Insurgents target Strykers in Iraq

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Fortunately for the world, the Internet can not be purged of the truth:

Zinni a full half year BEFORE the invasion

Linky no worky.

[civdiv]

Originally posted by Sergei:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Fortunately for the world, the Internet can not be purged of the truth:

Zinni a full half year BEFORE the invasion

Linky no worky. </font>

[Wicky]

Frunze from the GF IIRC had a pretty good take on what panned out re sunni/****e conflict

[Tarquelne]

Originally posted by Wicky:

Frunze from the GF IIRC had a pretty good take on what panned out re sunni/****e conflict

Yeah, but he cheated. Only he would use a Marxist class analysis, which is obviously the proper conceptual tool-kit. But, you know... it's pinko.

[Battlefront.com]

Frunze... man I forgot all about our resident defender of the proletariat.

Yo Splinty!

Yup, I've heard the ops in Baghdad are making improvements. Good news all around, especially since people around here want you back in one piece. At least they should (or I will ban them ). But I don't think many thought the ops would have anything but a noticable short term positive effect, so in a sense nobody should be surprised. It's the medium and long term that the skeptics (and I am certainly one of them) are concerned about.

The problem is that Baghdad is only one spot. Important as it is, there is a lot of Iraq left. I don't see Anbar becomming Happy Camper Land any time soon nor do I see the Sunni-Shia violence going away any time soon. So in the places where we aren't things are still the way they were and as soon as we decide to leave where we are things will become what they were. Heh... I'm a philosopher tonight! Based on the last 4 years and the last 400 thrown in... I don't see things winding up stable until there are a lot more boddies pointing to Mecca.

What really sucks is that the majority of people in Iraq have ALWAYS wanted to just get on with their lives. I remember almost exactly 2 years ago listening to a talk by a 101st battalion CO say exactly what you said, including how more and more locals were coming out and helping. How the shops were reopening again, and the bad guys were on the run. He said, emphatically, that we'd turned a corner and things were only going to get better. That was Ramadi. We know what's happened there, and the rest of Iraq, since then. I felt genuinely hopeful after hearing his on the ground, first hand info. So I'm more than a tiny bit skeptical, sad to say.

Enjoying life without Saddam and his sons running around was high on the average Iraqi's post-ivasion ToDo List, but a fairly small number of people decided otherwise. History, and contemporary state of affairs, shows that this is the unfortunate normal state for the Middle East. Meaning, a small minority of thugs rules roughshod (to some degree or another) over the majority of every day people that just want to be left alone.

Keep your head down and come back in one piece there Splinty. No matter what happens over there in Iraq, good or bad, this Forum needs every semi-coherent poster it can get

Steve

[ March 24, 2007, 08:19 PM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[Splinty]

Thanks for the good wishes, I was out at our IP station yesterday and was thinking I might be eating my optimistic words. Two car bombs went off a couple of miles south of my area and we were setting up a roadblock to stop a van load of women who were supposedly carrying 15 Katyusha rockets to be used against our FOB. My squad didn't get them, but someone else did. We spent the rest of the afternoon patroling the Al Muthana district looking for trouble, nothing happened. Which, although it makes for a dull day,is a good thing.

[Battlefront.com]

Dull days are good days, I'd say!

Read a "nice" little piece about a suicide car bomber getting through a checkpoint because there were a bunch of kids in the back of the car. They pass through, parked in front of some target, got out, and the car and kids went BOOM. How can one beat an enemy that has absolutely no traces of Human compassion? Looking around the good 'ol USA's crime reports it's clear that one can't. We're a pretty neat species, but man oh man did someone make some boo-boos when our brains were designed. I'd guess that Microsoft could even do a better job, though it would have taken 200 million years to develop and we'd still be sitting around most of the time trying to figure out "where we want to go" and the occasional unexplaned desire to smack our heads against a hard surface Still, it would beat having people detonating bombs with kids sitting on top of them as decoys.

