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shawa
CNO
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 2004
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 Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2005 2:31 pm Post subject: Cheerleading For America's Failure? |
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And so it goes on and on and on...from Vietnam to Iraq.
The media elitists are cheerleaders for American Failure!
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/davidlimbaugh/dl20050118.shtml
Old Media Naysaying On Iraqi Democracy
David Limbaugh (archive)
January 18, 2005
Far be it from me to accuse the mainstream media of rooting for failure in the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections, but their reporting sometimes makes you wonder.
On Monday, MSNBC's "First Read" sought to draw a contrast between President Bush's so-called "liberty speech" (his upcoming inaugural address) and the "more and more details com[ing] out about how unsafe the balloting in Iraq is expected to be."
Let me get this straight: The fact that we have enemy forces trying to sabotage the transition to democracy and liberty means that the president's goal to secure that liberty is somehow misguided?
Are we to assume that liberty for other peoples is so unimportant to the Old Media that unless it can happen automatically, it ought not to happen at all? Are they so ignorant of history that they believe democracy can be won effortlessly and without resistance from those with a vested interest in thwarting it?
It's as if these committed cynics are enjoying some euphoric "I told you so moment," reveling in the ongoing news that the transition to democracy is painful and costly. This hardly qualifies as news.
Ever since Saddam's holdover miscreants joined forces with international terrorists to prevent Iraqi's transition to democracy, we've known that the election process would be extremely dangerous.
But you'd never know it from reading First Read, which considers it "surreal" that the Bush administration is going to tout the Iraqi elections as legitimate even though "the names of many candidates [and] the locations of many polling places" won't be announced in advance for security reasons.
What is our alternative, gentlemen? Would you prefer that our commander in chief cower at the increased terrorist violence leading up to the elections? Should he lose his resolve and abandon all that our troops and Iraqi troops have fought and died for?
Should he, in anticipation of terrorist violence at the polling places, declare in advance that the elections will be illegitimate if the terrorists succeed in wreaking substantial disruption in the election process? What kind of self-defeating lunacy are these people advocating?
It's not just MSNBC. USA Today frets that "mass resignations by frightened poll workers and police threaten the viability of elections scheduled in two weeks." The Boston Globe, instead of recognizing the wisdom in our decision to drastically reduce the number of polling places to make them easier to secure, laments, "Iraqis will have to travel farther to vote in an election whose legitimacy depends in part on significant turnout."
The Los Angeles Times chimes in that "U.S. and Iraqi officials have begun to focus on the daunting problems they will face the morning after election day -- ones every bit as formidable as those they have faced since the invasion," as if that's some newsworthy revelation.
Don't forget that President Bush, despite being pressured by the Old Media and Democrats to do so, has steadfastly refused to give a timetable on the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. He knows this is going to take a number of years and has never suggested that the Iraqi elections would end the war.
The naysayers have always mouthed the mindless complaint that President Bush had no plan to "win the peace." Well, what's their plan: to withdraw at the first sign of any difficulty? In order to win the peace, you have to be willing to stay with the democratization process until some stability has been achieved. To win the peace, you must defeat the enemies of the peace.
Instead of endlessly wringing their hands, these Old Media pseudo-champions of the downtrodden ought to be extolling the American and Iraqi troops risking their lives to secure for the Iraqi people the lofty goals of freedom and democracy, to which the Old Media merely pay lip service. They ought to be headlining the remarkable courage of the Iraqi people jeopardizing everything to secure their own liberty. (According to a survey by an independent Iraqi newspaper, two-thirds of registered voters in Baghdad plan to vote despite threats of violence.)
The prevailing Old Media attitude seems to be that nothing worth fighting for is worth fighting for. Well, let's pray that their type is not in charge if we ever experience terrorist violence at our own voting places in America.
