http://thebluestate.typepad.co…..feld_.html

Which creates a perception of weakness and lack of resolve; public reasoned debate or ineffective prosecution of a war?

First the “enemy”, whoever the f**k that is, may not care nor even be aware of the reasoned public debate on war in the United States. Do they gather around the big screen television in between building IEDs and watch blitzer and hume and chortle at them? Feeling empowered by we Bush haters….hardly.

Perhaps what he is really saying is that reasoned public debate makes a good excuse for the failure of the administration.

If I remember correctly, several years ago the neo-con Republicans jumped all over justices on the Supreme Court because the deciding justices, in a death penalty case, had based part of their ruling on what countries overseas, especially in Europe, had ruled regarding the death penalty.

In other words, the neo-cons got upset that the justices would listen to “foreigners” and decide a case based on what “foreigners” think. (Presumably, I guess, instead of basing their ruling on what only the neo-cons think).

Anyway, now Laird and others like him are saying that we should be concerned about what the “terrorists” will think of U.S. citizens engaging in a healthy, democratic discussion. That somehow, in our practicing of our democratic rights, that the “terrorists” will think we’re weak.

I didn’t realize that Laird and his neo-con pals were so concerned about the “terrorists.”

Which could explain why Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld let Osama bin Laden slip the noose of Tora Bora. They were concerned about what bin Laden would “think” if we’d captured him, or what his fanatical followers would have thought if we’d killed him.

I didn’t realize that these neo-cons cared so much for the fanatical religious terrorists out to wipe democracy from the face of the earth.

Who would have guessed?!?!?!

Several years ago, I saw a t.v. program in which an ex-Viet Cong was asked whether he believed the United States could have won the Vietnam War. Of course, he could have just said, “No way. We had the upper hand” or something similarly macho. Instead, he replied, after laughing, that the Vietnamese had been fighting the Chinese for over a thousand years…and Vietnam still remained autonomous. Even though, part of Vietnam was lost to China.

So, what’s in store for Iraq?

Saddam Hussein kept the Sunni, Shia and Kurds together as “Iraq” only through brute force. Everytime the Shia or Kurds tried to split away, their opposition was crushed. Because of this, “Iraq” remained fairly stable except for an occassional uprising. But Hussein had a sizable internal intelligence force in place which kept it’s eye on anyone suspected of harboring revolting thoughts.

Right now in “Iraq”, we are seeing what happens when internal security in a country either disappears or is weakened. In this case, the loss of internal security in “Iraq” rests squarely on the Bush administration because after our forces took Baghdad, we didn’t have enough troops to replace Saddam Hussein’s internal security forces with our own.

This means that the only way “Iraq” as a country will survive as “Iraq” is if someone as brutal as Saddam Hussein holds it together. In other words, we are seeing civil war breaking out between the three main Iraqi factions, but it will take one group slaughtering enough members of the other two groups to maintain “Iraq” within it’s current borders.

Fracturing of “Iraq” into three mini-states, however, is more likely.

i had this friend. a brevet captain in the crotch. who decided to become an artist after departing .

i have several of his bits. so much like this one.

his work wasn’t included in this collection. who knows why,

but you should check it out.

vietnam: relexes and reflections.
isbn #: 081093945-2

Secondly as you say, why should debate in the US over policy in Iraq be held hostage to the perceptions of terrorists?

One thing Melvin Laird has in common with Rumsfeld and the rest of the Neo-Conmen is they’ve been totally, tragically and obstinately wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong about pretty much every goddamn thing they’ve dreamt up concerning how the US should conduct it’s foreign policy.

Revisionist has-beens like Laird need to STFU and hope that people who actually know something about how the world actually works can somehhow wrestle the wheel away from delusional screw-ups like Donald Rumsfeld.

Or as they used to say back in the good old days:

We have to destroy democracy in order to save it.

” believe that undermining our [democratic processes] because of what our enemies believe is a bad precedent, and in this email to Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt, addressed this point therein in two words.” the link is http://www.pressthenews.com/f_hiatt1 or there is a direct link here

to condemn speaking out too much on the one hand (as the article does) and then on the other make the very theme of the article that they should have spoken out before retiring, when the requirement, as part of the military structure, of not speaking out, is far greater (and far more reasonable) is inherently contradictory.
Thus the article’s basic point is a contradiction.

The article at the end states,”But the enemy does not understand or appreciate reasoned public debate.” who cares! Then it concludes, “it is perceived as a sign of weakness and lack of resolve.” Again, who cares. but more importantly, this is extremely flawed. Debate over what the best policy in Iraq is perceived as a lack of resolve, and we should care? It shows a resolve to address the problem to the best of our abilities. Also, what enemies? Al Qaeda? how so? And if one is speaking about the insurgents, if anything it shows a resolve, again, to get the problem addressed (nor is it all that clear how our presence in Iraq is affecting the insurgency).

A March 22 Washington Post editorial quoted the President making a similar point. I believe that undermining our democracy because of what our enemies believe is a bad precedent, and in this email to Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt, addressed this point therein in two words.

Statements like these, “But the enemy does not understand or appreciate reasoned public debate.” are atrocious. They are either meaningless (again, like we should care) or worse, if as here by implication our democracy, on top of the other damage international terrorists have done, should be further held hostage by our own response to this threat. A classic example is the wiretap issue, addressed here and here and in this letter to an associate editor at the Washington Post. this issue has also been covered extremely poorly by the media as well.

In a better world Melvin Laird would be sitting in a cell in The Hague for commiting war crimes against the people of Vietnam. What has this pissant ever done except help drag America into it’s most humiliating defeat in our history? (up til now that is)

30,000 plus names etched in that black wall in Washington DC means Melvin Laird has no moral authority to speak to this issue.