Originally posted by BP:


then why does bush talk about winning the peace in iraq? doesn't this go against your stated philosophy?



There are many different kinds of peace. Without getting into a philosophy discourse here, there can exist a peace that is found on the other side of war; unfortunately this is the only way the Iraqi people will find their particular brand of peace.

The Iraqi people aren't fools; they know there will always be someone around to fight with if they so wish (each other, Israel, Iran, etc.). Despite this, the peace that will some day be afforded them has afforded the US with the certainty that the Hussein regime no longer is in ANY position to threaten or pretend to threaten the US or US interests.

Originally posted by BP:
btw who are we at war with? the iraqi people?



Yes and no. Some Iraqis are waging an insurgency against the US and the new Iraqi government. Others are extremists that have decided to "join the party"...



Originally posted by BP:
complete and utter bs. iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and it's been stated by our own intelligence agencies several times.

I don't think that is his point, but I'll let Dan answer that one.

Originally posted by BP:
and you think what we're doing now is going to change that how?



We've failed on more than just a few accounts in winning over the population; some of the dipsh!ts in command and some of our misguided and foolish troops have helped this along, in conjunction with the one-sided media coverage on Iraq. However, there are thousands of troops that maintain friendly and cordial contact with the Iraqi population (at least those that aren't shooting at them).

There's always going to be a civilian that gets in the way of the bad guy and the good guy shooting at him; given this, there will always be a civilian element that will hate the occupying force, even if they are there to "liberate" the folks from their oppressors...

Regardless, this doesn't change the fact that the US is doing more for the Iraqi people in terms of aid and support than any Islamic militia or radical organization that's been lopping heads off of people and indiscriminitely killing folks with bombs and the like.


Originally posted by BP:
i have and it doesn't apply to iraq because we're not fighting the traditional enemy in iraq. we're at war with an ideology, which is a war that i don't beleive can be won with soldiers, guns, and bombs. don't get me wrong, it does have it's place when used correctly.



Sun Tzu's fundamentals are still there. Countering an ideology is much more difficult than gunning for a "traditional" enemy; it takes much more time, care and effort. The fact is that one has to use the soldiers, bombs and guns in the first place to establish a cornerstone to where we can work with those of a like mind; those that wish for something other than a fundamentalist existance that permeates terrorism, hatred and ignorance.

Originally posted by BP:
bush recalculating (flip flopping)? say it isn't so...

There is a marked difference between adjusting one's strategy or tactics and wholesale dumping a problem to the ground to appease the naysayers, who for the most part consist of certifiable morons who didn't want us going into Iraq in the first place.


Originally posted by BP:

is peace the objective here or not. please pick a side.

i don't know who has the answers to how we get out of this problem we're in with iraq. i just think we went about it the wrong way to begin with and started so far off course with a plan to win the "war" against terrorism that now we're stuck in an even deeper predicament. i hope whomever is the next president has some long boots on cause the sh!t we're in is deep.

The fatalism you exhude is simply astonishing. The blinders that the media has on the bulk of the US population simply frightens me beyond description. Our efforts in Iraq and against terrorism overall haven't been the best they could have been, but they are a FAR cry from being anywhere near the abject failure that they are constantly pegged as. We've got RESULTS; Libya dropping everything they had and held on to for years and wanting to rejoin the civilized world, Iraq slowly but SURELY evolving into something other than a totalitarian blight in the Middle-East, N. Korea backing off their rhetoric and coming to their senses a bit (God knows how long that will last, though), Iran submitting to IAEA inspections (yes, I'll admit they are playing us and everyone else for fools on the nuke issue, but such is the game), somewhere around 50-75% of the Al-Qaeda leadership dead or captured....

The fact is that you can second-guess and "politic" yourself into paralysis on the world stage today trying to appease everybody; it seems many liberals would prefer this method of [sarcasm]"protection"[/sarcasm] to the point where is imperils the US to those that WILL take advantage of this type of thought. Why? It makes them "feel" better and "feel" safer; consensus alway has and always will do this for people.

Half-assing it just so we make everybody happy is about the worst thing we can do to a bunch of absolutists whose sole goal is to see the Western powers fall. To this day I take minor objection at some of what we have done, but overall I think the Bush administration has handled itself very well against the challenges that it has been put up against.

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