David Limbaugh is a syndicated columnist who blogs at DavidLimbaugh.com |
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scotty61
LCDR
Joined: 07 May 2004
Posts: 419
Location: Glyndon MN
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| Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2005 2:53 pm Post subject: |
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Cheerleaders for America's Failure? Heaven help me, but the first thought in my mind was Teddy Kennedy in saddle shoes, pleated skirt, sweater and pompoms. 
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John Kerry. A Neville Chamberlain for our times. |
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coldwarvet
Admiral
Joined: 03 Jun 2004
Posts: 1125
Location: Minnetonka, MN
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| Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2005 3:10 pm Post subject: |
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The liberals can't stand for anything positive to happen while they are out of power. In example the unemployment rate of 5.4% was reported as a great accomplishment for the Clinton administration while the unemployment rate of 5.2% was reported a failure of the Bush administration.
They would rather see Social Security go defunct rather then see Bush get credit for strengthening it. The would rather see an attempt for democracy fail in the heart of the Jihad terrorist world fail rather then see Bush get credit for it.
They had their chance with eight years of Clinton who could have actually accomplished something if he could have just kept his zipper zipped. However, the liberals blame the conservatives for distracting Clinton from his agenda by attacking his personal life.
I wish the liberals would just grow up and take personal responsibility for their actions and put the good of the country and the World over their own thirst for power.
CWV
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Defender of the honor of those in harms way keeping us out of harms way.
"Peace is our Profession"
Strategic Air Command - Motto
USAF 75-79 Security Police |
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Leeman
PO3
Joined: 08 Nov 2004
Posts: 265
Location: Connecticut
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| Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2005 5:54 pm Post subject: |
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I am also sick & tired of listening to the MSM on how everybody in the world hates us. Sure we have our detractors but not like those Cheerleaders of doom make us believe.
I served my duty in the National Guard & I am also sick & tired of the MSN making us sound like a social club, doing nothing but drinking beer & shooting pool & eating pizza. |
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I B Squidly
Vice Admiral
Joined: 26 Aug 2004
Posts: 879
Location: Cactus Patch
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| Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2005 6:26 pm Post subject: |
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This may already be floating aroundon another thread but it's worth repeating:
| Quote: | http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson011405.htmlJanuary 14, 2005
Triangulating the War
Yesterday's genius, today's fool, tomorrow's what?
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
Reading the pages of foreign-policy journals, between the long tracts on Bush's "failures" and neoconservative "arrogance," one encounters mostly predictions of defeat and calls for phased withdrawal — always with resounding criticism of the American "botched" occupation.
Platitudes follow: "We can't just leave now," followed by no real advice on how a fascist society can be jumpstarted into a modern liberal republic. After all, there is no government handbook entitled, "Operation 1A: How to remove a Middle East fascist regime in three weeks, reconstruct the countryside, and hold the first elections in the nation's history — all within two years." Almost all who supported the war now are bailing on the pretext that their version of the reconstruction was not followed: While a three-week war was their idea, a 20-month messy reconstruction was surely someone else's. Yesterday genius is today's fool — and who knows next month if the elections work? Witness Afghanistan where all those who recently said the victory was "lost" to warlords are now suddenly quiet.
HEADS YOU LOSE, TAILS WE WIN
Indeed, from the oscillating analyses of Iraq, the following impossible picture often emerges from our intelligentsia. It was a fatal error to disband the Iraqi army. That led to lawlessness and a loss of confidence in the American ability to restore immediate order after Saddam's fall. Yet it was also a fatal error to keep some Baathists in the newly constituted army. They were corrupt and wished reform to fail — witness the Fallujah Brigade that either betrayed us or aided the enemy. So we turned off the Sunnis by disbanding the army — and yet somehow turned off the Shiites by keeping some parts of it.
Massive construction projects were hogged by gargantuan American firms, ensconced in the Green Zone that did not engage either local Iraqi workers or small companies and thus squandered precious good will. Or, indigenous contractors proved irresponsible and unreliable, evidence for why Iraq was in such bad shape to begin with. And when we did put exclusive reliance on them, it ensured only lackadaisical and half-hearted reconstruction.
