<p>Interesting read from Leanard Pitts Jr.: <a href=“http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/leonard_pitts/15882212.htm[/url]”>http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/leonard_pitts/15882212.htm</a>
Maybe Mini is right; maybe we need to keep history alive through individual effort at this point.</p>
<p>“Stay the course.”</p>
<p>Mini never lies, and is always right. ;)</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the New York Post endorsed Hillary Clinton today over a successful and effective Republican former mayor.</p>
<p>Stay the course.</p>
<p>“Meanwhile, the New York Post endorsed Hillary Clinton today over a successful and effective Republican former mayor.”</p>
<p>Whose definition of successful?</p>
<p>Yonkers is the most disfunctional municipality in the county!</p>
<p>I read Bush’s backfiring on “Stay the Course” this morning as well, but hadn’t read all those lovely prior references.</p>
<p>And who’s the flipflopper?</p>
<p>Policy shift?</p>
<p>Bush in campaign speech 10/30/06, “Republican’s plan is to win the war in Iraq. The Democrat’s plan is to get out of Iraq.” {applause here} </p>
<p>I thought He told us that we are in Iraq to fight Terrorists. Now we are fighting our friends, Iraq. </p>
<p>I think am going to switch political parties.</p>
<p>If you really want to be depressed, read Elizabeth Rubin’s really detailed articles on the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the 10/29 and 10/22 New York Times Magazine. They make clear that the relative success story in Afghanistan isn’t a whole lot more successful than Iraq, and that no one seems to have any idea how to turn things around.</p>
<p>Why is anyone surprised about Afghanistan or Iraq? We can’t shove our way of life, type of government down the throats of other societies, sepecially by force. Not every nation “loves liberty” Bush-style. In the same way, our government can’t legislate morality and lifestyle within our own country.</p>
<p>“Stay the course” was never going to work.</p>
<h1>7
</h1>
<p>‘stay the course’ is an active, present and positive phase. To deviate, change, or alter the original phase implies that the original ‘stay the course’ was incorrect. The nation and its elected leaders bought into it. We own it and we shall see it through.</p>
<p>Of course, it begs the question of “which course”? Control of the Iraqi oil pipelines? Permanent military bases in the Middle East outside of Saudi Arabia? Finding the Weapons of Mass Destruction?</p>
<p>Oh, the heck with it.</p>
<p>Stay the course.</p>
<p>itstoomuch, I have to confess that I don’t understand what you’re saying in post #8.</p>
<p>Maybe we can’t control the pipelines unless we have military bases in place?</p>
<p>The truth revealed - left wingers who want to also abandon Afghanistan -what a surprise</p>
<p>THIS is partly the reason why it will be many years until left wingers again win the white house. Was not 8 years under Clinton of kissing up to terrorists and treating is as a law enforcement issue and hoping they will leave us alone - not enough to teach you something?</p>
<p>The left is absolutely invested in DEFEAT</p>
<p>“Of course, it begs the question of “which course”?” </p>
<p>The “course” seems to be constantly changing. And to use the phrase “stay the course” is only political rhetoric to justify whatever the “course” currently is. In the current political climate, these words trigger a national defensiveness among the public that blinds them to the facts and defies logic; it seems to unconsciously convey a positive connation that “the course” is the “right” course-whatever it happens to be. Similar to other popularly used political “fear tactics.”</p>
<p>Strange the Nancy Pelosi, minority leader of the Dems in Congress, and Howard Dean, leader of the Dem party - have offerered not one single alternative strategy in Iraq other than “talking to Syria” “talking to Iran” or “taking to the French” or some variationalong with "redeployment to nearby MIDDLE EASTERN countries</p>
<p>The Dems in fact have zero strategy except assuring America’s defeat in Iraq</p>
<p>I’d parse the last line: the Dems have no strategy, and the Reps have ensured defeat.</p>
<p>It’s over. Time to get over it. The war was won in 2003, the dictator toppled, the thousands of tons of WMD found and destroyed, democracy restored, all paid for with Iraqi oil revenues.</p>
<p>Now they just want to kill us.</p>
<p>Just goes to prove that Hillary is nothing more than another right-wing Democrat.</p>
<p>The leading pre-9/11 history of Islamism, Gilles Kerpel’s “Jihad”, was written in 2000 and published in spring 2001. In its closing pages, Kerpel wrote that it was a propitious time to write the history of Islamism, because Islamism was in its death-throes as a movement: rejected in its radical form by common people across the Muslim world, discredited as a practical philosophy of government. All that was left, he said, was the Taliban (widely regarded as crazy barbarians) and Osama Bin Laden living in a cave in Afghanistan trying to dream up things to get back the attention that the world had withdrawn. Even Hamas, at the time, was moribund.</p>
<p>That was the legacy of Clinton’s approach. It worked. He didn’t succeed in trying to eliminate Bin Laden extralegally – more’s the pity – but he tried, and that was the right thing to do. But even in retrospect the world and America were in much better shape in 2000 than they are now. Clinton did not ignore terrorism, but he didn’t cultivate it either. The Bush Administration has screwed up every step of the way, and in the process has contributed immeasurably to the revival of Islamism and dug a hole that will take a generation or more to get out of. And I do not believe that it has made America a whit safer than it was 62 months ago.</p>
<p>Clinton brought us to the brink of an actual victory by keeping his eye on the ball and addressing the issues that the terrorists use to get legitimacy. He understood that the U.S.'s greatest advantage is in the marketplace of ideas, and by fighting the battles there he was winning. Bush has engaged in an obscenely costly five-year national military tantrum, in the course of which he has conferred more legitimacy on the terrorists than they could possibly have achieved on their own, squandered the power of the U.S., caused the deaths and maiming of thousands of Americans and tens or hundreds of thousands of Asians, and spread the terrorism virus throughout the world.</p>
<p>Make no mistake about it. We were winning, and we have been defeated. The objectives for which we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq cannot be achieved and have already been abandoned, our power has been diminished, and our interests and those of our allies have been seriously compromised. 9/11 was a senseless tragedy, not a defeat. Afghanistan and Iraq are defeats. No amount of chest-thumping or name-calling or spinning from the right will ever make them anything but that.</p>
<p>“He understood that the U.S.'s greatest advantage is in the marketplace of ideas, and by fighting the battles there he was winning.”</p>
<p>Killing half a million children (a million people overall) in one of the largest attempts at genocide in the late 20th Century was hardly the victory of the marketplace of ideas.</p>
<p>“Afghanistan and Iraq are defeats. No amount of chest-thumping or name-calling or spinning from the right will ever make them anything but that.”</p>
<p>Oh, let’s be fair: the Reps have already voted $20 mil for the Victory Parade.</p>
<p>I keep forgetting that aspect of Clinton’s policies, but I still don’t buy that Clinton killed more Iraqis than Bush (at a fraction of the cost, too).</p>
<p>But let’s remember another victory of the Clinton era. Iraq had actually stopped its WMD development. Too bad we didn’t pick that up.</p>
<p>You don’t have to buy it. UNICEF studied it. Demographers studied it. European nations condemned the genocide - and called it for what it was. Madeleine Albright owned up to it. Dennis Halliday resigned because of it. Oil for Food was created as a result. </p>
<p>He could have bombed places where Saddam Hussein was known to live. He could have taken out military installations. But children were an easier target. With fewer children growing to adulthood, Iraq would be (and now is) a weaker nation for decades to come. Easier target, too. Genocide isn’t so particularly difficult to effect, if you aim at the kids.</p>
<p>As to how many GWB is responsible for, the jury is still out (but likely an order of magnitude fewer, unless you count Iraqis killing each other.)</p>