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Posted by: revtrent

From Rich Lowry, the editor of the National Review.

You know, that libral rag of a magazine founded by William F.Buckley, who was a wicked commie!


15 August 2006
Bush’s Vietnam?
For the past 30 years, left-right debate over America’s wars has traveled a well-worn rut. The Left says whatever war is in question is “another Vietnam,” while the Right denies it. After three decades of being serially wrong, in the Iraq war liberals might be making their first-ever correct diagnosis.

In Iraq, as in Vietnam, we face a vicious insurgency that has worn down the will of the American public. In Iraq, as in Vietnam, we have failed to cut off the enemy from re-supply. In Iraq, as in Vietnam, we have had ever-shifting military strategies. In Iraq, as in Vietnam, we have had trouble building effective, clean governmental institutions in the soil of an alien culture. Most importantly, in Iraq, as in Vietnam, we face the prospect of defeat.

The consequences of that defeat would be remarkably similar to those in the wake of Vietnam. The prestige of the U.S. government would sink around the world, emboldening our enemies and creating a period of American doubt and retreat. A humanitarian catastrophe would likely befall Iraq, just as it did Vietnam. The only significant difference is that in Iraq, radical Islamists harbor ambitions to come to our shores and kill Americans, whereas the Viet Cong never wanted to follow us home.

The American domestic political scene already has the hallmarks of Vietnam redux. The Democrats are waging an intraparty civil war to marginalize supporters of the war, and they revile President Bush as much as they did President Nixon. Republicans, on the other hand, are hoping that the Democrats lurch too far in their dovishness and will, once again, discredit themselves on national security for a generation.

The paradox is that Republicans are seeking to win the midterm elections on national security at the same time they are losing, or at least not obviously winning, a major war. This can’t help but hurt the GOP, no matter how much weakness and incoherence there is among the Ned Lamont Democrats.

The two parties have clashing imperatives in the Iraq debate. The Democrats want to wage a fight over the war in retrospect, emphasizing Bush administration missteps that have become a matter of conventional wisdom, while declining to make any positive prescriptions that might divide their party or expose unpopular positions (e.g., an immediate pullout). The Republicans have to fight in prospect, avoiding the losing debate over the past while convincing people they have a plausible strategy for success and the Democrats have none.

But what is that strategy? President Bush sometimes seems not to realize that having a fierce determination to see things through is only the precondition for a winning strategy. For too long, his administration has seemed content to do the bare minimum in Iraq, hoping to hold things together just enough to allow troop drawdowns that justify the administration’s assurances of progress. This hasn’t worked, since the violence in Iraq has belied the rhetoric of progress and prevented any reduction in troops. Bush would be much better served by forthrightly acknowledging Iraq’s distressing circumstances and backing an all-out push to secure Baghdad even if it takes thousands more American troops in the country.

For there is one other similarity with Vietnam that should be avoided — the aching sense that not everything was done to win the war. By the end of Vietnam, we had essentially beaten the insurgency and could have helped the South Vietnamese hold off the conventional invasion of the North, if we hadn’t given up. In Iraq, too, we have scored some successes against the Sunni insurgency, but the insurgents have managed to create a new and different threat by stoking a budding civil war.

It is not too late to tamp down that militia-directed violence, which hasn’t yet taken on an uncontrollable life of its own. But the clock is ticking, toward the hour when we will indeed suffer another Vietnam.


Well how about that?
This guy must be a "left-wing dickhead", right MACOP?
Someone should tell him that he should "try being a little friggin patriotic", right CHROMECOLT357?
Perhaps he should "join the church group protesting at the veteran's funerals", right, KWFLATBED?

Bite me.

Almost everything about this war is a disgrace.

From the way leadership is forcing our guys to fight it, to our alleged plan for "victory".

As always, keep our troops in your prayers.

But tonight, pray that those in Washington will soon realize the quagmire at hand and the single solution for it; immediate and total withdrawl.

-Trent

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Posted by: Wolfman

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Posted by: kwflatbed

Rev Trent your talking out of your ass again !!

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Posted by: Irish Wampanoag

BAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAA

REV you must be a born again! Born again from jack asses

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Posted by: kwflatbed

Rev Trent take Notice a true Hero

Slain Soldier Remembered As Hero

Funeral Held For Clint Storey


ENID, Okla. -- This northwestern Oklahoma town long has been military-friendly -- thanks in good part to nearby Vance Air Force Base -- so when locals buried one of their own war dead Wednesday, they made sure to let Army Staff Sgt. Clint Storey's family know how they felt.

Dozens of U.S. flags -- held by veterans, members of a motorcycle gang and young children, among others -- lined the streets around Central Christian Church, where funeral services for Storey were held. Another flag hung high above the street in front of the building, held by a fire truck's ladder.

More flags waved at Enid Cemetery, where a plot and headstone were donated for Storey, 30, who died Aug. 4 after a roadside bomb blast in Ramadi, Iraq. About 100 people held flags as family and friends gathered around Storey's casket at the cemetery, where he was buried with full military honors.

That support didn't escape the notice of Storey's mother, Carol Inherst.

"You are an American hero and an Oklahoman," Inherst wrote in a letter to her son that was read during the service, "and I wish you could see your hometown of Enid."

Storey's wife, Melissa Storey, who lives in Palmer, Mass., attended the funeral. She and Inherst had disagreed about where he should be buried. His wife said earlier that he had wanted to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, but Inherst had said her son signed military papers before he deployed overseas that left her in charge of his remains.

Army Chaplain Maj. Martha A. Carson praised Storey and other soldiers in Iraq for their bravery and compared them to the shepherd described in Psalm 23 in the Bible.

"Staff Sergeant Storey decided to go beyond his backyard, put on a uniform and fight the enemies of freedom," Carson said.

"He was a man in uniform who was willing to go out and do what others cannot, or will not, do."

Storey joined the military in 1997 and was an Army recruiter for three years in Los Angeles before being stationed in Germany and, eventually, Iraq.

Melissa Storey was presented with the folded flag that had laid atop her husband's casket. Military officials then presented another folded flag to Inherst, who at the cemetery sat across her son's casket from her daughter-in-law.

The Storeys had a 4-year-old daughter and Melissa Storey is pregnant with the couple's second child. She is due to give birth in February.

A memorial service for Clint Storey will be held in Massachusetts on Aug. 26 in Palmer.



Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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