jujuman13
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Jun 1, 2006
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Not entirely sure that this belongs here, but cannot decoide where else to place it.
Link
One last push and thats you finished in Iraq, Mr President - Sunday Times - Times Online
Quote
(I have not heard one remotely plausible game plan for the “Battle of the Surge”. Leaks have indicated that commanders on the ground are strongly opposed to giving the enemy yet more targets. Pentagon chiefs are equally opposed to the cost in men and money of a transient boost in control on the ground. American public opinion and Congress are overwhelmingly against the plan, which Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator, calls “Alice in Wonderland”.)
Quote
(Leaders contemplating defeat far from the front are always tempted to order “one last push”. Thus did Hitler order the battle of the bulge, Nixon the bombing of Cambodia and Reagan the blasting of the Shouf to cover his retreat from Lebanon. A general must pretend to victory even in the jaws of defeat, or his soldiers will not fight. America has 1m men under arms. Surely they are not to be beaten by a few hundred guerrillas in the suburbs of Baghdad? So Bush will tell them to make one last heave, however pointless. He does not want to share his father’s legacy of cutting and running from Iraq.)
Quote
(Such Iraqi government as exists under Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, is unable to enforce any law or order any army. For Washington and London to tell him to “bring his militias to heel” is like telling a junior cop to arrest Al Capone.)
Quote
(More US troops in Baghdad will almost certainly spend their time defending surviving Sunni enclaves from Shi’ite ethnic cleansing now pushing west across Baghdad, supported by semi-official Madhist and other death squads. Of all ironies none will be more savage than that US soldiers should lose their lives protecting Sunni Ba’athists from a murderous onslaught by Shi’ite irregulars in league with the police and army.)
Quote
(If it comes to either state of affairs, no outsiders, regional or global, should meddle. Iraq’s next chapter must be written by Iraqis alone. Outsiders have made this country a byword for arrogant and incompetent interventionism. The West’s 2003 assault on Iraq was unprovoked and justified by no overriding threat to western interests. It was a ghastly, gigantic whim, one to which the British government fully subscribed.)
But can President Bush see this, the answer is apparently not.
Link
One last push and thats you finished in Iraq, Mr President - Sunday Times - Times Online
Quote
(I have not heard one remotely plausible game plan for the “Battle of the Surge”. Leaks have indicated that commanders on the ground are strongly opposed to giving the enemy yet more targets. Pentagon chiefs are equally opposed to the cost in men and money of a transient boost in control on the ground. American public opinion and Congress are overwhelmingly against the plan, which Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator, calls “Alice in Wonderland”.)
Quote
(Leaders contemplating defeat far from the front are always tempted to order “one last push”. Thus did Hitler order the battle of the bulge, Nixon the bombing of Cambodia and Reagan the blasting of the Shouf to cover his retreat from Lebanon. A general must pretend to victory even in the jaws of defeat, or his soldiers will not fight. America has 1m men under arms. Surely they are not to be beaten by a few hundred guerrillas in the suburbs of Baghdad? So Bush will tell them to make one last heave, however pointless. He does not want to share his father’s legacy of cutting and running from Iraq.)
Quote
(Such Iraqi government as exists under Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, is unable to enforce any law or order any army. For Washington and London to tell him to “bring his militias to heel” is like telling a junior cop to arrest Al Capone.)
Quote
(More US troops in Baghdad will almost certainly spend their time defending surviving Sunni enclaves from Shi’ite ethnic cleansing now pushing west across Baghdad, supported by semi-official Madhist and other death squads. Of all ironies none will be more savage than that US soldiers should lose their lives protecting Sunni Ba’athists from a murderous onslaught by Shi’ite irregulars in league with the police and army.)
Quote
(If it comes to either state of affairs, no outsiders, regional or global, should meddle. Iraq’s next chapter must be written by Iraqis alone. Outsiders have made this country a byword for arrogant and incompetent interventionism. The West’s 2003 assault on Iraq was unprovoked and justified by no overriding threat to western interests. It was a ghastly, gigantic whim, one to which the British government fully subscribed.)
But can President Bush see this, the answer is apparently not.
