<p>God, your just like the Maoists during the Cultural Revolution: “you just don’t believe enough,” was their basic message as they took out their opponents. </p>
<p>I can say myself, though you didn’t ask me, that though I opposed this war for the same reasons that Cheney himself did (see the link)</p>
<p>I spent the first 6 months of the war screaming at the television set and whoever would listen to me that I wished we had 3 times as many troops on the ground and that we actually controlled Iraq. Only this way, I thought, would the misconceived war have a possibility of succeeding.</p>
<p>People like you who say your either for this war or against this country take a very cheap shot. And if you yourself were really for this country or the troops, you’d be asking much harder questions about the rationale for going to war (lies) and what is actually being achieved by staying at in our current at best deadlocked state in Iraq. Instead, all you can do is impute treachery and disloyalty to other people who care a lot about this country and the world and are sickened by what they see.</p>
<p>Actually, I take what I said above, leave your head in the smelly spot where it was; well, it’s not like you were going to pull it from there anyway.</p>
<p>It’s funny how the only people who seem to pull this kind of stunt are the people who wouldn’t dream of fighting in Iraq themselves. The kind of people who oppose body armor, MRAVs, equitable pay raises and decent health care for our troops, and disability and education benefits for our veterans.</p>
<p>The kind of people so divorced from reality they think no one serving in Iraq joined the military before March 2003.</p>
<p>“Petraeus is going to give an open report.”</p>
<p>Does it matter? He’s a hack. Is he going to make a report on the political progress, which was the point of the increase in hostile, aggressive occupying forces to begin with? He’s not qualified to do that (and not even he would claim to be.)</p>
<p>It’s not about Sunni extremists, Shiite militias, Kurdish rebels, homegrown Al-Qaeda terrorists, pro-Iranian followers of Sistanis, armed tribal chieftowns. It’s about the fact that the vast majority of Iraqis - men, women, and children, young and old, rich and poor, urban and rural, religious and secular - think it is a good thing to kill Americans.</p>
<p>They have witnessed firsthand our “reconstruction” efforts", our “surge”, our puppet governments, our “benchmarks”, our interrogation tactics, our walls built in the center of Baghdad, our Pork Zone, and have all come to the conclusion that we are better off dead.</p>
<p>That’s the real story. The rest is a bunch of spin.</p>
<p>“think it is a good thing to kill Americans”</p>
<p>Why do they spend all their time killing each other then? They mostly kill us when we get in the way of the internecine slaughter.</p>
<p>In the end who really gives a rat’s behind what their motives are or who they like or don’t like? Radical Islam is a threat to the West that will eventually have to be dealt with or we can kiss our own behinds goodbye. Many on the outer fringes of reality (pretty much any politician in or out of government today) would happily acquiesce to the demise of western civilization as long as it happened the day after they were planted in the ground, and many would welcome it. Their constituents may be made of sterner stuff but we probably won’t find out until the situation gets much worse.</p>
<p>With that thought in mind I am throwing my political support behind whatever whack job the Daily Kos supports. The sooner we can give those fruitloops a go at surrendering 3000 years of western progress to a bunch of carpet kissing mysoginists the sooner folks will wake up to what a really bad idea it is.</p>
<p>“In the end who really gives a rat’s behind what their motives are or who they like or don’t like? Radical Islam is a threat to the West that will eventually have to be dealt with or we can kiss our own behinds goodbye.”</p>
<p>You may be right, which is why it is really strange that the U.S. caused two million of the most progressive, most-secular, most pro-Western professionally trained doctors, lawyers, engineers, and teachers to go into exile, and then refuses to support them. All this while providing arms to Al-Qaeda through Saudi Arabia.</p>
<p>“With that thought in mind I am throwing my political support behind whatever whack job the Daily Kos supports.”</p>
<p>Glad to hear it. You can’t do much worse than what you’ve got.</p>
<p>higherlead, if you sincerely believe the US military is so weak it cannot withstand an invasion by an Islamic or any other country–it’s all the more reason to stop squandering them on foreign adventures.</p>
<p>As soon as the Islamic Navy arrives on our shores (with or without support from the Islamic Airforce) do let me know. I’ve got an old over ‘n’ under I can pull out to stand guard over the local liquor/lingerie store. In the meantime, let’s bring our National Guard home, followed rather quickly by the reg. mil. Because they are caught in an untenable situation ‘over there’ and no amount of blood or treasure is going to make it work. Every report from the powers that be, whether really from some general or written by the spin-doctors at the White House, reminds me more and more of the boy looking for the pony under piles of manure.</p>
<p>“As soon as the Islamic Navy arrives on our shores (with or without support from the Islamic Airforce) do let me know.”</p>
<p>The Islamic Navy already knocked out the USS Cole and the Islamic Air Force did something neither Hitler nor Tojo could do i.e. bomb New York city and the Pentagon. I’d rather kill 'em in the Middle East than in Pennsylvania but that’s just me.</p>
<p>“Every report from the powers that be, whether really from some general or written by the spin-doctors at the White House, reminds me more and more of the boy looking for the pony under piles of manure.”</p>
<p>I can actually agree with that and as long as we insist we are fighting a war on terror as opposed to a war on Islam it is going to be a problem. Before you can defeat the enemy you have to have the courage to name him.</p>
<p>higherlead: If you seriously meant that last post, then you’re completely and dangerously delusional. If on the other hand, you meant “a war against radical fundamentalist Islam that considers violence an acceptable tactic” then I agree with you.</p>
<p>Otherwise, we might as well declare war on religion in general. We won’t win, but hey… this one’s not going so hot either.</p>
<p>The Cole and the 9/11 attack are hardly the kind of thing the right wing is talking about with their constant drumbeat about ‘them’ coming over ‘here’ to impose some kind of sharia. (Like the conservative woman on Hardball who ended her diatribe at a slightly more liberal woman by saying ‘and you’ll look good in a burqa.’ ) And neither attack were orchestrated or implemented by anybody from an organized national military. They were criminal acts, carried out by criminals. True, they are criminals with a political point of view, but the KKK is too, and we don’t go to war with Arkansas.</p>
<p>The ‘pony under the manure pile’ is referring to the elusive ‘victory’ that the right keeps saying is achievable in Iraq. We are not at war with Islam – that would be truly ridiculous. Islam is a religion with a long, peaceful history. Christian sects do just as much fighting amongst themselves as the Muslims do. (Ever hear of a place called Northern Ireland?)</p>
<p>There is no such thing as moderate Islam. people need to stop deluding themselves. You might as well look for a moderate NAZI or a moderate Klansman or a moderate Spanish Inquisition.</p>