43 Replies to “Five years In”

  1. If the Iraq war had been fought like WW11, with a will to win and support of the world and the media. It would have been over in 6 months, with fewer casualties.
    A few bombs here and there and its is over.
    Did he mention how many casualties in any of the other wars.

  2. Did Obama mention that if it weren’t for the civil war he might still be picking cotton?
    Lot’s of white people died to make him a senator.

  3. …but WW2 for the ‘muricans lasted only three years, nine months and a handful of days.

  4. Let’s put it another way:
    GWB is the longest serving wartime president in American history.

  5. Hey mary T
    I guess one of the reasons the Iraq war hasn’t been fought like WW2 is that the authors of the war knew damn well they’d never be able to get a draft happening –
    Even though they all refer to the war as the most necessary, decisive conflict of our time (etc., etc.), they’ve never felt the need to institute a draft or even raise taxes to pay for it. In fact, they’ve lowered taxes!
    They all kinda knew they could kinda get public support for the war if they scared the public by saying Iraq was ready to nuke’em (the whole WMD-smoking gun-mushroom cloud thing) and falsely linking Iraq to 9-11 when everyone was so freshly traumatized by that event.
    But even so, they knew they couldn’t go so far as to say a draft would be necessary! That would’ve put a definite no-go on the whole enterprise. So would have raising the folks’ taxes to make them pay for the war.

  6. Hey, does anyone see any point whatever to John West’s post except for him to make an entirely irrelevant reference to Obama’s race?
    Oh and Kate: it’s pretty clear Obama was referring to *America’s* involvement in WW2.
    But you just keep on putting these posts up trying to score spurious political points with your wilful misinterpretations.
    That’ll show them Leftards what a fool Obama is!

  7. “I guess one of the reasons the Iraq war hasn’t been fought like WW2 is that the” terrorists are not wearing uniforms. That was Hitlers mistake, those damn “uniforms” made his boys sitting ducks.

  8. Well tim
    I guess if the war’s so all-important as its supporters say it is, you’d think they’d insist on a draft, wouldn’t they? Heck, some of’em might even go over and volunteer to fight it themselves.
    Oh, that wouldn’t solve the problem that the ‘enemy’ isn’t wearing uniforms. But it sure wouldn’t hurt, and it’d sure be important as a testament to how crucial they consider the war to be, and it sure would’ve been more likely to get the war over sooner than it took the US to defeat Hitler, huh?

  9. I notice that Obama didn’t mention Vietnam; but then that was the Dem’s big show, wasn’t it? It went on for 11 years and cost several times the Iraq war in % of GDP. They lost on average more soldiers in each year than Iraq has cost total. And the mistakes made were legend. The Iraq war has actually gone smooth compared to WWll or WWl. GWB never lost an entire army as in Dieppe or Galipole. There were no hopeless bombing missions where our guys were forbidden to shoot back as in Hanoi. I won’t even bother discussing Korea.
    Yep I guess Michael Moore was right after all. Iraq was just a peaceful paradise where children played at weddings. GWB destroyed it all for nothing but to serve his ego and increase the share value of Haleburton.

  10. Go boy go ! Obama will be >20 points behind John boy by November… His mouth & Anti-USA friends have sunk the Dems. How many Dem Senators can run & win on his bib slobber & blabber? Hillary was dangerous because she would have flipped…
    Those that think MSM (belt-way) politics determine the views of ALL Americans are Morons.

  11. After the US invasion of Iraq, Osama called all jihadists to go there and fight the Great Satan in a battle they couldn’t afford to lose. His words, not mine.
    Five years later, thousands upon thousands of jihadis are dead, fewer and fewer of them are hanging on in Iraq, and the rest have fled to the northern tribal areas in Pakistan where 150k Pak soldiers are lined up to their south, thousands of NATO troops are massing on their north. Their hideouts are being hit with missiles from drone aircraft in the first salvos of what will perhaps be a defining fight.
    They have no other place to go. The US has a military presence in a dozen Middle East countries. Iran, the worst terrorist sponsor, is now completely surrounded by the US military.
    All of this has been accomplished with 4 thousand US casualties, a remarkably low count by any historic measurement. If that’s losing, I’ll take more thank you.