Steve

[Pak_43]

"How can one beat an enemy that has absolutely no traces of Human compassion?"

Now, it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan brown,

For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles, and he weareth the Christian down;

And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, with the name of the late deceased,

And the epitaph drear: 'A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.'

C'mon Steve, this is the story of the middle-east since time immemorial...there's been enough history documented to surely realise that this time around it would be no different for the US? Blimey, how many Hamas bombs, how many Israeli "security operations", how many thousands and thousands and thousands needed to die in the Iran-Iraq war in absolutely godawful circumstances, how many people killed and mutilated in Iraq's prisons...

Surely the writing was on the wall before this even started, that it would end up with car-bombs, kidnappings, assasinations, blind factional loyalty and a fundamental belief that the ends justify the means...

Particularly since it is the general belief amongst virtually all classes of society in the Middle-East that it requires a "strong" dictator to govern the countries there..trying to govern by consensus is perceived by the vast majority as weakness...

I'm just re-reading Robert Fisks's "The Great War for Civilisation - The conquest of the Middle-East", I suggest you do too, or at the very least dig out some Kipling...

[civdiv]

Bremer and his bunch of clowns plus State and the Administration are the primary architects of our failure. I get so sick of the military getting blamed for the situation in Iraq. But then you have stuff like this, no wonder they hate us over there. This is perhaps the most distrubing video I have seen from Iraq. And this is early on, before the insurgency got rolling. That's 4th ID when they finally got in country. Several Army buddies have told me that that iteration of 4th ID (The iteration of 4th ID that first got into Iraq.) was a horribly undisciplined unit. Not trying to flame the Army or 4th ID soldiers, I'm sure most were professionals, but apparantly 4th ID was known for crap like this;

[Battlefront.com]

Uhm... Pak_43... see my previous posts. I'm not surprised at all. I'm just saddened that some people feel that murder is an acceptable means to an end.

Civdiv,

For an invasion to be successful it must be handled by the military and handled correctly. For an occupation/rebuilding to be successfull it must be handled by politicans and handled correctly. Anybody that blames the military for this mess in Iraq may have some points if they are specific to things like what you mentioned (plus a number of other small unit criminal acts + a certain prison incident), but if they don't lay the failure at the feet of the politicians then they simply don't understand the problems. And it is not simply good enough to blame Bremer and State. They report to one man who is the same man that appointed them and resisted all calls to fix things before they were totally broken. Who is that man? In theory President Bush, though a great many would say it was Cheney.

Now, the military is at fault to some degree. From the evidence that is now surfacing thanks to personnel retiring and Freedom of Information Act releases the military was either telling the President what he wanted to hear or they made some extremely huge blunders. I'm not talking about the grunts on the ground, I'm talking about guys with lots of stars on their uniforms.

The most important lesson out of all of this is never, ever, EVER should the military embark on a military mission like this unless they know that once the invasion is over that the peace will be propperly dealt with. I think Franks should have threatened resignation when he found that there was no plan for peace. Since he didn't, I hold him responsible one way or the other (incompetent or a political lacky, neither of which are admirable qualities for a senior commander).

Hey... that was a pretty good rant for a sunny Sunday afternoon

Steve

[civdiv]

Steve,

Agree completely. Mistakes have been made by the brass, but sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference between a general officer beaten to parade rest by Cheny or Rummy or Bush or Bremer, etc, and when they are keeping their mouth shut to avoid getting sacked. Lots of egos involved to; Sanchez saying the surge wouldn't work, WTF was he thinking? So general, you had all the troops you needed, and things were progressing forward (based on numerous statements he made), but now we can't succeed with 25 thousand more troops? Can someone explain that to me please?

It was a pretty sunny Sunday afternoon and I got to spent a couple of hours out in it. I'll email you some 70 degree weather, how big an attachment can your email box take? I think it's about a meg per degree.

civdiv

[Peter Cairns]

Steve,

For those who think things would be rosey if we hadn't gone into Iraq, well... their living in as much of a dream world as the neo-cons.

