Andrew Sullivan leaning toward the reality that Iraq is lost

[beachmom]

I knew it would eventually happen, because he is not willing to avoid the hard facts on the ground. He still goes through the motions of considering more troops, yet he ends with this:

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/11/50000_more_troo.html

But I'm leaning toward an acceptance that Iraq may have to experience an actual civil war before any settlement can really hold. It was suppressed for decades. We had one chance to exert control and unwind the sectarian dynamic peacefully; and we blew it.





In a way, this even torpedoes Kerry's ideas about a Summit coupled with a timetable for withdrawal which could bring a peaceful settlement. I think it's too late for that -- we're at the point of no return. God this is going to be VERY PAINFUL for the American people to accept. But the longer we put it off the more soldiers who will die for a mistake.

[TayTay]

1. You know, you really don't have to change that many words

from that April 22, 1971 testimony:

We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism - and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong.

We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.

We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals.

We watched the United States falsification of body counts, in fact the glorification of body counts. We listened while month after month we were told the back of the enemy was about to break. We fought using weapons against "oriental human beings." We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater. We watched while men charged up hills because a general said that hill has to be taken, and after losing one platoon or two platoons they marched away to leave the hill for reoccupation by the North Vietnamese. We watched pride allow the most unimportant battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and we couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point, and so there were Hamburger Hills and Khe Sanhs and Hill 81s and Fire Base 6s, and so many others.

Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese.

Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war."

We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?....

Snip

We are also here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We are here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatric and so many others. Where are they now that we, the men whom they sent off to war, have returned? These are commanders who have deserted their troops, and there is no more serious crime in the law of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded.

The Marines say they never leave even their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They have left the real stuff of their reputation bleaching behind them in the sun in this country.

http://www.c-span.org/2004vote/jkerrytestimony.asp

Really, replace some of those hills taken with sites in Anbar province, flip the 'Oriental' people with brown Muslims, and it's just about the same. We had Hamadi, we had the destruction of Falluja and so forth. The hearts and minds are hopelessly lost. All that remains is the dying, which will go on no matter what the Baker Commission decides.

Out of Iraq. Sooner rather than later. Out of Iraq!

[ginnyinWI]

2. You can't win a war of insurgency in modern times, period.

Vietnam taught us that (well, some of us), and now it's being confirmed again. Since electronic communication in modern times especially. They are able to unify against their aggressors.

I think a summit would have worked maybe a year or two ago, but it seems to be completely FUBAR now, sadly.