Well, it isn't obvious to Petraeus or to the great majority of people I've heard from who've been there.
Ed the Roman | 04.30.07 - 1:19 pm | #

That depends on how you define "win". If winning means everybody living happily ever after, most wars cannot be won. But look at a war that many say our side lost, Vietnam. We accomplished some important things in Vietnam, at an admittedly high price. We demonstrated that we would stand by our allies for years even if it meant taking considerable casualties. We demonstrated to Hanoi that any future expansion of Communism by military force would cost them dearly. We showed the fallacy of thinking the advance of Marxism was somehow inevitable, when in fact it only came with difficulty and a great loss of human life.
Sometimes "winning" in politics, is just a matter of accomplishing what is possible, and not expecting the impossible. There is much to be said for minimizing the damages when it seems one is in a no-win situation.
Matthew | 04.30.07 - 1:25 pm | #

But we--the West--can't win against Islam period. There is no morally acceptable way to defeat people willing to blow themselves and their children up to kill their enemies.

Sometimes, Mark, I wonder if you wouldn't welcome sharia law since it would make public life so "pure."
Sandra Miesel | 04.30.07 - 2:06 pm | #

If winning means everybody living happily ever after...

Who on earth ever said that?
Mark Shea | Homepage | 04.30.07 - 2:06 pm | #

Sometimes, Mark, I wonder if you wouldn't welcome sharia law since it would make public life so "pure."

Uh, no.
Mark Shea | Homepage | 04.30.07 - 2:07 pm | #

Is Matthew's comment some conservative test phrase to see if this will fly?

Did we really teach Hanoi about the spread of communism, this being before they invaded Cambodia?

"This depends how you define 'win.'"

Fantastic politico-babble. And seemingly quoted without the least touch of irony, humor, or sarcasm. I have no doubt that this is a right wing talking point trial.

Fantastic.
Daniel H. Conway | 04.30.07 - 2:08 pm | #

If Vietnam left the rest of the world an impression (or "demonstrated", if you want to put it that way), it was that with enough determination, even the USA could be defeated.
Ignacio | 04.30.07 - 2:14 pm | #

A perception that -it appears- the next events in the war in Iraq, unfortunately, will reinforce.
Ignacio | 04.30.07 - 2:17 pm | #

What we really need to do to win is to appoint a kinder, gentler Saddam as dictator (or, better yet, king) and then leave and support said dictator/monarch from a distance. Unfortunately the whole "bringing democracy to the middle east" load of bull precludes that solution.
Anonymous | 04.30.07 - 2:37 pm | #

" Well, it isn't obvious to Petraeus or to the great majority of people I've heard from who've been there."

From my reading of Petraeus, who seems an honest realist and a good soldier, there is no military solution. That agrees with other sources I've been looking at.

The solution, if there is one, is political, and Ed, the pieces for that one don't seem at this point to be in place. That isn't Petraeus' fault.

In fact, politically, Iraq aeems to be getting filthier by the day. Mailiki fires effective generals. King Abdullah of SA refuses to meet with him, and calls US presence in Iraq illegitmate. Al Quaeda and Iran are both, apparently, being strengthened, not weakened. Contradictions between Sunni and Shia Islam are sharpened, and a Sunni/Shia war, proxy or otherwise becomes a possibility. Turkey shows signs of morbid stress.

None of that is Petraeus' fault, and there's nothing in all of that he can remedy.
Pavel Chichikov | Homepage | 04.30.07 - 2:50 pm | #

"The whole 'bringing democracy to the middle east' load of bull. . ."

Because they're all just a bunch of filthy camel jockeys who enjoy being fed through industrial shredders, right, anon? How foolish of those Zionist neocon theocrats to think that "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" are blessings to be enjoyed even by Iraqis as well as well-fed, carbon-offsetting, gaia-honoring Western liberals. Feh.

And Mark, this sort of snark is why I had to stop reading your blog (as much as I enjoy it). When WFB puts forth his thoughts on why the war can't be won, I will give him serious consideration. He has demonstrated, over his career, enough intellectual honesty to warrant being taken seriously. I don't have to wonder whether he's taking this position to play to his friends in the NYT or to position himself for a place in a Democrat administration (paging George Tenet).

But when morally bankrupt clowns like Harry Reid proclaim the war lost, they ARE "Cut and run cowardly Lose-ocrats." Reid and senile fools like Jack Murtha have demonstrated time and again that they are playing the war out for their own partisan purposes (need I remind you of Reid's loathsome gloat that the war would help the Party of Death gain seats?), and that no matter what happens, no matter what course Bush or Petraeus might pursue, they will continue to oppose it without offering any solution other than "run away right now!"