  12. “This war has now lasted longer than World War I, World War II or the Civil War,” – Barack Obama
    Or he could have said,
    More American soldiers died in a couple of days of fighting in WW-I, WW-II or in one single day of fighting in the Civil War ( Civil War record; 6000 in one day if I am not mistaken ) than have died in all these years in the Iraq War.
    Or he could have said more innocent people died in a few minutes on 9/11 than on an average day of fighting in WW-I, WW-II or the Civil war.
    But that would make him honest…and a conservative!…

  13. Lets see.
    World War I started in 1914 and ended in 1919. The US got involved in 1917.
    World War II started in 1939 and ended in 1945. The US got involved in 1941.
    The invasion of Iraq is five years old. About the same as World War I and shorter than World War II.
    But if you factor in American involvement in either of those wars, then at five years its well over the 2 year ‘American’ WWI and 4 year ‘American’ WWII.
    Guess, hes talking about the American versions of the war then.
    “All of this has been accomplished with 4 thousand US casualties, a remarkably low count by any historic measurement. If that’s losing, I’ll take more thank you.”
    bob c, ever considered joining the army? And putting your own life on the line? You re treating those numbers as statistics, not individuals.
    No one’s stormed any beaches in this war. Nor have they engaged in old tactics such as standing in lines across from each other and shooting. Casualty counts in th Civil War were highre because the methods of warfare were a bit crude. Throw in one armoured car into the American civil war and it would change the equation quite dramatically. Tis a different world, one in which 4,000 is not a small number.
    John West
    “Did Obama mention that if it weren’t for the civil war he might still be picking cotton?”
    Or his ancestors could have fled to Canada. Oops did I say something good about Canada on whiner’s paradise aka smalldeadanimals.
    And to all our military strategists, Kate included. Thanl God they are not wearing uniforms. The uniform is a product of organization and discipline. The Romans mastered it, and the German army, and well, all uniformed armies, are hugely impressive because of their ability to maintain their form, organization, and discipline in war. A uniformed enemy would be a trained and organized one. Not a bunch of untrained guys with guns. They cant be trained remember. The Americans destroyed all the training camps. Or so they claim. And better a ragtag group of gunmen than a Nazi German style efficient army.

  14. too many liberals around for a country to actually win a war. you would have to kill too many of your own in order to win. by the way, sicne ww2 you have noticed the u.s. bases still in europe and japan. been there somewhat longer than 5 years. carry on.

  15. Of course! Bring up the draft… although if you actually review how the modern US armed forces are trained, a draft would reduce its effectiveness, as there would not be the resources to bring everyone up to spec.
    War opponents use the draft boogeyman because it’s scary, but the truth is that the US military doesn’t want it either.
    Now, more support from domestic sources, instead of B. H. Obama’s “I always voted against it” mentality, that might have helped.

  16. I think it is important to compare wars to learn from them and really understand the real outcomes (cost vs. benefits, etc). However, you cannot blindly compare wars in terms of duration or in terms of cost (lives and money) or in terms of causes and reasons. They are each unique in that regards.
    For example, the Iraqi war probably will cost more than a trillion dollars but the US has a 14 trillion dollar economy (and illegally probably more so). Therefore if the war lasts, say, one more year (6 years) then the US economy will have generated a total GDP of over 80 trillion dollars. If the cost of the war by next March is 1 trillion dollars then the total cost of the war per GDP generated is ~ 1.25%. This is miniscule compared to something like WWII.
    Saddam is gone. There is no going back. If conditions continue to improve in Iraq over the next year and the Iraqi government continues to improve (and probably will with the upcoming provincial elections) then Clinton and Obama will not look too good in the eyes of the average non-ideologue American (most Americans).

  17. rolik,what’s the deal with the draft? If the Americans needed the draft they would have implemented it. They didn’t!

  18. The Iraq War lasted only a few months. It achieved the fall of the dictatorship and enabled the establishment of a constitutional democracy within those few months.
    What is going on now in Iraq is not a war comparable to WWI or WWII or the American civil war or any other war. It is an internal and regional insurgency being fought between tribalist agendas and democratic agendas of the ME. The Americans are helping the Iraqi government and its own police and military to fight the tribalist agendas.
    This transformation of the basic political, social and economic infrastructure of a population in the millions is not something that can be accomplished rapidly or without dissent from the old tribes, who want to retain power rather than handing it over to those millions.
    For Obama to declare that this is a ‘war’ comparable to WWI/II is not merely ignorance but is above all, a political strategy. His agenda is not to help transform the ME and thus, marginalize Islamic fundamentalism around the world and make the world safer. His agenda is personal and immediate: votes, votes based on emotion and ignorance.