If we had not gone into Iraq the confrontation with militant Islam would simply happened in some other guise in some other time in the very near future.

What makes you think a major conflict with militant Islam would have occured somewhere else relatively quickly if it hadn't been Iraq.

Militant Islams been around since the Irainian revolution ( almost thirty years) and suicide bombing since before the US suffered it in Beruit. But that doesn't mean that a major confrontation was any more inevitable than the Cold War going hot.

Situations like Greece v Turkey can remain stable for decades, Korea is another example. No one doubts that the atagonism exists or that it's a possibility, but it is never inevitable.

I've never liked the black and white argument "If it wasn't for X you'd be Y" ,whether it be America in ww2 and speaking German, or Nato and speaking Russian.

Certainly both a possible outcomes, but they are points on a bell curve with multiple outcomes rather than an off/on switch.

For over twenty years I was expecting terrorists somewhere to pull of a real spectacular, blowing up an oil tanker, or crashing a truck full of home made explosives in to an oil refinery, so when 9/11 happened my reaction was " Oh so it's today".

To be honest I was somewhat amazed we had managed to get through much of my adult life without such an attack.

From this perspective unlike most politicians that I hear, I don't think the world changed, or that militant Islam really became such a great threat, and from that perspective I see no reason why things couldn't have remained stable for decades with intermittant attacks like the Bali, Madrid or the London bombings being the mainstay with a lower level threat of a "spectacular".

I am interested to know just what events you seem to have seen as harbingers of an impeding showdown.

Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, The Philipeans, Pakistan and Afghanistan all had militant Islam, but all of these conflicts had there own internal dynamic and causes, rather than being a line of "Islamic dominos" that were poised to fall all the way to Americas door.

Peter.

[Moronic Max]

Meh. If we really wanted to take on militant Islam, we'd be making nice with groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. We'd be desperately trying to encourage 'reform' groups in places like Saudi and Pakistan that aren't a bunch of googly-eyed lunatics. We'd be engaging in constructive dialogue with Iran. We'd be seriously pressuring Egypt and pals to ditch the corrupt, undemocratic processes.

But we don't, so we're not. Because dealing--really dealing--with militant Islam is going to require a major shift in American foreign policy. And, well, that ain't gonna happen anytime soon. Can you imagine what O'Reilly and Coulter and pals would be saying if we actually started talking to Iran?

[civdiv]

Max,

We have forced (indirectly) Khaddafi into given up his WMD program (Where most of Iraq's WMD program went), we forced some measure of democratic change in Kuwait. I agree that the root problem is the corrupt dictatorships in Kuwait, SA, UAE, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, etc. We have moved towards forcing more transparancy and democracy, but we are over-the-barrel due to being on the oil teet. I agree more needs to be done in regards to our foreign policy, but only so much can be done. Iran is a non-starter as they did blow up our barracks in SA a few years ago. Clinton and the rest of his minions did their best to deflect the media's attention from that fact while trying to 'massage' his legacy by improving relations with Iran. The fact is we should have pummelled Iran from afar at the time, instead of blowing up baby food factories in Sudan. But we were to fixated on Iraq at the time, and Clinton was too busy turning down various groups and nations offering us bin Laden's head on a platter. If we had 1) taken Sudan's offer of bin Laden, 2), not hit them with cruise missiles, we might have engaged them to a degree that this Darfur crap wouldn't be going on now. But lost opportunities and ancient history.

But making nice with the Muslim Brotherhood, are you insane? They hate all things western and what would that do to our relationship with Mubarak? Look, there are resistance groups that we might want to break bread with but the Muslim Brotherhood is not one of them. I'd treat with Hekmatyar or Fatah or Hamas long before I did anything but kill members of the Muslim Brotherhood on sight.

