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" Senate passes war spending bill with withdrawal deadline"

Steve Wilkins

Steve Wilkins

Teaching pigs to dance, one pig at a time.
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
Cate said:
All of that is great, unless you're dealing with human lives and billions of dollars and possibly the fate of the entire Middle East. "Having faith that you're doing the right thing" is a bit of a shaky standard for sending people into combat.

Now, I think that an arbitrary pullout date is idiocy. But I think that having benchmarks isn't just non-idiocy, it's wise. Setting short-term goals that will contribute to the success of the long-term goals is wise. Saying, "We need to have X number of Iraqi police officers in uniform, showing up to work, and not murdering people on the job within Y months, or we're going to have to seriously reexamine our strategy" is wise, because otherwise, you're sitting there with 1,000 Iraqi police officers and two-thirds don't show up at all and you're saying, "Well, give it a few more months, maybe? I dunno." Saying, "The Iraqi government has to have X provision for human rights and Y provision for distribution of oil revenues established in law within Z months, or we're withdrawing A support" is wise, because otherwise, you're sitting there under sharia law saying, "Come on, guys, won't you get with the program, pretty please?"

If you'd had to mortgage your house to get Airwarriors up and running, you'd probably have wanted some benchmarks, right? You'd have said, "I need to see X page views from Y unique visitors within Z months, or I'm broadening my target market and going after all military." Because otherwise, you could lose your house. You wouldn't have been setting arbitrary deadlines; you would have been deciding, based on the information you had, what you realistically thought you could accomplish, because if you didn't, you could lose your house. Now switch it up and imagine you could die if Airwarriors wasn't successful.
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Your last sentence is more dead on than you probably intended. We're not running a marketing campaign in Iraq where the risk of failure can be easily quantified. It is not a commercial venture where each dead soldier, marine, sailor, or coasty has a specific value that can be interpreted into some loss of revenue. Two different worlds here. One world is profit driven and the other one is not.

Cate said:
"Having faith that you're doing the right thing" is a bit of a shaky standard for sending people into combat.
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It's not a standard. It's a philosophy. And for those of us who have served, I think that is the only way we want to be sent in to harms way. We don't want to half-ass it. We want to know from the get go that this is the right thing to do and that our government and fellow Americans are behind us. Will we go over someplace and do the job that we were told to do? Yes? But consider for a moment just how emotionally debilitating it would be for an enemy to know that all of America is behind their President/Commander-in-Chief and fully supports armed forces being sent over to destroy them. They're gonna think, "Fuck us. We don't have a chance."

But that isn't the case, and why is that? Because we have a country full of arm chair quarterbacks who think they know more and have privy to better information than the POTUS. "Hindsight is not wisdom and second guessing is not a strategy" (GW Bush).
 
Recidivist

Recidivist

Registered User
Benchmarks need to be in place to measure the efficacy of our actions.

It is my opinion that it would take a commitment long US presence in Iraq to have an outcome that is stable and favorable, especially considering how botched some things have been so far. Do not get me wrong, I think that our military is doing their job, and doing it well. There have been instances that I am not proud of, but war is ugly, nasty and people will die, be maimed and dollars that could be spent in other ways will be spent on war. That is why war should be reserved for only the most dire of circumstances, and once it has begun, the politicians need to let the military leaders accomplish their mission (obviously there are bounds to this). There are good reasons that career soldiers, not politicians, lead armies and Navies. IMO this is the #1 reason that the Vietnam conflict ended unfavorably.
I did not like the idea of this war in 2003, and I still don't like it, BUT, I think our immediate withdraw, without security provisions for Iraqi people will be a disaster. Do you think Bosnia was bad (It was), well imagine what will happen when we leave if we are seeing 100-200 people being murdered daily when we are there. Our mission needs to be evaluated as a both Humanitarian mission and an anti-terrorist effort at this point.
We need benchmarks, we need commitment and we need accountability.
These bills are political maneuvering. Congress and Senate know it will get vetoed, yet they want that to happen to produce accountability. They feel that the accountability will show more negatively on the white house than it will on them. We'll see.

BTW, this is a marketing campaign folks, the media is selling what's going on in the middle east to the American people, If they aren't buying it, guess what happens at Elections, that's how this bill got into swing anyway.
 