  19. Bad comparison by Obama. The war in Iraq is an insurgency. As the U.S. military pointed out as early as 2003, these typically last 10 years or more. Perseverence is key. Comparing Iraq to past conventional wars shows a profound misunderstanding of the nature of the conflict.
    It would be just as wrong to compare casualties, but I’ll do it anyway. In its shorter experience in WW II the U.S. suffered 417,000 killed in action. In Iraq to date, just under 4,000 killed. This alone should illustrate that they are dealing with a very different kind of conflict.

  20. If Rolik and Sput are so angry that George Bush stopped the Chretien crime family from stealing the Iraqi people’s oil (France Chretien’s father-in-law is Paul Desmarais, chairman and largest shareholder of Power Corp., a large shareholder of TotalFinaElf, and he’s also on TotalFinaElf’s board of directors, an oil company totally in bed with Saddam), why don’t they strap on a suicide bomb vest and go fight the Americans instead of boring everyone to tears with moronic CBC lies like Bush said “Iraq was ready to nuke’em (the whole WMD-smoking gun-mushroom cloud thing) and falsely linking Iraq to 9-11” and using American soldiers as statistics rather than individuals.

  21. Duh, that’s right Grantk1!
    War’s goin’ just fine!
    Don’t need no dumb draft!
    It’s all wrappped up!

  22. This war ended when they flushed the rat from the hole. one must not confuse occupation with all out war.
    There were US troops in Germany on bases from the end of WWII till now. 60+ years. Police action.

  23. Well said ET. The Dem’s are working on the very emotions of the “MSM”. It is about time world woke up and started seeing the Radical Muslims as they are. You can not have a few people in power with their resource of oil and no democratic society. Very few people get educated and very few have say in which way the country is run. It took 40 years+ to bring some of these countries out of the dark ages and it will take more to get them to a democratic society so the ordinary person has a vote.
    The world has to intervene in these countries political process. We have neighbor’s who fought in Germany’s SS. There DRAFT was, “YOU WILL JOIN US OR WE WILL KILL ALL YOUR FAMILY”. I do believe a lot of the Jihad draft is like this.
    For the war against terrorism, they will win. Comparing years and deaths are irrelevant. Too much modern machinery. Too bad the Jihads did not have air power and sea power. Then they could defeat them there too. All they have is small bombs and “FORCED ON” idiotic believes to major population. No different than the Canadian Liberals and there scare tactics. It runs out and they are digging themselves a hole. Lets hope it is deep and when they crawl in it, we can fill it up with the “BS” that they have been telling the major population for 40+ years. Merle Underwood.

  24. The Iraq war is fought with lawyers the MSM and liberal public sentiment not solders. If it had been the Chinese army in Iraq it would have been over within a month. The American army in Iraq is forced to be a defensive policing force, without the authority or will to finish the job in a traditional sense.
    Remember the army is heavily populated with gays in this war, the largest concern many of the regular troops have is being molested in the showers as they await deployment orders. In other words thier hands are tied as the liberal left leaves them exposed and wills thier defeat so that they can say “see, that Bush was the worst president ever”.

  25. ET is right. The actual Iraq war was over when Saddam and his army were defeated. The current conflict is an insurgency.
    This will be a long, seemingly endless war, until the strategy changes to fit the actual conflict – starting with the correct definition. “The war on a tactic,” certainly isn’t it:
    “Conquest Model of Islamic Terrorism” (excerpts)
    By Moorthy Muthuswamy
    The Western political, defense and intelligence establishments, for the most part, view Islam under the “religion model.” In this model, aspirations of Muslims are seen to be no different from the ones in any other religious community. It acknowledges the violent track record of Muslims and its probable origins in Islamic scriptures, but hopes that, as is the case with other ethnic groups and nations, over the passage of time, Muslims too will eventually overcome the hurdles to become a cohesive component of the global community. This model implicitly assumes coexistence…
    That a conquest-based ideology should use religion in its framework should be no surprise. Religion provides enduring and powerful legitimacy, inspires followers and helps impose the will of a civilization on unsuspecting alien populations…
    In the context of the conquest model, the Western approach to the war on terror would indeed be very different. For instance, the notion of introducing democracy in Muslim nations such as Iraq or Afghanistan without weakening Islamic ideological hold on the population will be considered flawed. Islamic religious institutions in the West will be seen as instruments of conquest of unbelievers and a repressive element in the life of Muslim citizens (these institutions are now protected under the religion model on the grounds of religious freedom). A Muslim minority’s drive to segregate themselves through special treatments will be seen as the first step toward creating their own exclusive place and eventually their own land – a form of conquest.
    In the conquest model, Islam itself is seen as less a religion and more as an ideology of conquest – as an affront to liberty and wealth-creation, much like communism. From this perspective it is difficult to foresee how Islam can be reformed any more than Communism has been. This view makes it possible to wage a far more comprehensive ideological, political and military warfare against what is plausibly an ideology of conquest.
    frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=85447CC0-5BC0-4B50-BD31-7718A136D661