Pete, the failure in your argument is that both sides had not agreed to tone things down. AQ was just awaiting the opportunity to hit us again, and again, and again. I agree Iraq was a mistake, and I said so at the time, but the fact remained that radical Islam was going to continue to spread and continue to attack us. They would have brought down some country (Pakistan, SA, etc.) eventually. Given the thousands of radical nut jobs that have entered Iraq to fight us, where would they have gone if Iraq was not an option? Given, our actions in Iraq have only made things worse, but whether it's 10 thousand more radicals in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, things were going to break at some point. The Greeks and the Turks have realized the point of diminishing reutrns, especially due to dreams of entering the EU, so they put aside their swords. AQ has made no such decision, and they will continue to be a threat for decades, regardless of whether we enter Iraq or not.

civdiv

[ March 25, 2007, 05:38 PM: Message edited by: civdiv ]

[Battlefront.com]

What CivDiv said. We've been on a collision course with militant Islam for decades. And during that time the US has largely made the threat even worse. Most experts agree that if the US left the ME alone Militant Islam would lose interest in attacking it, yet it has done exactly the opposite. By continually backing oppressive "secular" governments like Saddam, the Shaw, the Saudis, and pretty much every other government in the ME except Syria American policy is right there in their faces. The thing that pisses me off is our so-called friends there allow this and even encourage this to deflect the anger overseas instead of at home. But we are addicted to oil so we made pacts with devils to get it. Now it's all coming to bite us on the bum.

The Iranians have control of one of the last big reserves in the world (partly because they lack the ability to pump it as fast as they can sell it), Iraq is largely offline, a pipeline across Afghanistan is out of the question, an Saudi Arabia could theoretically go at any time (or at least suffer damage to its infrastructure). Some have predicted that if Iran were to go offline at the wrong time a barrel of crude would shoot to $100+ a barrel. That would have the effect, right now at least, of putting the world's economies dangerously close to a Depression (if the price were maintained for any significant amount of time). A nasty Recession would be the best that could be hoped for.

The Neo-Cons answer to these economic threats is hit the problem over the head with the biggest and bluntest foreign policy sledgehammer the can possibly make. I think that is the best that can be said for the foreign policy of the last 6 years. I personally would add inept, incompetent, counter productive, deceitful, often illegal, and at times treasonous.

So the vicious cycle continues full force. On the one hand a group that is determined to have things in the ME a certain way to benefit its own interests, on the other hand another group that is pissed off about it and is too cowardly to deal with it directly. Want to screw the US? Gain control of the oil and shut it off. We'd be done. But shutting off the oil means shutting off the money. Without money there is no power. And power is what the militant Islamic movements area really after. Just look at Iran... they could cripple the West's economies tomorrow, but with over 60% of its revenue coming from the West it simply can't afford to because there would be another revolution.

It's a mess, that's for sure. Especially since the power of oil is already on the decline because the supply is also on the decline. In other words, we're all fighting over something that in 20-30 years will be irrelevant anyway. As Agent K would say, Humans are smart... people are stupid.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Civdiv,

Mistakes have been made by the brass, but sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference between a general officer beaten to parade rest by Cheny or Rummy or Bush or Bremer, etc, and when they are keeping their mouth shut to avoid getting sacked.

That's my point though, about there not being much difference. A soldier's sworn oath to his or her nation trumps whatever civilian head happens to be in that position of Commander in Chief. Supposedly our top military brass is in charge because they are they are worthy of their positions. A military commander who knows he's comitting the nation to a military action which was conceived by a bunch of people who wouldn't know what day of the week it was without a Blackberry shoved up where the sun doesn't shine, should stand firm and ensure the forces under his or her command aren't going to be thrown at a political problem (or at least without a sensible military plan). He can not disobey a direct order, but he can resign or ask for a transfer. You know, a kinder version of Death Before Dishonor (Retirement Before Dishonor) .

