BRAINSTORM PARTY: Respond to the latest GOP talking point.

[chaska]

Republicants are out there with a new one, and it's pretty good: "Do you want us to win (in Iraq)?"

This is a chance to do something constructive for the party. So let's hear your response to this. It doesn't have to tie us in knots if we can work with it a bit before we're confronted with the question.

I have a half dozen or so responses that I'll interject for the next hour or two to keep this going a while, but let's hear how you would deal with this.

I plan to send this thread (or perhaps a distillation thereof) to various powers-that-be in the party. I'm not letting O'Reilly's sorry ass (and his ilk) bend us over on this shit.

...GO!

[ret5hd]

1. I want the Iraqi people to win.

[Old and In the Way]

2. Sure, I also want a million dollars and be 21 again, too!

We can't "win", all we can do is define the magnitude of our losses.

[roguenkatz]

3. or...

should we keep on doing what we have been doing already?

[gilpo]

4. That war is already lost

[johnaries]

5. Define "win".

Democracy in Iraq? Our military can't do that, only the Iraqi people can bring Democracy to Iraq.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

6. Ask them what they mean by 'win'

Do we use the number of dead people or the number of barrels of oil?

No one will 'win' this occupation.

[Greybnk48]

7. Define "win."

[Greybnk48]

9. ooooh. I see great minds think alike!!

[HereSince1628]

8. Meme=SURELY YOU JEST--BUSH ALREADY LOST IRAQ.

There's no point in getting any deeper into it.

BUT, Bush is an addict. And addictive personalities have certain dangerous propensities.

Like...I lost the 17th straight hand of poker. So having bet and lost paycheck, my savings account, my car, my wedding ring, my children's college fund, I now MUST ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY BET THE HOUSE and my mother's grave plot.

This is a real psychological disorder known as the SUNK-COST EFFECT. It is a common symptom of addictive gamblers. IT RUINS THEIR LIVES. And BUSH is now up to betting the lives of soldiers and the future of our Country.

[Bok_Tukalo]

10. Do you want us to win (in Iraq)?

Yes.

[chaska]

11. That's like asking me if I want to aid and abet a crime.

[hwmnbn]

14. oooh! I like this one....

:thumbsup:

[Nite Owl]

12. This isn't our war, it's theirs

Ask them where their winning strategy is because it's obvious that more of the same is losing us troops and money each day. Stay the course is not a winning strategy.

[porphyrian]

13. No. If you respond to them, they are controlling the conversation.

Make them respond to our talking points. It's not like we don't have any.

[chaska]

25. Valid point. But you've been asked, how do you respond? You can...

of course go on the offensive, or change the subject, or whatever. As long as it's effective.

[Armstead]

15. Yes. That's why...

I want to see the idiots replaced who made the mistake of starting this mess and who continue to make it worse.

[personman]

16. How many dead american soldiers is a win?

Now I personally don't think the american soldiers lives are more important then the innocent iraqi civilians lives, but I'm wording it to hurt the nationalists.

If we lose 90% (or 5% or 1% or 0.25) of our population in a war, but vanquish our enemy, would that be a win?

Not to me.

"Win" is sports mentality bullshit. There is no winning in war, sometimes you lose less.

Perhaps they can tell us why we DESERVE to win this war of aggression? When every reason we went in was a lie. These people are arrogant and entitled enough, the question of "deserve" probably never entered their minds.

Edit: Maybe they decided 5000 names would look better on the war memorial then 3000, once we build it?

[chaska]

17. The only way to win a war is to prevent war.

[Opusnone]

18. We have already WON!

Too easy.

We removed Hussein and his sons from power and made Iraq a Democratic nation in the middle east.
It is now up to them and their neighbors to behave and sell us the oil.

If we secure our own borders and remain vigilant we have no need to fear terrorism.

If multinational corporations are worried about terror, let them finance and field their own armies.

[OnionPatch]

34. I always use this one, too.

We already won. Saddam is out of power. There are no weapons of mass destruction. Time to pack up and go home! Iraqis will have to work it out themselves and start running their own country. It seems pretty clear to me that the only reason we're still there is so the oil companies can keep taking Iraqi oil.

[Lil Red]

19. Nobody wins in war.

The best we can hope for is to minimize our losses.
:hide:

[Uncle Joe]

20. Do you want us to win in America?

We have major problems with our own democracy, how on earth can we export what we can't live up to here at home?