  26. John West>
    “Did Obama mention that if it weren’t for the civil war he might still be picking cotton?”
    Actually I would doubt that to be the case.
    The cotton industry of the south before the civil war was heavily populated with a labor class peoples in the fields relying heavily on more muscle and less thinking ability. With Senator Obama’s gift of speech and inherent communication skills, he would have most probably been what they referred to at that time as a “House Negro” and would have in all likelihood not spent very much time in the actual fields. This would have provided him with quite a bit of authority within the black community of the time and in some respect shows that his inherent gifts would have allowed him a much softer life regardless of affirmative action today. On the other hand in all likelihood he would not have been running for the US president.

  27. I agree with Sput.
    The only way to win the war is by Nuking Baghdad. That would be the only reasonable solution. Then once we nuke them a second time we can put bases on their territory and help them develop into a modern liberal democracy.
    Or maybe we could carpet bomb Kabul killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. Then we could split the country in half and build a wall between the Nato controlled sector and the Islamist controlled sector.
    After all this is said and done we just need to live in fear for 40 years about the possibility of our total annihilation, to solidify how these wars were glorious campaigns.
    Wasn’t WW2 glorious?
    Don’t you ever feel stupid for being wrong Sput?
    1. Baghdad was controlled within 3 months with fewer civilian casualties than 2 days of bombing Japan.
    2. The declared victory over Japan was only possible by indiscriminately killing 250,000 Japanese civilians. Truman decided to do so because an invasion of Japan would have cost a million lives.
    3. WW2 continued until 1990, using the same logic that is used to consider the Iraq war ongoing. Don’t forget the flareups in Korea, Afghanistan I and Vietnam that would be considered side wars. The Baathists were defeated in a year. Right now we’re fighting the analogue of the soviets and communists.
    Please stop before posting and reconsider your view of history.

  28. Toontown Kid,
    Read. Digest. Then respond.
    “If Rolik and Sput are so angry that George Bush stopped the Chretien crime family from stealing the Iraqi people’s oil (France Chretien’s father-in-law is Paul Desmarais, chairman and largest shareholder of Power Corp., a large shareholder of TotalFinaElf, and he’s also on TotalFinaElf’s board of directors, an oil company totally in bed with Saddam)”
    I wont speak for Rolik, but I dont live under illusions that anybody at the top is clean. Not Desmarais, certainly, though TotalFinaElf, is a huge oil company. But lets keep playing your strange game, you know, special needs for special people, and remind ourselves about how Senior Bush accepted investment from the Bin Ladens in the Carlyle group. Junior Bush was also a member of the BoD there. Should we be angry at the fact that Desmarais is also affiliated to the Carlyle group? But lets not let facts get in the way of your little diatribe, shall we?
    “why don’t they strap on a suicide bomb vest and go fight the Americans instead of boring everyone to tears with moronic CBC lies like Bush said “Iraq was ready to nuke’em (the whole WMD-smoking gun-mushroom cloud thing) and falsely linking Iraq to 9-11″ and using American soldiers as statistics rather than individuals.”
    Sorry, what? I just asked bob c to stop using American soldiers such as statistics.
    And we all know how Saddam and Al Qaeda are bedfellows.

  29. Sput,
    Anything that can be counted is a statistic. Please leave your appeal to emotion at the door when debating war.

  30. Sput; My comment about the historical context of 4 thousand dead US soldiers in Iraq is bang on. It is a testiment to your ignorance of military history if you don’t understand that. If you spent a little more quality time in a library and a lot less watching the CBC no one would have to explain it to you.
    I have the utmost respect for anyone who puts it all on the line for their country. Noting the simple facts re death tolls in the context of a discussion about war in no way takes away from that. Why you think it does is beyond my understanding.
    As far as military service is concerned, show me your brass and I’ll show you mine.

  31. ion; Just noticed your post. Well said. Do you think either of us is getting through to Gunga Sput? I’m not holding my breath.

