Iraqis and insurgents that need to be killed keeps going up. No one knows where they come from or what they were before they were Iraqis that need to be killed or Insurgents that need to be killed.

Perhaps if the Soviet Union were still around our top political leaders wouldn't have felt a need to invade Iraq. If the Soviet Union had never existed America could have invaded Franco Spain, Pinochet Chile, Apartheid South Africa. There never has to be a shortage of places that need liberating.

So far no one has nuked each other. Israel hasn't nuked the saudi wahabi schools. China hasn't nuked Taiwan. India hasn't nuked Pakistan. Pakistan hasn't nuked India. France hasn't nuked McDonalds. The Russians haven't nuked Japan. Belarus didn't sell its nukes to anyone. If they did, they'd get taken out by conventional warhead missiles in about 3 minutes. Then all kinds of documentaries would be made, then all kinds of new treaties would be made.

Bill Call points to a WSJ article where it was written:

The problem is not American force levels in Iraq. It is divisiveness at home. While our military has adapted, our society has disconnected from its martial values.

One of the interesting features of ongoing neocon fantasies, (one being that the Iraq war has been won and now comes five years of 'winding down,') is that the cheerleaders for martial values, for the most part, haven't put themselves in harm's way for a second.

It would seem that besides the 'my country right or wrong' pole dance, the signal value of in martial values is that one joins up, enjoins their sons and daughters to join up, and does as the Spartans did.

Well, Sparta the USA is not.

***

Now the phraseology adapts "conditions based." This Orwellian turn of phrase offers both victory now and troop withdrawal at some uncertain future date.

From my perspective, this leads me to assess the conditions based in open source information sourced in credible research.

For example, Cordesman, http://www.csis.org/component/option,co ... view/id,3/

ABANDON SHIPS: The Costly Illusion of Unaffordable Transformation 08/11/2008

US Casualties:The Trends in Iraq and Afghanistan 08/07/2008

Sadr and the Mahdi Army: Evolution, Capabilities, and a New Direction 08/04/2008

Analyzing the Afghan-pakistan War 07/29/2008

The Afghanistan-Pakistan War: Measuring Success (or Failure) 07/29/2008

Commentary: Afghanistan: The Problem is Far More than Troop Levels 07/24/2008

US Troop Withdrawals from Iraq: How Ready are Iraqi Forces? 07/23/2008

US Troop Levels And Iraqi Perceptions of the US 07/22/2008

The Ongoing Lessons of Armed Nation Building In Afghanistan and Iraq 07/11/2008

The Iraq War: Key Trends and Developments 07/10/2008

The Afghan-Pakistan War: A Status Report 07/07/2008

Admittedly, I'm prejudiced to favor social science, still, it would seem the above reports suggest at least two crucial broad points:

(1) the situation is complex and very dynamic

(2) what the Iraqi polity desires may not be what the US leadership desires

I'm not sure what "martial values" are supposed to mean in the context of occupying Iraq. Professional proponents of this tend to live in cushy suburbs or sheltered high rises or condos, and have jobs in media, finance, or government.

The Spartans were a culture of jailers. They did not work or produce anything. Their primary occupations were indoctrinating and hazing each other into being spartans, then taxing, looting, and pillaging the 95 percent of the population in the countryside who weren't in the Clique. They had a rigidly enforced culture of bisexuality, infanticide, and screwyness. They were worse than communists. It is comical for todays neocons to look to them for inspiration. Is that that moral relativism stuff?

I realize a successful movie about Sparta came out recently. But there are nearly unlimited examples of societies with martial values throughout history. Some of them even after printing presses and photography were invented. There must be better examples than Sparta. Fracisco Franco of Spain or Pinochet of Chile or Hissen Habré of the Republic of Chad are probably good examples, and they each had the support of the Reagan Administration.

It would seem that besides the 'my country right or wrong' pole dance, the signal value of in martial values is that one joins up, enjoins their sons and daughters to join up, and does as the Spartans did.

Well, Sparta the USA is not.

Yes, the US is not Sparta. We abolished slavery and have an all volunteer military.

ryan costa wrote:Iran isn't a threat to us or the greater middle eastern region. Russia has the stature to be a threat, and will probably be molded into one just for the sake of giving our own higher ups something to do.

Ryan,
Do you believe Iran is a threat to Israel?

Ryan, Stephen.

I raised Sparta as a 'metaphor' for the inane quote provided from the WSJ article.

My intention was to evoke a sense of irony.

Stephen Calhoun wrote:Ryan, Stephen.

I raised Sparta as a 'metaphor' for the inane quote provided from the WSJ article.

My intention was to evoke a sense of irony.

I figured that but could not resist