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The L.A. Times saves space on its Sunday front page for a hit piece on John McCain. The main thrust of the piece is to say, in essence, “Nyaah, nyaah, John McCain said that Iraq would be a cakewalk, but it wasn’t.”Lots of people got Iraq wrong, but the LAT really is taking a cheap shot here. If they're going to hit Crazy Cousin John, I wish they'd hit him on immigration, tax cuts or campaign finance. But since his positions on all those issues are liberal, he gets a pass on those.
The Real Culture War Elite Violent Campus Anti-Semites and their Faculty
Enables vs my “White Privileged” Dad.
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Lieutenant Harold Kaminsky: [to Captain John Earle, who demanded
confirmation before alerting anyone when informed of a sub sighting in the
restricted zone...
6 hours ago
I'm still working on the whole thing - there's certainly lots to be said about it, but if I understand it correctly, the original idea was to make the military forces light and mobile. We were _not_ going to get into "nation building". Rumsfeld came to office with the mission of changing the established military into one in which tanks and massed armies were no longer the preferred method of fighting, with completely separate branches of AF, Army, Navy, Marines etc. but integrating their missions so that they all worked together. No nation building meant that the civil engineering corp wasn't much needed.
ReplyDeleteThat being so, Iraq _was_ a cake walk. We were finished with the war in 3 weeks. "Mission Accomplished" was a fact.
Then the realization set in that we couldn't just oust Saddam and walk away. Maybe if we'd immediately caught and killed him, but he was still out there, waiting for us to leave so he could pick up where he left off. And the situation created a political sump that resulted in every Al Qaida member or recruit within 1000 miles arriving with the goal of attacking the great satan. We learned that we had underestimated the intent of islam on the march.
Rumsfeld had to do an about face on mission, which meant an about face on the military he was building. We got into nation building in a big way - because without Saddam and the Sunnis, there really wasn't much of a nation.
I think they've done a fantastic job. It's long and tough, and it's not done yet. Given the intentions of the Dems, we could still fail...but the Iraqis have used the time well. The more time we can give them the better, but maybe they're well on their way. Their children - and the future - are forever changed.
The _war_ was a cakewalk - it's the nation building _after_ the war that takes time and treasure. 'Specially when you have insurgents trying to undo everything you so.