The Liberal Avenger has posted a very hypothetical question on his (their) website. Guessing that our readers are more probably conservative than liberal, I’m asking you to ignore the incendiary verbiage and concentrate on the hypothetical question: if we somehow knew that the war in Iraq was a hopeless cause, what ought we to do?
Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument only, that we liberals were right about the war – that we were misled, that we’ve made life worse for Iraqis than under Saddam, that we’ve created more terrorism/terrorists and that we’ll never “win†there. In this imagination exercise we must imagine that in spite of us liberals being right the Bush Administration is too proud/ dumb/ stubborn/ messianic to accept the fact that Iraq has become a catastrophe and for whatever reason won’t budge from the “stay the course†strategy they’ve taken all along – regardless of the fact that 3+ American soldiers continue to be killed there every day and the entire enterprise costs us $7 billion per month. The Iraq misadventure is like a runaway train that will eventually derail in a high-speed, disastrous explosion.
If this were to be the case, what do you wingnuts thing that we liberals should do?
Now this is old territory between us and (BedRockTruth) here. I don’t want to put words in BRT’s mouth, so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, Sir, but my impression is that your position is basically “My Country Right or Wrong†and that we liberals should shut up, regardless.
The Avenger has put this question in a form which assumes that the Bush Administration would never change course, because, the assumption is, that President Bush would not accept the notion that he was wrong and the war could not be won.
So, ignoring the Avenger’s verbiage, if you became convinced that the war was not only unwinable, but would cause both the United States and Iraq greater harm the longer we continued to try to win it, what would you suggest should be done?
What can be done now? Train Iraq army…re-enlist the disbanded members of the Iraq army, police, republican guard, etc….give them the weapons…leave on a time table…then watch civil war from home while supplying the pro-American forces…
You did a better job asking the question than I did. I honestly didn’t want it to be incendiary.
Dana,
LA has perfected the fine art of posing questions that prevoke and create debate, (even when this particular question was pure hypothetical,ignoring the incendiary verbiage was not his intent). As I’m sure you’ve seen (by now) on his site, (in the comments section of his thread) no one cared to tackle the ” hypothetical” and instead plunged head on into reality. The discussion was provocative and mostly civil. LA’s one of the
smarm·i·est fellers I’ve come across in the “spere” lately, but his flair for provoking discourse is admirable. (My own personal opinion/theory is he’s a closet conservative) That said, BigBuddaPuppy summed up just about all that could be done under LA’s scenario. (I’m sure there’s more we can come up with)
Interesting that no one on the liberals side of the debate (including LA), offered any “reasoned” thought of a solution. It was/is still all about F**k
Bush, Neocons, etc.
“Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument only, that we liberals were right about the war “?
For the sake of argument only, what if LA and his pals are totally wrong?
[...] The Liberal Avenger posted a hypothetical question, which I referenced previously in The Liberal Avenger Asks . . . . I promised him an answer, but, as is my wont, it’ll probably be lengthy. [...]
The problem that Libs have is straight tunnel vision. They keep complaining there’s trees blocking the view of the forest! Libs are taking Iraq as a singular action when Iraq is one piece of the multi-piece puzzle called the Global War On Terror. But first you have to belive there is a GWOT. Without that belief, or even acknowledgement, Iraq will be trouble for them. But Iraq isn’t the only stop on this war, it includes all of SW Asia. As long as the tunnel vision exists, The GWOT and Iraq will never be understood.
Yorkshire wrote:
I don’t believe that there is a Global War on Terror, because terrorism is only a tactic. Rather, I believe that it is a war against Islamic Fascism, or Islamism, or militant Islam; I suppose other labels can be devised.
I agree with you about the tunnel vision of the left, but I think we also need to be honest with ourselves as to whom our enemies are.
Dana sez:
I believe that it is a war against Islamic Fascism, or Islamism, or militant Islam; I suppose other labels can be devised.
Dear Mr. Semantics,
I used GWOT because that is the label, and yes we are fighting the Radical Islamicists who use terror as their only means since they can’t mount armies, and are basically cowards. They exhort others to kill themselves in the name of radicalism, but the leaders just don’t seem to lead by example.
[...] Ignoring the Avenger’s more incindiary verbiage and rephrasing the question in a less inflammatory manner, something of which the Avenger approved, I did write a fairly lengthy response, brevity always being a shortcoming of mine. [...]
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