“The objectives of the war were to boost the political popularity of George W. Bush and his supporters and to ensure a steady flow of government dollars to military contractors.”

to tell me Amanda’s cheif motivation is political.

She doesn’t like the war, that is obvious. Her first post mentioned the Republican party, first off, rather than Bush. And again, her first focus was on the war and then the economy. When she said she would be supporting Obama, again her reasons were the war first.

While people may not always tell you what they really believe first off the bat, Harry, the order and priority they give to criticizing certain groups or objects are a very clear hint, however.

I dont see anything other than BDS as motivation based upon previous comments.

I cannot really agree with you that human lives should be expended by having soldiers wait in their barracks, like in Lebanon, for the terrorists to cave the building in on them. I also cannot agree with increasing military recruiting potential and military readiness by having the military in a peace time bureaucratic setup where the only way they can learn “on the job” is by manufacturing fake products such as readiness reports for peace time consumption.

Since Nixon, the party has banked its fate on being the more militarily assertive of the two parties.

Many former Democrat elements went to the Republicans via Reagan. This has had the effect of turning many new conservatives into classical liberals, hence the desire for war and change on the part of the Republicans but not on the part of the Democrats, at least not land wars like Somalia.

These series of small, “easy” wars led the GOP and much of the country to believe that knocking off foreign dictators is easy stuff:

Knocking off dictators is easy. Bush chose the hard route, which was staying in the country afterwards and not giving power to another strongman or “fake elections” while the US went away for good.

The enemy has demonstrated over and over again that it has virtually no strategic military vision whatsoever.

I don’t believe underestimating the enemy is justification enough for retreating in the strategic view, Amanda. Why would it be wise to say that the enemy has no strategic vision, so we should give up our strategic successes and retreat to America while leaving our strategic assets and allies to die out in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Radical Islam shares with communist extremism a highly self-destructive paradigm. The sooner we allow it to achieve what it is programmed for, the better.

Having the world be destroyed in nuclear fire along with millions of starved peasants in Russia and thousands of re-educated and torn apart families in Vietnam, is neither good for the world nor good for America.

It’s one thing to deal with the Cuban Missile Crisis as it occurs. It is another thing entirely to allow Cuba to become a threat with the excuse that the sooner we allow communism to achieve what it is programmed for in Cuba, the better. Same goes for Iraq, the rest of the world, and America itself.

I would of course like to help the Iraqis, or the Congolese, Sudanese, Haitians, Cubans, Zaireans and on and on and on, but I can’t honestly say I’m willing to sacrifice American national security wholesale in order to do so.

Having America go it alone in the world with no allies and a boat load of enemies may help American national security in your view, Amanda, but it doesn’t in mine.

More important, I have serious doubts about any superpower’s ability to transform 3rd-world dictatorships into democracies by bombing them into submission.

Counter-insurgency, aka COIN, is not about bombing people into submission and you would know this if you had spent any time learning about strategic military vision. What’s the point about worrying over American national security if you just ignore the military side of things as they are occuring?

Many leftists accuse rightists of being “craven” and “amoral” because they don’t demand that America’s vast surplus of grains be shipped immediately to the starving peoples of Africa.

That’s a redistribution scheme that has nothing to do with mutual interest. It is not in America’s interest to starve ourselves and take a hit in our trade income by sending free food to Africa, where it will just be used by warlords to foment terrorism and tyranny against America and each other. The Left thinks for Africa to have food, America must starve or at least eat less.

A real mutual interest solution would be to pay the starving peoples of Africa, starving because of Leftist corrupt engineered bio-fuel schemes, a food income if they will join in an American military unit and agree to be trained by us and fight for us for 10 years. Their food allotment and pay for their families will go up the longer they stay in.

That’s mutual interest. We get people to fight our wars and secure their own nations from warlords and anti-Americans, and the starving people of Africa get American dollars and real food. Everybody benefits except the Leftist zero-sum warlords and the enemies of humanity.

I oppose it not out of cravenness or amorality, but out of a principled, substantiated understanding that such interventions are counterproductive.

I’m not willing to accuse you of being amoral, as Harry has, since I believe your disagreement here is founded on more old school conservative and isolationist ideas than fake liberal ideas.

However, that doesn’t mean I agree that you have a “substantiated understanding” of military invasions or occupations or counter-insurgencies.

COIN is necessary for America’s security, both national and otherwise. You cannot learn coin by unleashing the Marines on ghettoes and gangs and insurgent organizations here in America, you know. So America can only learn it in foreign countries, and a successful COIN war will not only help America, but the indigenous populations that the COIN was practiced on.

You don’t see this, of course, since you see invasion or warfare only as bombs and technology. That’s not what war is about and it is especially not what counter-insurgency is about.

That just goes along with Democrat ideology that the world is a zero sum place and it should be a zero sum place where the only way to get rich or benefits is by stealing wealth and benefits from others.