I'm going to have to just read your Church posts from now on. This consistent smearing of conservatives and the war is bad enough - it's worse coming from someone whose views I generally respect.
Christopher | 04.30.07 - 2:57 pm | #

Petraeus, who seems an honest realist and a good soldier, there is no military solution
True. But he has also stated that a political solution is not possible without some sense of security in Iraq. Something which is not possible if we follow the advice of Pelosi, Reid, et al.
Jon | 04.30.07 - 3:10 pm | #

I don't know who you are hearing from, but friends of my family, my brother, and his best friend joined the Marines upon graduating from college a few years ago and their appraisal has not been positive.
My brother in particular has been a military history buff and political science guy for as long as I have known him. Majoring in one, minoring in the other during college; arguing heatedly with what he called his "liberal professors". He has always been decidedly conservative.
But after serving in Iraq and getting first hand experience of the operations, the local people and their attitude, witnessing the 'economy' and so forth, his exact and sober words to me upon returning were: "The mission is a farce."

Granted, plenty more was said, much of it extremely interesting, but nothing that contradicted this appraisal. He wished he could say otherwise but declared only a fool, yes-men, or those far removed from the first hand goings-on would be stupid enough to say otherwise.

His experienced friends agree . . . except the one we can't talk to because he was shot in the face by a sniper.
pd | 04.30.07 - 3:14 pm | #

Chris:

Could you point to me where I said a single word of support for Reid, Murtha or the Dems?

I'm sorry if you don't like my lampoon of the standard strategy that war supporters have been deploying against critics of the war,

http://www.freerepublic.com/focu...s/1825131/ posts

However, your choice to read it as a vote of support for the Dems more or less confirms my point that supporters of the war tend to deal with criticism of the administration's failure by associating their critics with unpatriotism, just like the Freepers do. Your strategy is to say that Dems are entirely motivated by political gain, not by love of country, and then to magically associate me with them. It's the same tired strategy that has kept the party from facing facts about this war.
Mark Shea | Homepage | 04.30.07 - 3:14 pm | #

"What we really need to do to win is to appoint a kinder, gentler Saddam as dictator (or, better yet, king) and then leave and support said dictator/monarch from a distance."

We've tried that before, in Iran; and unfortunately, you see where that strategy ultimately led ...
Roger Chapman | 04.30.07 - 3:24 pm | #

"True. But he has also stated that a political solution is not possible without some sense of security in Iraq."

Sure, the security part is his mission. But we can be in Iraq as we are now for the next ten months or the next ten years (as someone wrote in a recent Foreign Affairs article), and without a political resolution there will be no permanent security.

Don't ask me what to do next. I have no idea. For one thing, you'd need to understand the political and cultural issues. And these, as Petraeus said, are 'complex.' Anyone here?
Pavel Chichikov | Homepage | 04.30.07 - 3:47 pm | #

Oh, please, Mark - FreeRepublic? If we're going down that road, then DK, Firedoglake and DU are the authentic voice of the pro-Saddamites. I could care less what the Freepers have to say.

I am not reading your post as support for the Democrat party. Your lampoon's humor was lost on me because, nearly from day one, the left (and no, I'm not calling you a leftie) has shrieked that the Administration labels dissenting voices as "unpatriotic," though when asked to provide specific quotes, they mumble and retreat behind the weasel wording of "well, they implied it." I, on the other hand, can point to many instances of Democrats explicitly calling Bush, Cheney, et al unpatriotic.

And as far as "your strategy is to say the Dems are motivated entirely by political gain," well. . .

- when they call for more boots on the ground then decry the surge;

- when they slam Bush for not listening to his generals, then yell that he's taking too much of their advice;

- when they scream that Bush needs to implement the recommendations of the ISG then protest the implementation of the surge (an ISG recommendation);

- when they confirm General Petraeus' appointment, then refuse to meet with him and say they won't believe a word he says. . .

then yes, I do feel they are playing politics with the war.
Christopher | 04.30.07 - 3:50 pm | #

Your lampoon's humor was lost on me because, nearly from day one, the left (and no, I'm not calling you a leftie) has shrieked that the Administration labels dissenting voices as "unpatriotic," though when asked to provide specific quotes, they mumble and retreat behind the weasel wording of "well, they implied it."

I don't know about the Administration, but certainly the agitprop wing of the End to Evil crowd does, as in this infamous bull of excommunication.

http://www.nationalreview.com/fr.../ frum031903.asp

When you show some semblance of acknowledgement of the existence of that piece, and of any lack of retraction, perhaps then you will get the point of my entry on WFB.
Mark Shea | Homepage | 04.30.07 - 4:27 pm | #

Sandra wrote:

"But we--the West--can't win against Islam period. There is no morally acceptable way to defeat people willing to blow themselves and their children up to kill their enemies."