Cate

Cate

Pretty much invincible
Once again, I'm not in favor of arbitrary pullout dates. I've said that. But there's a difference between an arbitrary pullout date and a sensible benchmark to realistically measure progress. So far, the administration has been unequivocally opposed to the latter, and much of Congress won't settle for anything less than the former. And no one, not Congress, not the president, not the armchair quarterbacks at home, will give an inch, because they're too busy playing politics to consider what will work (whether or not it's pleasant) and what should be done (whether or not it makes us look, collectively, like a big swinging superpower dick).
 
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phrogpilot73

Well-Known Member
I just had a Marine join Veterans Against the War (he's getting out), and I was disgusted. Here's what I told him:

It doesn't matter why we're there, or if it's a civil war. We fucked that country up by singlehandedly destroying their government, infrastructure, and military. It's our responsibility to repair it.

What kind of benchmarks can we use? More schools? More troops? More IPs? I don't think anyone here can answer that question, because everyone is still assuming that their culture is remarkably similar to ours. It's not. Thankfully, I think Gen. Patraeus knows this.
 
A4sForever

A4sForever

BTDT OLD GUY
pilot
Contributor
I love it when some talk about what's "sensible" or "reasonable" or "benchmarks" ... and mouth slogans like ... "we support the troops" ... :)

The Democrats hate Bush and this Administration with such a white hot passion that they WILL sacrifice the U.S. military and make the lives already lost a futile sacrifice in a political vendetta against those who "stole" the 2000 & 2004 national elections .... their entire congressional focus for the next two years will be to "get Bush". Anyone who couldn't see this coming prior to the 2006 elections is a fool. Don't talk to me about "polls" ... most people in this country are, unfortunately, too ignorant to balance their own checkbook.

I hold the Republicans responsible for a failure to "fight the war" -- to win --- while they claim "we're at war" ... and I hold them responsible for their failure to motivate and unify the post 9-11 sentiment in this country ...

I hold the Democrats responsible --- for their irresponsibility in foreign affairs, their vindictiveness, their supine position at the feet of the left wing of their party, and their politically inspired vengeance.

They all disgust me. Republicans & Democrats. I was roasted by some herein when I stated something to the effect in the past that ... "they're going to give away all the sacrifices that have been made since 9-11 .....they're going to do it to YOU again ... " .... you know, the old Vietnam analogy. But that won't happen .... right???

Prove me wrong. You learn from history or you repeat the mistakes of the past. History is the the written record and the template for the future. Mankind repeats itself. We've seen it all before ....
 
Recidivist

Recidivist

Registered User
phrogpilot73 said:
It doesn't matter why we're there, or if it's a civil war. We fucked that country up by singlehandedly destroying their government, infrastructure, and military. It's our responsibility to repair it.

What kind of benchmarks can we use? More schools? More troops? More IPs? I don't think anyone here can answer that question, because everyone is still assuming that their culture is remarkably similar to ours. It's not.
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Couldn't be more to the point. +Rep
 
Afterburner76

Afterburner76

Life is Gouda
pilot
HueyCobra8151 said:
...there is nothing we can do about the fact that currently we are in Iraq. Do we leave it in shambles unable to fend for itself when the all out Civil War between Sunni, Shia'a, et. al, happens? Or do we continue to rebuild it to the point where it can function independently?

.
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The prob is we have never defined what that even means. Until we do, there will be no end. We have to set a goal. We haven't even determined what a functioning Iraqi defense force is defined as. (ie. a functioning army contains x number of trained soldiers, therefore when Iraq has x number of soldiers they are considered functioning.) Until we start defining what it is we are trying to attain, we'll be stuck in the Iraqi sandbox....
 
HueyCobra8151

HueyCobra8151

Well-Known Member
pilot
Hmmm...

Try a wikipedia search for "Iraqi Security Forces"

Or read a newspaper?

Until then, don't lump me in with your "we."
 
HueyCobra8151

HueyCobra8151

Well-Known Member
pilot
Could try a "google" search for Iraqi Security Forces, or any other search you want, just figured wikipedia would point him in the right direction.
 
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