Bush and the neocons have taken us back to a pre-1776 if not a pre-Magna Carta mindset.

[w4rma]

21. Obviously it hasn't been a very good talking point, since Dems *expanded* our lead.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15557264/site/newsweek
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2926965

[savemefromdumbya]

22. Um, we want to CLEAR UP THE MESS THAT BUSH MADE in Iraq

send in the UN to Iraq clean up Bush's mess

use our troops more wisely for homeland security and national disasters.

[chaska]

23. "What is this, a football game? We're talking about people's lives here. To...

trivialize this to that degree is despicable."

[kenny blankenship]

24. How out of touch with sanity do you have to be

to believe we have any chance left of "winning"--whatever the hell that is--in Iraq? If we are charitable and interpret a "win" as the creation of a stable democracy which is not despotic towards its minorities, which can defend/control its own territory and which will be aligned toward the United States instead of toward its close neighbor Iran, then only a fool or a mental patient could assert that a win is possible. Iraq is already lost to us.

Our stated political objective of replacing the dictatorship there with a pluralist democratic republic was destroyed in the first year of the occupation by mass round ups of Sunni men without any known connection to the insurgency and holding them in Abu Ghraib where they were mistreated, tortured in some cases and taught to hate Americans. Thousands of ordinary Sunni men were mixed together with clandestine Ba'athist insurgents, former Army soldiers, and religious extremists under barbarous conditions GUARANTEED to radicalize the most indifferent and apolitical persons. We brewed the Sunni insurgency ourselves in Abu Ghraib. That's what should be engraved on the headstone of the failed American Invasion of Iraq. We destroyed our chances ourselves. We created anarchy by disbanding the police and the Army and we reacted to the anarchy by piling on the repression like a colonial occupier, engendering an armed resistance. The resistance can't dislodge us outright, but it can make the country ungovernable preventing any "return to normalcy"--and that's usually the way successful insurgencies go. They win by surviving and not giving up. Eventually the foreign occupier will leave.

But in a deeper sense the goal (again, I'm referring only to the publicly stated purposes and justification for our intervention in Iraq, not the real ulterior motives of controlling the world's oil patch) of bringing democracy to Iraq was doomed from the start--it was a failure before it even started. Democracy means majority control, but in Iraq the majority would define itself not by class allegiances but by religious and tribal identifications. That majority had been oppressed by the previous regime which represented the minority Sunni population. That minority's elite status was not just the function of recent history under Saddam or even the history of the Ba'athist party in Iraq, but stretches back centuries. It is a relic of Turkic Sunni empire. The grudge of the Shia majority isn't just a simple one of an outgroup given the short end of the stick for a longtime. It's not something easily overcome by forgetting: for the spiritual center of all Shia Islam is in Iraq, not in Iran a country where a Shia majority already holds sway. In Iraq, the Shia majority were kept down in the very homeland of their sect. The antiquity of this kind of grudge makes it deceptive. People on different sides of this fault-line can get along tolerably well together under a stable regime, even if it is unfair. However, once something comes along to activate the grudge, to put the old objects of contention into play again, a cycle of violence may start and spiral downwards without pause until neighbor slaughters neighbor. By proposing to democratize Iraq, American meddlers activated this ancient hostility. Sunnis are 20% of Iraq. Shia are 60%. There are three times as many Shia as Sunni, and the other group (Kurds) hated the Sunni at the outset of our occupation even more actively than the Shia did. Coalititon of Kurds with Sunnis to protect their rights as minority groups is what one would naturally predict, however Kurds were engaged in a long running armed struggle to separate from Iraq, and the Sunni Arab dictatorship had butchered Kurdish populations (Saddam will be executed for having gassed Kurdish villages) : the need for coalition between these two groups was far outweighed by the bad blood between them. Making matters worse for the prospect of a peaceful democratic post-war future, Iraqi oil deposits are located away from the Sunni areas. The oil is mostly in the Shia south (and most of the rest is in the Kurdish north) which is to say: the wealth of the nation is drawn from its poorest and least empowered regions. "Democracy" in Iraq would result in a simple flipping of the dominant-subjugated group relationship along straight sectarian lines. The Shia would predictably feel doubly justified--religiously and economically--in asserting their absolute dominance over the country. However, since the Iraqi Army had previously been dominated by the Sunni, a vicious civil war between these two groups was, as said already, the highly predictable outcome of the Neo-Con project from Iraq--predictable from the day the plan to democratize Iraq was announced. It would take miracles to avoid it even if all details of the occupation, reconstruction, and transition back to Iraqi sovereignty were handled optimally by the Bushlerite Idiocracy.