Since when did Bush's stupid war morph into a clash between the west and Islam? And since when did the entire Islamic world become suicide bombers? (I'll pass on how utterly offensive that one is) Honestly, we need to get past this Manichean rubbish-- haven't you people learned anything from the past few years?

Lesson Number 1: you do not defeat Islamic terrorism by having a western pro-Israel power invade a Muslim country with lots of oil and a history of western dominance. In fact, that's how to INCREASE Islamic terrorism. It's not that hard to follow, for God's sake. But here we are, in the midst of this horrendous tragedy, all because of this ridiculous logic.
Morning's Minion | Homepage | 04.30.07 - 7:23 pm | #

Because they're all just a bunch of filthy camel jockeys who enjoy being fed through industrial shredders, right, anon?

Once we'd conquered Iraq, what evidence did we find of those industrial shredders? Were they, say, found installed at Abu Ghraib prison? Or do we think they got moved, along with all the weapons of mass destruction, to Syria? Or to put it another way, what reason do we have to give those stories any more credence than those heart-rending stories about Kuwaiti babies taken out of incubators in Kuwait City and left to die in August 1990? Or Belgian babies tossed on German bayonets in August 1914? (Hint: the fact that Saddam did lots of other bad things doesn't constitute sufficient evidence.)
Seamus | 04.30.07 - 8:19 pm | #

I doubt Mrs. Miesel is referring specifically to the war in Iraq, but rather to a broader conflict which has been going, off and on, for 1000 years.

But points for "you people". I had a great-uncle by marriage who loved that one, or rather the variation "those people", usually when he was bragging about his youth in the Klan.

But he was almost always drunk when he said it.
Franklin Jennings | 04.30.07 - 8:29 pm | #

I am not reading your post as support for the Democrat party. Your lampoon's humor was lost on me because, nearly from day one, the left (and no, I'm not calling you a leftie) has shrieked that the Administration labels dissenting voices as "unpatriotic," though when asked to provide specific quotes, they mumble and retreat behind the weasel wording of "well, they implied it."

Well, David Frum was technically no longer part of "the Administration" when he wrote his notoriouis article labeling Robert Novak and several other critics of the Administration as "Unpatriotic Conservatives," but he had been until about a year earlier. If you want specific quotes, how about "terror denial," "espousing defeatism," and "yearning for defeat." Those accusations weren't implied; Frum made them boldly and explicitly.
Seamus | 04.30.07 - 8:30 pm | #

I forgot the peroration to Frum's screed: "They have finished by hating their country. . . . In a time of danger, they have turned their backs on their country."

You can almost hear the little Jacobin crying "to the lampposts!"
Seamus | 04.30.07 - 8:33 pm | #

One...
Franklin Jennings | 04.30.07 - 8:45 pm | #

Dear me! I was waiting for someone to compare Samson to a suicide bomber. I am indeed commenting on the general cultural clash between the Dar-al-Harb and the Dar-al-Islam. Muslim terrorists are at work all over the world. It's a bit of a stretch to see a connection between Israel and Muslims murdering Buddhists in Thailand.

Between terrorism and voluntary creeping dhimmitude on the part of some Westerners, we're doomed to lose. The roots of modern jihadism are generations older than the Iraq conflict. And suicide bombs have been in their arsenal for decades.

China might end up the last power standing because it doesn't share our moral strictures.
Sandra Miesel | 04.30.07 - 9:28 pm | #

Well, when the New York Times is saying that Anbar is turning around now, it's hard for me to say that nobody sees any way to do anything useful.

For anonymous, your recommendation is exactly what the British did in 1920. They made the king a Sunni, becuase they thought the Shia were crackpots, and the Bedouin are Sunni and they liked the Bedouin. Plus a Sunni king in a Shia majority kingdom needs friends.

For Seamus, I think they were at other locations than Abu Ghraib.

Bear in mind that this is not a story about an event. This is hardware found with tissue residue in it.

For that matter, I've seen the footage of people being pushed off diving boards into empty pools.
Ed the Roman | 04.30.07 - 10:40 pm | #

If Vietnam left the rest of the world an impression (or "demonstrated", if you want to put it that way), it was that with enough determination, even the USA could be defeated.

Considering that the US did not lose a single battle in Vietnam, how can you say that the US lost the war? That assertion is usually made on the basis of what happened after the military campaign ceased the lions share of the troops had been withdrawn. (Remember, the war ended in early 1973 and Saigon fell two years later.)

The war was lost by Congress and if history is not to repeat itself, people had better wise up and soon.

