Flypaper
By Callimachus | Related entries in Bad Decisions, In The News, The War On Terrorism, WarGreg, at Belgravia Dispatch, rips up the “flypaper theory” about Iraq. And he adds:
This entry was posted on Monday, August 29th, 2005 and is filed under Bad Decisions, In The News, The War On Terrorism, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.Thus the critical need for honesty and serious thinking and fortitude. The stakes are immense. Failure is not an option. And the chances of success will be bolstered if we have a President who appears, not a broken record spouting tiresomely the same old about ‘fighting them there so we don’t fight ‘em here’ or ‘god’s gift of freedom’–but who is instead spelling out a convincing war strategy to win this conflict. What do I want to hear? Well, it’s more what I don’t want to hear. Even as the country is in the midst of huge turmoil, we keep hearing about troop withdrawals. Why? Such talk won’t helpfully ‘concentrate minds’, or otherwise mitigate the potency of the insurgency, or reassure all those Iraqis out there reportedly so consumed about the specter of perma-bases and their oil supplies being stolen by the American interloper. It will more embolden insurgents and maximalists who will wait out the Americans to pursue their varied nefarious agendas. And the notion that Level 3 Iraqi forces, many of them who will flee the second they don’t have U.S. backup, are going to take the fight to the enemy, by 2006, well, it’s just utter bunk.
So, yes, I want to feel comfortable the President understands this, and understands that a cohesive Iraqi national army, representing the three main factions in the country, is going to need to be systematically built, in non-rushed fashion, over the coming years. And as that Army learns how to fight, the U.S. Army (wherever possible reducing its footprint but still available as it most assuredly will need to be) is ready and present and able to stand shoulder to shoulder with the New Iraq. This blog has been very critical of the Administration of late, and the hate mail and angry comments are growing, but that’s the blogosphere, and you all are entitled to your opinions. And, yes, I do know this: John Kerry would very likely have had us pulling out large amounts of troops already or imminently, and we wouldn’t even have had a chance to succeed. With Bush, there is at least hope.
August 30th, 2005 at 11:34 am
As you may recall, I’ve commented on the #8 point against the “flypaper theory” (the moral argument against using another country as a “flytrap”) here on Donklephant. Greg at BD makes the same point much more eloquently than I ever did.