[Vorta]

26. Will gasoline go to 99¢ per gallon?

[riderinthestorm]

27. By the measures laid down by the rethugs we've already "won"

on the objectives they initally laid out.

1. We made sure there were no WMDs in Iraq.
2. We removed a brutal dictator (Saddam Hussein)
3. We gave the Iraqis a chance to foster their own democracy.

Followed with:
We can't force Iraq into becoming a democratic state. They will have to do that themselves. We could only give them the opportunity. If they screw it up (and it's screwed up), then it's time to let them do so.

By the way, this isn't my response: this was David Brooks' response last night on Lehrer.

He was really blunt that the rethugs need to be removed from power, and we need to get out of Iraq. Blew me away.

[Opusnone]

28. That, of course, is the correct way to respond to them

Repuke talking points are easy to rebut, and should be every morning by a Democratic clearinghouse, yet we have no such place.
Perhaps DU?

[chaska]

29. With over a half-million dead, I'm sorry, there will be no winners.

[HotHoneyBlond]

30. NEW DEMOCRATIC IDEA TO WIN ALL FUTURE WARS

I have strong opinions as to why we are loosing in Iraq, but have also provided a suggestion to correct it in future wars since repukes are always saying we have no ideas of our own.

I get real upset in hearing this from repukes because they want us to provide them with a stratgy to win because they have not and this is their only defense. My new platform ideas for Democrats are posted in one of my other bloggers for all to read, but are separated by subject so be sure you are reading, "Inside the mind of a killer" for my thoughts on the war and new ideas to win.

If you support my idea spread the word among Dems because I am sick of hearing Dems have no ideas of our own to win wars or anything else.
http://journals.aol.com/hothoneyblond/politics-and-solutions/

[StellaBlue]

31. Define "win" OR "Do you mean win like we did in Vietnam?" OR

"Do you? If so, go enlist. Here's a form!"

OR

"How do you win an occupation?"

OR

"Are you calling the president a liar? Cause he told me three years ago that the mission was accomplished!"

OR

"Are you fucking stupid?"



Let em just try to talk to me (they rarely do). I can knock em down REAL fast. Let me on TV.

[randome]

32. How about...

"This is the 2nd war Republicans have lost."

[0rganism]

33. what's left for us to win? Do they have a lotto?

Truth is, we lost in Iraq the day we invaded. Heck, the division of force and lack of focus cost us in Afghanistan, too, the one place in the region where a firm occupation could potentially have created lasting positive change. But it's even worse for the locals -- the Iraqis lost Iraq.

If the GOP wants to call that "winning", let them run with it. I don't think Americans are buying that shit anymore.

[chaska]

35. It's more important to do what's right than to win.

[chaska]

36. We were deceived into this and are wrong to be there. We need to get out and make amends.

[demwing]

37. Didn't Bush say we already won? "Mission Accomplished" and all that?

How many way do the republicans want it?

[Greyhound]

38. Answer a question with a question. "What is the definition of 'winning'"? n/t

[applegrove]

39. I want negotiations to work. And they don't with the USA there.

[roseBudd]

40. I want a strategy and as Powell pointed out there must be an exit strategy

[Bucky]

41. How many troops have to die before you see it's not winnable?

Of course no one is going to seriously argue with that kind of statement. It's like admitting that everyone who'd died since March 2003 (or at least since Saddam Hussein was caught) died in vain.

[chaska]

42. You tell me why we're there, and I'll tell you if we should prevail.

[chaska]

43. When u were wrong 2 begin with the question becomes not 'do you want to win?' but 'should you win?'

[seabeyond]

44. i would like world peace. i would like for no one to go hungry..... SO

doesnt mean i am going to get it cause i "want" something. the adults know we dont get ALL we want,.... so then what

[chaska]

45. If you think it's even possible to win, you, friend, are seriously deluded.

[chaska]

46. Thanks, everybody. We got some great ones here. I gotta go, but keep posting.

[BurtWorm]

47. To anyone who asks that to my face, after straightening myself up from being doubled over laughing,

I would have to ask, "What would 'winning' in Iraq look like, and how, given reality and the physical laws of nature and whatnot, would that be accomplished?"

[gulliver]

48. Get rid of the Republicans and maybe there is a chance.

3.5 years of ceaseless, incompetent, bloody, expensive failure.