Mark,

I looked at the link you cited and noticed this admission in the text:

The antiwar conservatives aren't satisfied merely to question the wisdom of an Iraq war. Questions are perfectly reasonable, indeed valuable. There is more than one way to wage the war on terror, and thoughtful people will naturally disagree about how best to do it, whether to focus on terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and Hezbollah or on states like Iraq and Iran; and if states, then which state first?

But the antiwar conservatives have gone far, far beyond the advocacy of alternative strategies. They have made common cause with the left-wing and Islamist antiwar movements in this country and in Europe. They deny and excuse terror. They espouse a potentially self-fulfilling defeatism. They publicize wild conspiracy theories. And some of them explicitly yearn for the victory of their nation's enemies.

In other words, the issue being raised was not that people were critical but instead how they went about doing it. There is another factor to consider and that is the timing of this article.

If you check the date of the article, it was published on the day of the commensement of the Iraq war when the decision had been made to go in. What a lot of people do not seem to realize is that there is a difference between what one can say in a time of peace and what one can say in a time of war.

Several of those outlined in the article you referred to Mark in many cases are the sorts of wingnuts that do not seem to realize this if they made similar criticisms after that point as they did before it. An invisible line was crossed on March 19, 2003 and from that point on, acceptable criticisms sometimes become the fodder for destabilization of a military campaign.

But I am hesitant to say beyond that or I might be banned as you did Shawn McElhenney who in less diplomatic ways has said much the same thing a number of times from what I can discern in reading his views on these subjects.
The Midnight Rider | 04.30.07 - 10:40 pm | #

I meant to say "acceptable criticisms in a time of non-war sometimes become the fodder for destabilization of a military campaign underway."
The Midnight Rider | 04.30.07 - 10:42 pm | #

Midnight Rider:

I ban people who accuse me of treason on my blog. You got a problem with that? Yes or no. If yes, then shut up and leave.

Comprende?
Mark Shea | Homepage | 04.30.07 - 10:51 pm | #

In other words, the issue being raised was not that people were critical but instead how they went about doing it.

No. In other word, Chris Blosser said that war supporters don't go around attacking opponents of the war as unpatriotic or even "seditious" to use Shawn's word. Frum certainly did. And Shawn suggested a law against sedition to take care of the likes of me. And naturally, you make excuses for that and ignore the point of the argument.

Hell, why should I bother? I think I will just go ahead and kick you off. I don't need another jackass in my life. I'll give you one more chance Midnight Rider. But you're already acting like a jerk and I don't need it right now.
Mark Shea | Homepage | 04.30.07 - 11:11 pm | #

Midnight Rider,

The US military was not defeated in Vietnam, which is not the same as to say that the US was not defeated by Vietnam. We were.
Ed the Roman | 04.30.07 - 11:18 pm | #

GOP to R.I.P has a nice ring to it! The same goes for the Dems. There's got to be an alternative to this two-party strangle hold on the government of the USA. I refuse to vote for candidates of either party, unless they are mavericks like Ron Paul, who have a snowball's chance in Hell in getting the nomination.
canwetalk? | 04.30.07 - 11:41 pm | #

Third party candidates that I remember in my political lifetime are Ralph Nader, Ross Perot, John Anderson, and George Wallace. Further out in the ozone you can find more, including a guy whose name escapes me, but his platform said that he would "use Laser Beams to search for oil" and his running mate was Curtis LeMay.

I don't think that people who have no chance in hell of a major party nomination are the answer. If you can't get 1/6* or so of the people to vote for you in primaries between two parties, you aren't going to win a general when you only need 1/8 to win a nomination.

* With the current breakdown among D, R and I registrations, that's what it takes to get nominated. Another party knocks it down a notch.
Ed the Roman | 05.01.07 - 7:15 am | #

" An invisible line was crossed on March 19, 2003 and from that point on, acceptable criticisms sometimes become the fodder for destabilization of a military campaign."

Unsuccessful policies may not be criticized, because criticism offers aid and comfort to the enemy? But so does defeat.

If the conflict we're engaged in were going well no one would pay attention to 'criticism.' If the problem is that criticism is calling attention to real problems, then we have the worst problem of all: The inability to learn from mistakes.

"...the fodder for destabilization of a military campaign."

The fodder for destabilization appears to be inherent in the policies themselves, which are destabilizing.
Pavel Chichikov | Homepage | 05.01.07 - 9:39 am | #

Spirituality Without God?

Most religions seem hung up on God. But "God talk" turns a lot of people off, so much so that they reject spirituality along with rejecting God. Still, is it possible to have spirituality without God? Just what would that be like? I'm trying to get that discussion going (so far, without much success) on my blog,
http://spiritualitywithoutgod.bl...d.blogspot.com/
And if you want to check out this idea in more detail, try my web site: www.ExploreRationalFaith.net
RationalRodge | Homepage | 06.25.07 - 4:20 pm | #