Imagine how dofferent things would have bene if every Joint Cheif and head of CENTCOM that was told "you'll invade Iraq without a plan" resigned? It would only take one and the threat of a second before they would have had to abandon the war path or not tried to fight it on the cheap and with oil excs calling the shots. But instead, that did not happen. So yeah, I blame the top brass no matter if they were cowards, suckups, or dumbasses. The effect is the same... tens of thousands of US service personnel dead or injured, hundreds of thousands suffering PTSD, billions less for domestic priorities, our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, 10 years of military rebuilding, embolded enemy states, and a world image of the US as the new Evil Empire that replaced the Soviet Union. No to mention the possibility that the actions increased the threat from militant Islam. Thanks guys... enjoy you're retirements and I hope you can sleep at night. Good luck with the advances on royalties for your memoirs with titles like "Difficult Times, Difficult Decisions" and other stories from politicians in uniform.

Hey, cool. Another rant! I'm must need more sleep

Steve

[ March 25, 2007, 07:43 PM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[Bigduke6]

I would extend that "what if" right down the chain of command. This is a volunteer army we are talking about. For practical purposes, every leader is a US citizen with all the rights and responsibilities that citizenship implies.

I have trouble with a magic and invisible line, apparently at about three-star level, where if you don't resign rather than support an idiotic policy, you are a a bad guy and maybe a traitor; but if your pay grade is somewhere below three-star you get a free pass, just stay with the game plan, keep your mouth shut, charlie mike, and tell yourself by doing that you are helping your men stay alive.

I say, you support the war, you volunteered to serve in the war, great, that's your decision. Maybe people don't agree with it - I sure don't - but at least you took a political stand. The country needs citizens thinking about what is right in wrong in politics. The worst thing is when citizens could care less.

But how many tens of thousands of US officers and NCOs have concluded in their own minds this whole Iraq deal is a big fat waste, that whatever might be done nothing useful will be done? More than are speaking out, certainly. How many of those keeping their mouths shut, are doing so because it's their job, it's the only war we have, a guy's gotta stamp his time card (these days, more than once), a campaign badge always helps promotion, and in any case some one higher up the chain will take care of the big picture?

That's complicity and passing the buck, in my book. Careerism is not limited to the officers that appear before Congress.

The French Army mutinied (sort of) in 1917, because the men in the units were fed up with a war that achieved no results, but killed them efficiently. Some of the mutineer leaders eventually got executed, and to this day it is an arguement in France whether those executed were heroes or traitors.

One thing is for sure: A lot of French soldier lives were saved, because of the mutiny.

Should the US forces in Iraq mutiny? Nah, I'm not saying that. But I am saying, if we are going to demand moral courage from the top people in uniform, then it is fair - assuming soldier lives mean more than NCO and officer careers - to demand moral courage from the field and company grade officers, and the NCOs with the troops.

No personal offense intended. I hope guys like Splinty come home soon, in one piece, and stay that way.

[Peter Cairns]

I'd be less harsh in judging the leadership of the US armed forces over Iraq, in that they did the bit they had been trained to do , defeating the enemy before them on the battlefield, pretty well.

If they failed to anticipate the insurgency, well in that respect they are in good company because neither did the vast majority of US politicians or public.

If their view of post war Iraq was way wrong then it just means that as you would expect to an extent from the volunteer army of a democracy, it reflected national oppinion.

Prior to the invasion most Americans did expect to be greeeted as liberators. It's not so much that the Neocons lied as that they genuinely believed that they would be greeted as heros.

The big issue then becomes how can an entire nations political, military and business elites be so out of touch with the realities of what is going on in a region they have been involved in for decades.

I know one thing, you won't find the answer on FOX NEWS.

Peter.

[Battlefront.com]

Bigduke6,

I have trouble with a magic and invisible line, apparently at about three-star level, where if you don't resign rather than support an idiotic policy, you are a a bad guy and maybe a traitor; but if your pay grade is somewhere below three-star you get a free pass, just stay with the game plan, keep your mouth shut, charlie mike, and tell yourself by doing that you are helping your men stay alive.

