Exiting Iraq... Buckley

[Bigmack]

Are the Repubs looking for a way out... graceful or not? Worried about having enough troops for Iran? The freepers are surprisingly accepting... see below.
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Exiting Iraq : At what point is our job done? National Review May 06, 2005

It is time to ponder the strategic impact of the casualty figures. Those that are relevant to this analysis are widely familiar. The U.S. has lost approximately 1,500 dead in military action and 10,000 wounded, and we continue to lose, dead, about 50 soldiers every month. The Iraqis (using loose counts) die and are wounded at about ten times the U.S. rate. Moreover, the Iraqi deaths have increased substantially since the national election in January.

We are entitled to say to ourselves: If the bloodletting is to go on, it can do so without our involvement in it.

The indecisive course of affairs keeps us from saying with any confidence that Iraqi security forces are now capable of maintaining a peace. Some will reason that the impulse to kill will wither the day the last American embarks for home. But it is by no means safe to conclude that if U.S. troops withdrew tomorrow, killings in Iraq would end.

It is an Iraqi responsibility to move on to wherever Iraq intends to go. Our job depends heavily on being done when we declare it to have been done, not by the legerdemain proposed thirty years to get us out of Vietnam, but by reasonable talk about reasonable but limited commitments to Iraqi reform.

http://www.nationalreview.com/buckley/wfb200505061240.asp
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Freepville responds:

To: strategofr
I have to agree. Though we can't pull out everything, we need to start phasing out. Iran is heating up and countries all over sense we're stretched thin (this is not helped by the traitorous MSM).

Trouble is, the violence is still pretty high in Iraq despite the progress and even if we pull a few out that might embolden the terrorists to destabilize more. Not so great. This is a delicate time of a fledgling democracy.
4 posted on 05/07/2005 9:31:46 PM PDT by VictoryGal (Never give up, never surrender!)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1398846/posts

[GetTheRightVote]

1. Those people are just and simply idiots, it is time to leave & long over

due in fact, Has this country not had enough of killing innocents, and being considered war criminals for our act of war against a much weaker nation...... we need to start hanging our heads in deep shame.

:kick:

[Journeyman]

2. If the freerepublic belief is we need to phase out because Iran is heating

from where do they expect us to stage an attack?

Sheer madness. Military adventurism without a basis in reality. . . or a base on solid ground. And these are the twits who claim to know and understand the military mind.

[wtmusic]

5. Not to mention that maybe it's the right thing to do

ok, we'll let them have their own country (if it's expedient for us) :eyes:

[jimshoes]

15. The nintendo warriors at fr

are so used to pressing restart after getting blown to bits playing shoot em' ups on their x-boxes their ability to think in real life and death terms has been compromised to the extent that they cannot conceive of death as being final and irreversible. In other words, their thinking has become irrational and prone to delusions induced by wearing red, white and blue glasses and are susceptible to suggestion from right wing radio hatemongers. In short they are nuts.

[Gloria]

3. "It is an Iraqi responsibility to move on to wherever Iraq intends to go."

No accountablilty for what Bush has perpetrated, of course........

[yorkiemommie1]

7. nope not at all

after all it isn't about PNAC and oil <sarcasm off>

[The_Casual_Observer]

4. It's as if they are pretending that it isn't about the oil or something

Buckley is so full of shit it is running out of his ears nose and throat.
He knows god damned well that the wh junta is willing to sustain these losses and more in order to control the oil in Iraq. Nobody is leaving that place and they will send more storm troopers as they see fit.

[leftchick]

9. thank you for sayng just what I felt about buckley.

And it is 1600 dead. What an ass! I don't know the point of this article really. Perhaps he is trying to buy some time for bushco**.
They have no intention of going anywhere.

[kenny blankenship]

6. Old Bitchley wants to cut'n'run from Iraq, does he?

But without the "legerdemain" that marked our withdrawal from SE Asia?

Interesting; I only learned about it from books and news clips but it has been my impression that people LIKE HIM were the very reason any "legerdemain" was required from Johnson or Nixon to extricate our national posteriors from the Indochinese soup, as it were.

I guess 8 decades is about the average time it takes for a conservative to finally learn something basic about reality.

[Neshanic]

8. He's leaned so far back in his chair his brain has shut down.

We are not going anywhere. We are staying put. That's the plan. Did he not get the memo? What was that big money vote just for? You do not build a billion dollar embassy there, unless it's because the roof can hold 100 helicopters that people can dangle from when we pull a Vietnam scram.

What an old freak he is. He should haul his delusional ass over there and entertain the troops. They would find him hilarious.

[hadrons]

10. "we're stretched thin (this is not helped by the traitorous MSM)."

other than cheering the war before it started, how does this fool strategofr explain that comment???

[Roland99]

11. His final answer is right but for all the wrong reasons

Seems Buckley believes everything the CPA and our government have said re: life in Iraq.

[Uncle Roy]

12. We never had an honest or rational discussion of why should go into Iraq

so it's pretty hard to have an honest or rational discussion of when we should leave. We have no basis for being there at all. This is the dilemma the Freepers face when they try to discuss an "exit strategy". Our "entrance strategy" was bogus, but they can't bring themselves to say that.

Should we leave when our "mission" is "accomplished"? What "mission"? All we ever got was a pack of lies. Not "a failure of intelligence", which might be viewed as accidental. Lies are intentional. They were transparently fraudulent from the very beginning, but no one was willing to say the Emperor was naked. In fact he's been mooning us.

And who pays the price for this? Not us. We're already starting to get a little bored by it all. Fidgetty, in need of distraction.

Pass the remote.

[jazzjunkysue]

14. There it is.

Just walk away from the oil. You first.

[ray of light]

13. "This is not helped by the traitorous MSN!"?

OMG!!! They still blame everyone but the real CULPRIT--their own NEFARIOUS leaders!

Bush does no wrong, Republicans do no wrong...they just play the blame game.

Face it boys at the Freeper braindead land...your Leader is a crook, his administration doesn't know their head from their ----, and the republicans in congress have NO MORALS.

Time to accept responsibilities--Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar? (exchange it from cookies to oil...) Bush and the Neocons stole the cookies from the cookie jar.

[MichiganVote]

16. The Bush US has no intention of leaving Iraq

Phasing out means fewer reports of casualties

Phasing out means more derision for those who object to this military action - not less

Phasing out means marginalizing the costs of every dime given to contractors who do very little for the money

You can't destabilize what is not stable. Iraq is not stable and will not be until another, perhaps more dictatorial regime, is again in place. The Iraqi's themselves are at a crossroads and will remain that way for at least ten years