Skip to main content

Praising the non-existent victory ...

... is something that fauxLibertarian Republican is all about these days.

Based on two MSM news reports [one ABC, one NPR], Eric Dondero has declared the so-called war on terror to be essentially won in Iraq and Afghanistan, while chiding the left-wing libertarian media for ignoring the story.

The problem, as usual, is that Eric has his facts ... wrong.

If the war in Iraq had been essentially won, then it would behoove somebody to explain why Generals Petraeus and Odierno think that we cannot safely get out of the country:

Petraeus, Gates, and Odierno had hoped to sell Obama on a plan that they formulated in the final months of the Bush administration that aimed at getting around a key provision of the U.S.-Iraqi withdrawal agreement signed envisioned re-categorizing large numbers of combat troops as support troops. That subterfuge was by the United States last November while ostensibly allowing Obama to deliver on his campaign promise....

The opening argument by the Petraeus-Odierno faction against Obama's withdrawal policy was revealed the evening of the Jan. 21 meeting when retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, one of the authors of the Bush troop surge policy and a close political ally and mentor of Gen. Petraeus, appeared on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer to comment on Obama's pledge on Iraq combat troop withdrawal.

Keane, who had certainly been briefed by Petraeus on the outcome of the Oval Office meeting, argued that implementing such a withdrawal of combat troops would "increase the risk rather dramatically over the 16 months." He asserted that it would jeopardize the "stable political situation in Iraq" and called that risk "not acceptable."...

Keane, the Army vice-chief of staff from 1999 to 2003, has ties to a network of active and retired four-star Army generals, and since Obama's Jan. 21 order on the 16-month withdrawal plan, some of the retired four-star generals in that network have begun discussing a campaign to blame Obama's troop withdrawal from Iraq for the ultimate collapse of the political "stability" that they expect to follow U.S. withdrawal, according to a military source familiar with the network's plans.


As for Eric's little NPR source on the supposed devastation of Al Qaeda in Pakistan [when, by the way, Eric, did NPR become a relevant source for military commentary--when they started agreeing with you?], it is belied by that far less credible military source--the Pentagon:

Meanwhile, the Pentagon released a long-awaited study Monday describing crumbling security and a peak in violence in Afghanistan in spring and summer of 2008.


You see, the problem in Afghanistan and Pakistan is no longer merely Al Qaeda. The problem is that our massive military intervention has failed to crush the Taliban (SecDef Gates himself sees multiple years ahead and the probable need for negotiations with the Taliban--not something you do with an enemy on the verge of being wiped out), we have nearly reached a decision to stop supporting Harmid Karzai (which is driving him into the arms of India and Iran); and we have completed the de-stabilization of Pakistan, helping the Indian sub-continent lurch along toward yet another war over Kashmir and other unresolved issues.

If you actually read, Eric, you can find the information here, here, here, and here.

Sorry if these articles use actual data and that makes your head explode, Eric.

The reason that actual libertarian blogs aren't covering the so-called victories in Iraq and Afghanistan is simple: they haven't happened.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Logic and reason are for pointy-headed intellectuals who don't understand how REAL AMERICANS feel about facts and truth.
Anonymous said…
Guy's like this is the reason your party will never be taken seriously.
bint alshamsa said…
Anyone who takes a serious look at the culture of Afghanistan can easily see why it's been so impossible for us to conquer. The people's tribal ties are stronger than their national ties to one another. The place is a hodge podge of languages. They are fiercely independent and take great pride in the fact that outsiders have never been able to conquer them.

Popular posts from this blog

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw

With apologies to Hube: dopey WNJ comments of the week

(Well, Hube, at least I'm pulling out Facebook comments and not poaching on your preserve in the Letters.) You will all remember the case this week of the photo of the young man posing with the .22LR squirrel rifle that his Dad got him for his birthday with resulted in Family Services and the local police attempting to search his house.  The story itself is a travesty since neither the father nor the boy had done anything remotely illegal (and check out the picture for how careful the son is being not to have his finger inside the trigger guard when the photo was taken). But the incident is chiefly important for revealing in the Comments Section--within Delaware--the fact that many backers of "common sense gun laws" really do have the elimination of 2nd Amendment rights and eventual outright confiscation of all privately held firearms as their objective: Let's run that by again: Elliot Jacobson says, This instance is not a case of a father bonding with h

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?