The difference is their ability to know the truth about the operation and their ability to influence it. It is silly to think that even a one or two star field commander would know, or even should know, what the Big Picture plan for the occupation is going to be, not to mention Colonels, Majors, and all that are below. Plus the fact that the higher up you go the more responsibility you have as a general rule of thumb. So yeah, I hold the senior level commanders to a higher standard. This was their responsibility, not SGT Rock of C Company.

The senior level commanders had a duty, and I mean that in the strongest terms, to NOT send our troops into harms way on a half baked mission. They should have demanded that full planning and funding be lined up before the war was started. Despite the faked evidence to the contrary, it was clear that there was no immediate need to go to war. There was time to get the operations planed correctly (unlike, perhaps, Afghanistan). They should have also demanded that the war be on solid, legal ground since it is criminal for a soldier to obey an illegal order.

Since the occupation was obviously not planned for and the war itself is still on shaky legal grounds at best (at worst it is a War of Aggression and the generals who signed off on it are war criminals), I can only see two possibilities at the senior level of military command; they were derelict in their duty or incompetent. Either way, they screwed up and everybody is paying for it.

Look back to Shinseki. Rumsfeld wanted to push a warplan down his throat that called for IIRC 50,000 troops to invade Iraq. The Army put its foot down and a a result it grew by three fold, but still 1/2 of what Shinseki said was required. Imagine the disaster we would have had if Shinseki was a spineless time card puncher? Yet Shinseki's successor, and the rest of the Joint Chiefs stayed quiet after Shinseki was sidelined for doing his job. And then there is Franks' presentation to Rumsfeld that can only be described as Pollyanna at best. HE should have known what was likely to happen since Zinni, who held the post longer IIRC and had more diplomatic experience in the ME, was out there in public predicting pretty accurately what was going to happen. Other military and intelligence people knew, so Franks should have too. His briefing should have been a wakeup call not a glossy presentation of what Rumsfeld wanted to hear. Men in uniform are supposed to anticipate ALL possible outcomes and plan accordingly. There is NO excuse for not knowing that an armed insurrection and/or factional fighting were strong possibilities.

Once again... it is dereliction of duty no matter how you slice it.

Steve

[ March 26, 2007, 09:31 AM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[Battlefront.com]

Peter,

If they failed to anticipate the insurgency, well in that respect they are in good company because neither did the vast majority of US politicians or public.

Not good enough. If a commanding general in WWII (let's say) punched through a section of front and found his flanks attacked, would he be judged competent if there were no forces to protect the flanks and no plans in the event that such an attack occured, even if it wasn't deemed likely? I think not. It is his responsibility to anticipate the enemy's possible actions, to be alert for them, and to have contingency plans in place if they should come to pass.

The senior level knew, and I mean KNEW, that there was a chance for unfriendly reactions either against us or agaist each other. The record is extremely clear about that. What is also extremely clear is that the political and military leadership had NO plan in place to deal with it. What should have happened was this...

"Hey, Mr. Rumsfeld... this is Franks here. Looks like we have ourselves more hostility towards us than expected. We'll put our stabilization plans into place and see if that works. However, if this does not work we'll have to execute Plan B before it gets out of control. Just thought you should know".

This did not happen since there was no Plan B. In fact the exact opposite happened. As the insurgency got worse nothing significant was done to change our strategy. Some forces were held longer and some were put in earlier, but there wasn't anything different going on other than that. Then the sectarian crap started full force and there was almost no reaction to it for a year. All the time the generals and politicians in charge kept telling everybody that things were going swimmingly and that anybody that said different was a traitor or at best ill informed. The media, of course, was blamed for spreading disinformation about what was really going on because they are liberal and want the US to fail. Etc. etc. etc.

If this were a few months after the invasion, that would be one thing. Some lack of planning and slowness to react would be expected. But we are 4 years in so whatever excuses that might have had some merrit in 2003/2004 can not explain 2004-2007.

The US forces are volunteers. They deserve better leadership. Simple as that.