We also lost hearts and minds by using GPS bombs to obliterate houses full of killers and take out blocks of insurgents. And yet we lost hearts and minds by failing to act decisively and de facto turning over large enclaves to terrorists and Saddamites whom we were afraid to root out. Elections should have been held earlier; no, they must be delayed since they come too soon when the country is still unsecured.
Our helmeted soldiers with sunglasses are holed up in enclaves, don't mingle, and perpetuated the heavy-handed image of snooty occupiers. But leaving the Green Zone is an open invitation to kidnapping and worse. So we are both too well hidden and yet not hidden enough. Embedded media gave us a real-time picture of the fighting. But (if one is conservative) it left open the opportunity for sensationalism on the part of wannabe crusaders, and (if one is liberal) it created too close a psychological bond with the soldiers that impaired objectivity.
It was a mistake to postpone Iraqi sovereignty for so long; but it is an equal mistake to rush into elections while the country is so insecure. The CIA is impotent, out-of-touch, and clownish; somehow it mind-controlled Allawi, Chalabi, and a host of other Iraqi "puppets."
The litany from the mercurial Beltway always goes on: There were enough troops to take out Saddam in three weeks, but not enough to restore order to the countryside — but still too many that resulted in too high an American profile on the streets of Baghdad. The transformations of Donald Rumsfeld (this week's genius, last week's fool) have left us stripped down and bereft of the muscle needed. Yet new, more mobile brigades in strikers and special forces with laptops are preferable to old armored divisions on the streets of Iraq.
We cannot flee, but must not stay. Iraqis publicly say we should leave, but privately beg us to remain. We were after cheap oil, but gas prices somehow climbed almost immediately after we went in. Democracy won't work with these people, but somehow we are seeing three elections in the wake of the Taliban, Arafat, and Saddam.
There are many constants in all this pessimistic confusion — beside the fact that we are becoming a near hysterical society. First, our miraculous efforts in toppling the Taliban and Saddam have apparently made us forget war is always a litany of mistakes. No conflict is conducted according to either antebellum planning or can proceed with the benefit of hindsight. Iraq was not Yemen or Qatar, but rather the most wicked regime in the world, in the heart of the Arab world, full of oil, terrorists, and mass graves. There were no helpful neighbors to keep a lid on their own infiltrating jihadists. Instead we had to go into the heart of the caliphate, take out a mass murderer, restore civil society after 30 years of brutality, and ward off Sunni and Baathist fomenters in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria — all the while keeping out Iranian-Shiite agents bent on stopping democracy. The wonder is not that there is violence and gloom in Iraq, but that less than two years after Saddam was removed, elections are still on track.
THE FOLLIES OF WORLD WAR II
Second, our very success creates ever increasing expectations of perfection for a postmodern America used to instant gratification. We now look back in awe at World War II, the model of military success, in which within four years an unprepared United States won two global wars, at sea, on the ground, and in the air, in three continents against Japan, Italy, and Germany, and supplied both England and the Soviet Union. But our forefathers experienced disaster after disaster in a tale of heartbreak, almost as inglorious as the Korean mess or Vietnam tragedy. And they did things to win we perhaps claim we would now not: Shoot German prisoners in the Bulge, firebomb Axis cities, drop the bomb — almost anything to stop fascists from slaughtering even more millions of innocents.
Our armored vehicles were deathtraps and only improved days before the surrender. American torpedoes were often duds. Unescorted daylight bombing proved a disaster, but continued. Amphibious assaults like Anzio and Tarawa were bloodbaths and emblematic of terrible planning and command. The recapture of Manila was clumsy and far too costly. Okinawa was the worst of all operations, and yet was begun just over fourth months before the surrender — without any planning for Kamikazes who were shortly to kill 5,000 American sailors. Patton, the one general that could have ended the western war in 1944, was relieved and then subordinated to an auxiliary position with near fatal results for the drive from Normandy; mediocrities like Mark Clark flourished and were promoted. Admiral King resisted the life-saving convoy system and unnecessarily sacrificed merchant ships; while Bull Halsey almost lost his unprepared fleet to a storm.