In the conservative, there is such a thing as mutual interest where people can work together and create gain for both. As you have termed it, caring about the Iraqi people seems to be, in your world, to take away care from Americans or vice a versa. That’s your zero sum world and it’s not something everyone, not even every Democrat, believes in.

I’d say I was dead on.

Much of your excuse for not fighting the war on terror boiled down to a dismissal of the threat of terrorism or fundamentalist Islam altogether. Even when you admit that you cannot quite care about the lives of the Iraqi people, (while solely condemning your own country for the civilian death toll), you make the dishonest claim that your opposition to our efforts stems from a national security stand point.

Who’s buying that crap?

I mean, I guess, other than the fact that for liberals, national security measures include not availing yourself of national security assets, (i.e. the military, intelligence gathering, detainment, profiling etc,), Im afraid there’s not much left to convince me you oppose our efforts on principal.

If you seriously oppose our efforts out of principal, you can stop using people’s misery for the purpose of abandoning these same people to a worse fate.

Even if you believe the Iraqi people were better off under a brutal dictatorship than they are now. You cannot make the dishonest argument that they would be better off abandoned to what ever comes next…especially after admitting you are less than concerned about their future.

Amoral? I say yes.

You seem to have forgetten the biggie: “elitist.”

Of course I care about the Iraqi people, but I must admit, given my status, standing, nationality and other resources I do not care about the Iraqi people AS MUCH as I care about Americans.

That’s not because I’ve made some arbitrary decision to not care about them because I happen to have been born in Gretna, Louisiana, but because I make my comments here and originate my analysis from the starting point of being an American citizen who tries to be serious about the rights and responsibilities that entails.

I would of course like to help the Iraqis, or the Congolese, Sudanese, Haitians, Cubans, Zaireans and on and on and on, but I can’t honestly say I’m willing to sacrifice American national security wholesale in order to do so.

More important, I have serious doubts about any superpower’s ability to transform 3rd-world dictatorships into democracies by bombing them into submission.

Here’s an analogy you may find persuasive, as it blames liberals: Many leftists accuse rightists of being “craven” and “amoral” because they don’t demand that America’s vast surplus of grains be shipped immediately to the starving peoples of Africa. How dare we withhold that food, they declare. Of course, the counterargument, and one I find compelling, is that providing the grain by simply dropping it from a plane onto the ground in bags that say: courtesy of the USA has not and will not help these countries feed their people for more than a few weeks or months, at most. Moreover, it will seriously interfere with the formation of the markets and institutions necessary to promote farming and economic growth.

I take the same view about large-scale military interventions such as the war in Iraq. I oppose it not out of cravenness or amorality, but out of a principled, substantiated understanding that such interventions are counterproductive. By most measures, the Iraqi people are far worse off today than they were under Saddam. That alone, of course, is not reason enough to condemn the invasion, but it is a salient fact — confirmed by an array of statistics on health, mortality, the economy, oil production and, of course, opinion polls as well — that must be considered by anyone wanting to argue the invasion has been successful.

Ad hominem attacks are a sign the attacker is otherwise poorly armed.

You’re giving Islamic extremists way too much credit for being rational military strategists.

The enemy has demonstrated over and over again that it has virtually no strategic military vision whatsoever. It’s motive force is naked rage, driven by broad ignorance and deep emotional and physical poverty.

They don’t read the NY Times and plot their strategy accordingly, no matter what some of their leaders might intimate in their ludicrous attempts at self-aggrandizement.

Indeed, the resort to terrorism as the primary means of battle comes because they literally have no real military option.

Radical Islam shares with communist extremism a highly self-destructive paradigm. The sooner we allow it to achieve what it is programmed for, the better.

I would be much more honest of you to simply admit that what ever happens to the Iraqi people does not interest you, with the exception of how their deaths and virtual enslavement might be yet another cynical partisan tool for you to bash George Bush with. I think you people are particularly craven and amoral, but Im probably just being redundant.

“On what possible basis does Hillary or Obama deserve to be President?”

I’ll be voting for Obama primarily because he is the most opposed to the war among the viable candidates.

The Iraq war has been a costly mistake in terms of human lives, taxpayer dollars, global prestige, military recruiting potential and military readiness.
Ending America’s combat role in that war is paramount to our own national security and economic health, not to mention to the health and safety of thousands of beautiful American men and women in the military.

You do make a good point that the Republicans have historically not been the party to start wars. I could see myself supporting the party enthusiastically — especially as I think its economic ideology is essentially correct — if the past 40 years had not taken place. Since Nixon, the party has banked its fate on being the more militarily assertive of the two parties. This has led to countless smaller wars from the Contra war in Nicaragua to “Operation Just ‘Cause” in Panama the totemic invasion of Grenada and, indeed, Gulf War I. These series of small, “easy” wars led the GOP and much of the country to believe that knocking off foreign dictators is easy stuff: drop a few bombs, invade the palace and … presto, it’s parade time.

Alas, such was not the case in Iraq, and U.S. military prestige is very seriously diminished as a result.

I share your concern with national security, I simply have a different idea about how to achieve it.