Steve

[ March 26, 2007, 09:47 AM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[Cpl Steiner]

I thought I'd add my comments to the debate on the conduct of the war as a non American (British).

All my life I have been a supporter of the US, even when it has been fashionable in my country to be anti-American to one degree or another. I remember rowing bitterly with my father in the 80s because he was so anti-American. I did American Studies at university to better understand US history, politics and culture, even though to this day I have never even been to America (the closest I got was a holiday in the Caribbean).

I supported the first Gulf War, and when 9/11 came it was a big shock to me. My sympathy for New York and the US was deep, and I was prepared to back the US in any action it deemed necessary to defeat the terrorists.

When the decision to invade Iraq came, I supported it, believing the politicians when they said that WMD would be found there. I was astonished that this turned out to be an error, or even worse, as it now seems, an outright lie.

The WMD issue was a fiasco but I thought I could at least have some satisfaction that the US had got rid of a ruthless dictator and made Iraq a better place. Over the last four years however things have gone from bad to worse. The total lack of any sort of plan for a post-invasion Iraq staggers belief. I am now coming to the conclusion that, as shocking as it sounds, the people of Iraq would have been better off under Saddam than they are now. At least Saddam only killed you if you opposed him. Now people are dying on the streets for no reason or being murdered by kidnappers demanding ransom money. There is not a shred of security in that country for the ordinary people anymore, despite the fact that the rules of war under international law require an occupier to provide basic law and order.

I am saddened now that I would be loath to back another US war, however justified it might seem at the time. The US has lost my confidence in its ability to behave in a responsible way on the world stage. As for 9/11, all the moral high ground the US once had has now been squandered because of its apparent lack of concern for the lives of ordinary non-Americans.

To top it all, I supported Tony Blair, and he has been massively damaged by the whole affair. I feel that the US has demanded total support from my leader but not kept its part of the bargain in making sure that the war would be a success. My leader is now forced to step down and you can guarantee that the new leadership will not be so willing to cosy up to the Americans again.

So, in a spectacular case of mismanagement the US has managed to alienate its friends and weaken its staunchest allies, for no obvious benefit to anyone. This is a sad day for America and the world, and it will take a long time for the damage to be repaired.

[ March 26, 2007, 12:53 PM: Message edited by: Cpl Steiner ]

[Leeo]

So, in a spectacular case of mismanagement the US has managed to alienate its friends and weaken its staunchest allies, for no obvious benefit to anyone.

Oh, I think some have obviously benefited.

[Moronic Max]

I agree more needs to be done in regards to our foreign policy, but only so much can be done.

I don't agree.

But making nice with the Muslim Brotherhood, are you insane? They hate all things western and what would that do to our relationship with Mubarak?

They--at least the group in Egypt--have renounced violence, and AFAIK have stuck to that. So, frankly, even if they do hate all things western--which I'm only willing to concede for the sake of argument--it doesn't matter. They're not our problem.

And, given that every observer I'm aware of holds that if there were free and open elections in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood would win a pluarity, we need to take them seriously, and engage with them.

[Battlefront.com]

The main problem I see is that any Muslim group of any decent size and influence is going to have lots of anti-Western baggage with it. Even the ruling groups that we are mostly friendly with (like in Saudi Arabia) help out our enemies.

Steve

[civdiv]

Cpl Steiner,

Agree with you whole heartedly, and I am an American. And when did you get busted to Cpl, I hated you in CC.

Max,

How do you reconcile Sharia law AND democracy? The latter is just a publicity ploy. Given, I agree with many of its complaints (The previously mentioned dictatorships), but they are just another collection of Islamic nutjobs.

Sort of related, one of the thesis' I did for a past college class was the importance of women's rights in battling radical Islam. You can't have both. So I theorized that women's rights was the best weapon to use against radical Islam. But keep in mind that empowering the Muslim women is not the same as a westerners version of the ERA. Voting rights, rights to own and run a business, rights to political office are still not a western 'liberated women's' idea of equal rights for women.

civdiv