VoteVets will start running this ad on Friday.
Make a new account
Now, he says things are better, at least as much as they can be with us still there. He says it is time for us to cut them loose and let them handle it themselves. He says they are as trained as we will ever get them to be.
He calls himself "one of the soldiers who takes out the bad guys" (I don't like that but he is good at what he is trained to do.) He hates to admit it and isn't sure it was worth it, but he does think the surge worked enough that we can leave now.
Just two cents from a career soldier who has been there four times.
I hope all is well with your Nephew. Parent
He said he'd bet money he will have to go one more time. I hope he is wrong. He has a lot of affection for the Iraqi people who aren't "bad guys". He has videos from inside his Humvee while the big fighter helicopters are firing on some town and it is really weird watching them. He has hundreds of pictures and everything looks to be in ruins. It will be a long time before things are "nomal over there. Parent
Sadly, I think the hardest thing for any person to face is the realization that they have engaged in something that not only wasn't worth it, but that destroyed others and themselves in the process. There is nothing good to say about the Iraq war. Nothing. Sorry. If the old Soviet Union can collapse without an invasion, so could Saddam's Iraq. We committed an unforgivable act and continue to rationalize it with delusions.
I wish your nephew well. I hope a big part of him wasn't destroyed, as well, but war tends to do that. BTW, my brother is there right now for his third tour. His last tour was in Afghanistan, where he was in the mountains working with villagers, only to have the village he was working with torched by...the U.S. Army. Much to his disgust.
Part of the reason wars are not a first resort option, as they have been for the bloodthirsty, thimble-d*cked f*cknuts who run this country -- and by that I mean the Bushies AND us, since we enabled this crap and allow it to continue. Parent
One of the many indications of class divide in America, I think, as I also don't know anyone who signed up to serve in the military (though I do know a couple in the academies). Parent
That's what I did :). My ex-husband joined the Air Force when he ran out of school money and it put him through college. I can't tell you how many under 20 couples we knew who ended up getting divorced the first few years. (We made it 11 and were only in the AF 4 years.) It was worth it for him...he got his education and actually had a job that got him an excellent position that he has to this day.
The military can be a great life when there isn't a war. I can't imagine letting someone I love join right now. But most of these kids have no way to go to college or to get a good job and that we send them over there so unprepared is just awful. I think my nephew worried more about those kids than he did some Iraqi coming after him. Parent
I've heard exactly what your nephew said, and I've heard other military vets of this "war" who say it's actually better than what we hear through the media.
We don't hear of air raids, bombs dropping, ground fighting, etc., so I'd sure like to hear what is costing us 10-12 billion a month. I'm not liking what I'm hearing from Obama during his trip.
And, as far as this ad is concerned, I don't think it's a smart tactic to keep pushing that stupid comment from McCain as a plan. Yes, he said 100 years, no, he doesn't have a good plan for withdrawing all the troops, and the latter fact is more problematic than the first. Any ad that makes me roll my eyes for latching onto something more lame than the many other choices that are really solid won't work on me or many others who are deciding who to vote for. Parent
Even without the "kicker" the shots and editing distract from the message -- the best way to communicate a simple, straightforward message is a simple, straightforward visual style. This was way too complicated visually for its message.
So, without insulting your intelligence I can only assume you are kidding Parent
According to a report, made public yesterday, by the Government Accountability Office, "The administration lacks an updated and comprehensive Iraq strategy to move beyond the "surge" of combat troops President Bush launched in January of 2007." It cited "little improvement" where the Iraqi security forces are concerned, noted the failure to implement "key legislation" by the Iraqi parliament, found that crucial ministries had fallen off in spending their budgeted monies, and that "oil and electricity production" continued to miss targets.
Karen DeYoung, June 24, 2008, WaPo (link):
Bush's strategy of January 2007, the GAO said, "defined the original goals and objectives that the Administration believed were achievable by the end of this phase in July 2008." Not meeting many of them changed circumstances on the ground and the pending withdrawal of the last of the additional U.S. forces mean that strategy is now outdated, the report said. The GAO recommends that the State and Defense departments work together to fashion a new approach.
LGen RT Odierno, Mar 13, 2008, Heritage Lecture #1068 (link):
Explaining the reduction in violence and its strategic significance has been the subject of much debate. It's tempting for those of us personally connected to the events to exaggerate the effects of the surge. By the same token, it's a gross oversimplification to say, as some commentators have, that the positive trends we're observing have come about because we paid off the Sunni insurgents or because Muqtada al-Sadr simply decided to announce a ceasefire. These assertions ignore the key variable in the equation--the Coalition's change in strategy and our employment of the surge forces. Suggesting that the reduction in violence resulted merely from bribing our enemies to stop fighting us is uninformed and an oversimplification. It overlooks our significant offensive push in the last half of 2007 and our rise in casualties in May and June as we began to take back neighborhoods. It overlooks the salient point that many who reconciled with us did so from a position of weakness, rather than strength. The truth is that the improvement in security and stability is the result of a number of factors, and what Coalition forces did throughout 2007 ranks among the most significant.
Suggesting that the reduction in violence resulted merely from bribing our enemies to stop fighting us is uninformed and an oversimplification. It overlooks our significant offensive push in the last half of 2007 and our rise in casualties in May and June as we began to take back neighborhoods. It overlooks the salient point that many who reconciled with us did so from a position of weakness, rather than strength. The truth is that the improvement in security and stability is the result of a number of factors, and what Coalition forces did throughout 2007 ranks among the most significant.
But now that the surge is over--and now that our ground forces are largely depleted--Iran is much stronger, the Taliban is resurgent, and we still haven't reached anything resembling success in Iraq. This all occurring against the backdrop of a failing state in Afghanistan. As Jon Soltz told the American Prospect last week, had those same forces been allocated to Afghanistan--the theater deemed most important by General David Petraeus--then we could have doubled our forces there.
As Jon Soltz told the American Prospect last week, had those same forces been allocated to Afghanistan--the theater deemed most important by General David Petraeus--then we could have doubled our forces there.
Not surprisingly, America's top military leader, Admiral Mike Mullen agrees:
That's straight from the horse's mouth: We can't send more troops to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan because they're all tied up in Iraq.
So next time someone brings up how "successful" the surge has been in Iraq, just point to the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. Note how the disastrously ignorant policies pushed on us by Bush and McCain have done little for Iraq, and only served to benefit the Taliban and, by extension, al Qaeda.