  32. George W Bush is my hero, and remeber that Bill Clinton actually signed a resolutionc calling for Saddam to be replaced in 1998.
    Funny how the retards on the left ignore that.
    But then again, hould we be surprised?

  33. sput
    try getting some facts and using common sense in here
    “YOUR REAL GYPSY” friend asks this of you!!!!

  34. Hey Sut;
    If you can pull your head out of Mother Corp’s butt for a few seconds, try this.
    “Before February 2007, estimates of al-Qaeda in Iraq’s strength varied widely, from 5,000 to 10,000 members, according to U.S. military statistics. By December 2007, the group was estimated to have 2,800 to 3,900 members. The latest estimates put the number at 1,800 to 2,800.”
    full story at http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2008-03-20-fighters_N.htm?csp=34
    It’s starting to smell like victory to me. Knowing your deep respect for the troops, I knew you couldn’t wait for the good news. Hey don’t thank me. I’m happy just being Morpheus to your NEO.

  35. This Clive Davis fellow has got to be a bit of an idiot, not knowing how long WWII lasted. And the ignorant twits over at the Corner…what’s their excuse?

  36. I came. I tr011ed. I conquered.
    Who am I?
    Who are you?
    What are my qualifications?
    What are yours?
    Truth be told, most of you couldnt spot the facts even if you stared them in the eye.
    You are bounded by dogma. You cannot question yourselves or what you believe. Or anything that agrees with you. When something is true and it disagrees with you, it must be false. Not because it is false, but because it disagrees with you.
    Where dogma binds you, ideology blinds you. There is some sanity on this board. While ET is prone to thinking he/she is always right, at least there is a coherent logic behind his/her arguments. Something aside from the “I m right, You re wrong” stance taken by most of this board.
    Liberals are whiners. So are you. All you do is whine about Liberals.
    Liberals have conspiracy theories. So do you. More in fact.
    I bow out now. The real world beckons.
    Enjoy the comfort of your armchairs. Continue attacking strawmen. Keep fighting with shadows. You will never be able to put your money where your mouth is. The armchair is your fortress. The ivory towers of academia have a worthy unrecognized equivalent in you.
    Peace. Or is that too leftist.

  37. sput>
    Your not from around here, are yaa boy? Why don’t you pack up that peace of yours and get on back to the city before you hurt yourself with it.
    There’s a right way to do things and a left way! You just found yourself on a left hand turn in the wrong part of the DMZ, and peace lovin hippies only mean trouble!

  38. Wouldn’t it have been nice if sput actually ever said anything of consequence. Unfortunately we can never have nice conversations with Liberals because the world is whatever they want it to be, rather than what it is.

  39. Jon>
    You can’t be too hard on them; it’s a mental condition that predisposes them to fantasy. Simply right-brained verses left-brained, to which the left brain overrides their factual practicality and remains in touch with their artistic creativity and emotions full time.
    The hippies enhanced this touchy feely sentimentality with dope and visualized a rainbow world.
    Struggling or expanding societies have no time for this lazy mentality to lounge around at its expense and we only encounter these anomalous personalities once a society grows wealthy and comfortable. Then they are allowed to crawl out of the closet and feed from societies trough, eventually gaining ruling positions, invoking decadent lifestyles and eventual ruin. The unfortunate cycle of prosperous human culture.

  40. Making the assumption that the Iraq war that overthrew Saddam and the insurgency is lumped up into one single war… what about Afghanistan? That war/insurgency/conflict has technically lasted longer than Iraq, so where are all the big speeches about how long that war has been? I mean, besides here in Canada.

  41. While I’m likely the only one here with this sentiment, sorry to see you go Sput. If you do decide to come back, try explaining how this constitutes defeat.
    America set out to;
    1/ Knock the Taliban from power. Done
    2/ Destroy Al Qaeda’s base of operations. Done.
    3/ Drive Saddam and the Bathists from power. Done
    4/ Capture or kill Hussein. Done.
    5/ Capture or kill his sons. Done.
    6/ Put a democratically elected government in place. Done.
    7/ Kill the jihadis that Osama was sure to send. Done.
    As I said of Osamas boys in my initial post, those who haven’t been killed have “fled to the northern tribal areas in Pakistan where 150k Pak soldiers are lined up to their south, thousands of NATO troops are massing on their north. Their hideouts are being hit with missiles from drone aircraft in the first salvos of what will perhaps be a defining fight.”
    Stay tuned Sput, the US is about to open a major can of whoop ass on Osama and his boys.

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