More Vietnam reference

Boston Globe columnist H.D.S. Greenway brings up the Vietnam reference:

“Like Bush in Iraq, President Johnson in had hoped to bring some soldiers home in 1965 when South Vietnamese troops had been properly trained to take on their own security.”

“Now there is no more talk of being out by 1965 – or any other year in the foreseeable future,” Time said in 1964.

“After three years of intensive effort and considerable pain, including the expenditure of $3.3 billion in aid and the loss of 262 Americans killed, 1,196 wounded or injured…the war is still not being discernibly won.” So Johnson sent in more soldiers.

We would be grateful today if our expenditure of blood and treasure in Iraq were that low after three years.

Time wondered back then “how long American opinion will accept being told that the war is endless. That war lasted another 11 years, leaving more than 50,000 Americans and countless Vietnamese dead, but victory remained elusive.”

Sounds familiar? However I am not convinced that the American people of 2006 will allow this President or the next to continue for another 10-12 years.

“None of the Iraqi police are working to make their country better”

The above quote came, not from an U.S. source but from Brig. Gen. Salah al-Ani, Chief of Police for Western Baghdad. A damning indictment from a police official who should know what is going on in the ground in Baghdad.

The facts seem to be that the two main factions of Shiites vying for control, SCIRI, Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq which runs the Badr Brigade and Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army have infiltrated the Police forces and the Iraqi army. Which then means that they pursue the agendas of their leaders as opposed to being under the control of the Iraqi government. Everybody knows this but they are playing chicken. Meanwhile the average citizen and the American soldiers bear the brunt of their violent rivalry and their joint fight against the Sunnis.

To further complicate events, there are three types of police organizations, the Patrol, Traffic and the regular police who investigate crimes who are all autonomous.

It is apparently so unsafe that the American soldiers who train the Iraqi police inside the police headquarters compound for western Baghdad wear full body armor.

How is the U.S. going to bring democracy to this country?

U.S. Military might no substitute for a coherent foreign policy

The above phrase is the Op-Ed headline in the Daily Star, a Lebanese newspaper. It seems that the U.S. lead an international naval exercise off the Bahrain coast across from Iran aimed at blocking the smuggling of WMDs into Iran. The editorial goes on to say that military might has not solved anything in Iraq yet and shows no sign of doing so and the U.S. would be better served by bringing some clear thinking foreign policy into the equation.

Its evident that even the people in the war zone see that a new direction is needed than just the empty rhetoric flowing out of the administration these last few years.

Taking the fight to the Taliban

In an excellent article by Elizabeth Rubin of NY Times shows the futility of the allied efforts to put an end to the Taliban resurgence despite the valiant efforts of the NATO soldiers. With just 42,000 soldiers they are trying to control a country that is a third larger than Iraq. It seems like there is a Green Zone a la Baghdad when the NATO soldiers are in an area but as soon as they leave the Taliban come in and undo whatever the soldiers have done.

In one telling episode the embedded reporter writes about the U.S. soldiers securing an area called the Alamo and when they are ready to leave the Afghan police and soldier watch in dismay knowing that they will be killed if they remained in the are. Sure enough, the Americans learn that the Alamo was abandoned within 24 hours.

It is kind of dispiriting to know that there are not enough boots on the ground to help the Afghan government solve its problems and that the Bush administration does not have a credible plan to catch Osama. So why did we go to Afghanistan and why are we not out of there?

Fouad Ajami, Iraq war proponent writes a book

Prof. Fouad Ajami, a Professor, still at Johns Hopkins it seems, was one of the so called intellectuals pushing for a war against Iraq claiming that Saddam had WMDs and that people in Iraq would jump with joy at being liberated and extremists in the region would slink away. He has now written a book, reviewed by NY Times that apparently minimizes, deflects and changes his POV.

I have not read it and having learned a lesson by paying full price for Germs, written by NY Times (now former) reporter Judith Miller which influenced the Government with its falsehoods. This book can now be bought for 1 cent and I plan to wait till Ajami’s book can be bought used for 1 cent.

I don’t understand these opinion makers and “intellectuals.” Do they not know that they will forever be discredited, or should be, for making these false statements? The fact they still retain their University professorships says something about our teachers. At least the NY Times to its credit bounced Ms. Miller out.

Jim Webb: Democrats will provide an Iraq solution

Virginia Senate candidate Jim Webb, a Secretary of Navy under Reagan, a decorated veteran and a former Republican says only the Democrats can reverse the slide of Iraq policy failures by the current administration.

I have seen Jim Webb on PBS’s The News Hour a few times and he is a straight talking man that one can admire but its too bad he wants to become a Pol. If elected he too might become a mealy mouthed wishy washy time server like the rest of them.

In any case, he said in a Democratic weekly radio news address: “”Since 2003, President Bush has laid out nine different plans for victory in Iraq, none of them serious and none of them workable. And most seriously, this incompetence has hindered our ability to fight international terror.”

I wonder if the Republicans will try to “swift boat” him. It might be difficult with his background, credentials and the fact that he has a son serving with the Marines in Iraq.

Republican rats leaving a sinking ship?

Incumbent Republican politicians facing tough races are now finding God regretting supporting the war in Iraq.

In a classic statement, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas said she would not have authorized the war if she had known then what she knows now, almost echoing Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California who said something similar  a while back. It would be a refreshing surprise if these two were bounced out of the Senate. Highly unlikely but it would be a pleasant surprise.

VP Cheney thinks waterboarding is a “no brainer.”

In an interview on a talk radio station Vice President Dick Cheney agreed with the host that waterboarding, a torture technique, can be used to extract information. Whether the government is using torture to extract information from the war prisoners is one thing but to talk about openly, even hypothetically, is particularly callous.

Vocal opponents to torture such as Sen. John McCain helped pass a law banning torture but apparently left it to the Executive branch to decide whether it was legal to use these horrific techniques. It is just typical for holier than thou Congressmen and women to speak at length against torture and then pass a crippled law.

The administration running this war is so out of touch with the real world that they think these techniques will not be used by the opposite side in Iraq and Afghanistan on our own captured soldiers, or even more worrisome, they don’t care.

It is degrading and dehumanizing for a civilized society to sanction torture techniques used by the likes of the Khmer Rouge and other outlaw governments.

This is like Deja Vu all over again, Iraq and Vietnam

John Broder of the N.Y. Times in an article today says:“The moment is reminiscent of early 1968, when President Lyndon B. Johnson convened a panel of wise men to advise him on the Vietnam War, which by then was killing hundreds of Americans a month with little military progress to show for it. Mr. Johnson insisted that American credibility was at stake and believed that a leader in wartime had to show resolve in the face of an implacable enemy and loud domestic criticism.

That spring, he capitulated, announcing plans to begin to de-escalate the war and declaring that he would not seek re-election. It took seven more years for Presidents Nixon and Ford to extricate the United States fully from Vietnam.”

Because of that previous experience I am not sure the American people will give any U.S. Govt. seven years to get out from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Dear President Bush, please call up the Military Draft

We don’t have enough soldiers on the ground to fight two fronts, your Secretary of Defense does not have or want to send more troops over there. If you don’t have enough soldiers please call up the draft because no one in their right minds will volunteer to go get killed in a war that should not have happened.

By the way, your poll numbers are down, your own party, except for the neocons, are turning against you, you don’t seem to know how to change a non-working strategy, the Brits want to leave Iraq, and here’s the clincher, you cannot run for a third term.

So what do you have to lose? call up the draft and send more soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan to put an end to the fighting. This dilly dallying and hand wringing is not how Americans solve problems, take the bold step.