The war's aftermath seemed worse, to be overseen by an untried president who was considered an abject lightweight. Not-so-quite collateral damage had ruined entire cities. Europe nearly starved in winter 1945-6. Millions were on the road in mass exoduses. After spending billions to destroy Nazi Germany we had to spend billions more to rebuild it — and repair the devastation it had wrought on its neighbors. Our so-called partisan friends in Yugoslavia and Greece turned out to be hard-core Communist killers. Soon enough we learned that the guerrillas in the mountains of Europe whom we had idolized, in fact, fought as much for Communism as against fascism — but never for democracy.
But at least there was clear-cut strategic success? Oh? The war started to keep Eastern Europe free of Nazis and ended up ensuring that it was enslaved by Stalinists. Poland was neither free in 1940 nor in 1946. By early 1946 we were already considering putting former Luftwaffe pilots in American jets — improved with ample borrowing from Nazi technology — to protect Europe from the Red Army carried westward on GM trucks. We put Nazis on trials for war crimes even as we invited their scientists to our shores to match their counterparts in the Soviet Union who were building even more lethal weapons to destroy us. Our utopian idea of a global U.N. immediately deteriorated into a mess — decades of vetoes in the Security Council by Stalinists and Maoists, even as former colonial states turned thugocracies in the General Assembly ganged up on Israel and the survivors of the Holocaust.
After Americans had liberated France and restored his country, General de Gaulle created the myth of the French resistance and immediately triangulated with our enemies to reforge some pathetic sort of French grandeur. An exhausted England turned over to us a collapsing empire, with the warning that it might all turn Communist. Tired of the war and postbellum costs, Americans suddenly were asked to wage a new Cold War to keep a shrinking West and its allies free. The Department of War turned into the Department of Defense, along with weird new things like the U.S. Air Force, Strategic Air Command, Food for Peace, Alliance for Progress, Voice of America, and thousands of other costly entities never dreamed of just a few years earlier.
And yet our greatest generation thought by and large they had done pretty well. We in contrast would have given up in despair in 1942, New York Times columnists and NPR pundits pontificating "I told you so" as if we were better off sitting out the war all along.
IRAQI OPTIONS
Finally, the United States has a number of options in Iraq. In fact, the paradoxes are ever more confronting our enemies. There is a glaring problem for the terrorists in Iraq: 75 percent of the country wants elections. The Sunni clerics wish to delay them on the strange logic that they either cannot or will not stop their brethren who are trying to derail the voting through which their cause will lose. But such appeals appear increasingly empty — almost like the Secessionists complaining about Northern voters in 1860 might imperil the Union. And no one is all that sure that there really is a purist Sunni block of millions of obstructionists, rather than just ordinary Iraqis who want to vote and are in fear of extremists who claim their allegiance. Saudi Arabia unleashed terrorists to stop democracy in Iraq, and is now worried their young Frankensteins hate their creators just as much.
So we are inching ahead as global television soon will air an elected and autonomous government fighting fascists for the chance of democracy. If the Kurds and the Shiite majorities vote for us to leave, then we must — but to do so would be to ensure the return of the Baathists, the domination of Wahhabi fundamentalism, or the Lebanonization of the country. And so they probably won't. There is much talk of an Iranian takeover, but no evidence that an Iraqi Shiite sees himself as more an Iranian than an Arab.
All this we cannot see at the present as we in our weariness lament the losses of almost 1,100 combat dead and billions committed to people who appear from 30-second media streams to be singularly ungracious and not our sort of folk. We dwell on unmistakable lapses, never on amazing successes — just as we were consumed with Afghanistan in its dark moments, but now ignore its road to success. But never mind all this: The long-term prospects are still as bright as things seem gloomy in the short-term — but only if we emulate our grandfathers and press on with the third Middle East election in the last six months. |
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