Boxer should have held up the pic with Maliki and Amedinajacket
Mr. Petraeus can you explain this picture? Especially the holding hands part? Were Iranian missles showering the Green Zone on this day?
by: gaspare @ Wed Apr 09, 2008 at 08:50
I heard Juan Cole on the radio a few days back, and he was remarkably charitable toward McCain's bottomless ignorance. He didn't say that McCain was clueless old coot, despite the fact it was lke asking Stephen Hawkins about Bart Simpson's science project. Regarding McCain's 100-year plans, he said something to the effect that McCain didn't seem to realize that Iraq wasn't Germany or Japan (after WWII). But, the more that I thought about it, the more I came to think that Juan was just a little bit off on this one point: Iraq is Germany--right at the beginning of the Thirty Years War.
The Thirty Years' War was fought between 1618 and 1648, principally on the territory of today's Germany, and involved most of the major European powers.[2] Beginning as a religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire, it gradually developed into a general war involving much of Europe, for reasons not necessarily related to religion.[3] The war marked the culmination of the France-Habsburg rivalry for pre-eminence in Europe, which led to further wars between France and the Habsburg powers.
The major impact of the Thirty Years' War, in which mercenary armies were extensively used, was the devastation of entire regions scavenged bare by the foraging armies. Episodes of widespread famine and disease devastated the population of the German states and, to a lesser extent, the Low Countries and Italy, while bankrupting many of the powers involved. The war may have lasted for 30 years, but the conflicts that triggered it continued unresolved for a much longer time. The war ended with the Treaty of Münster, a part of the wider Peace of Westphalia.
Over the course of the war, the population of the German states was reduced by about 30%;[4] in the territory of Brandenburg, the losses had amounted to half, while in some areas an estimated two-thirds of the population died. Germany's male population was reduced by almost half. The population of the Czech lands declined by a third. The Swedish armies alone destroyed 2,000 castles, 18,000 villages and 1,500 towns in Germany, one-third of all German towns.
The analogy is striking--fragmented country riddled with religious conflict plus surrounding neighbors, each it's own agenda=a generation plus of incredibly bloody civil war with 30% population loss. If you ask me, the Lancet study is pretty much right on track.
This is what stupid Hitler analogies gets you: total blindness to rather obvious historical precedents that are far more relevant to actual situation.
I wish someone would ask Petraeus and Crocker about that.
Of course, weighty historical analogies, no matter how valid, and how much they might save our ass, only speak to a certain segment of the population. Hence, the eminent common sense of gaspare's suggestion. If the Democrats had learned anything from the Republicans over the past 20-30 years, not just Boxer, but two or three other senators, and a similar number of representatives would have asked strikingly similar, though not identical questions requiring display of the same photo.
Amd then there is the question of supporting out troops, and how the Iraq war is destoying out military....
To me, it's remarkable that the Democrats don't harp continuously on what BushCo has done to our military, with aid and support of the GOP in Congress. Same as it ever was, the GOP that spent the 1990s falsely accusing Clinton of destroying the military is doing a rather brilliant job of same themselves. This is from a recently-published example:
International Herald Tribune
U.S. captains bear weight of Iraq strategy By Michael Kamber
Friday, March 21, 2008
JISR DIALA, Iraq: During the war in Iraq, young army and Marine captains have become American viceroys, officers with large sectors to run and near-autonomy to do it. In military parlance, they are the "ground-owners." In practice, they are power brokers.
"They give us a chunk of land and say, 'Fix it,' " said Captain Rich Thompson, 36, who controls an area east of Baghdad.
The Iraqis have learned that these captains, many still in their 20s, can call down devastating American firepower one day and approve multimillion-dollar projects the next. Some have become celebrities in their sectors, men whose names are known even to children.
Many in the military believe that these captains are the linchpins in the American strategy for success in Iraq, but as the war continues into its sixth year the military has been losing them in large numbers - at a time when it says it needs thousands more.
Most of these captains have extensive combat experience and are regarded as the military's future leaders. They're exactly the men the military most wants. But corporate America wants them too. And the hardships of repeated tours are taking their toll, tilting them back toward civilian life and possibly complicating the future course of the war.
"I have served my time; I've done two tours in Iraq," said Captain Kirkner Bailey, 26, of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment in Mosul.
"For the past three years of my life I have either been in Iraq or training to go to Iraq," he added. "I just know that there is more to life than this war, and my girlfriend, Shannon, and I are interested in finding out what that is."
"I can't speak to trends," he said. "But 8 of my 10 friends who are captains are leaving the army."
And Petraeus was the perfect person to ask about this:
General David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, said: "It is the captains who turn the 'big ideas' and broad guidance issued at high levels into specific actions geared to local circumstances. Captains plan and execute the operations that often prove the most important, at ground level, where gains are truly achieved in this type of endeavor."
As the war has worn on, many captains say, the nature of that work has changed. Petraeus's counterinsurgency doctrine is centered on relatively small groups of soldiers establishing outposts in communities and living among the Iraqis. The result is a war that has largely been transformed into a fight on the ground by the captains.
While captains can make much more money as civilians, that's not what's driving their exodus. Rather, they are leaving because of the stress-and, one can only assume, the perceived pointlessness-of shouldering a large part of the burden created by the top-down destruction of the military they are living through, a destruction that is driven in large part by the deployment in Iraq. The stress of every-other-year deployments overseas is bad enough. But when they are back in the US, they are dealing with the increasing burden of soldiers under their command, dealing with lives that are falling apart:
But only a day after he was pinned with his captain's bars in early March, Bailey in Mosul knew he would leave the army as soon as his deployment was over.
"We're leaders proven under fire," said Bailey. "Put me in the most stressful corporate board meeting and I'll laugh."
In 2007, the army authorized retention bonuses for captains of up to $35,000. But corporate recruiters have matched that, captains say. And most captains make a base pay of $4,000 to $5,000 a month in the military, a figure they can easily exceed in corporate America.
Even so, money is not the deciding factor in leaving the military, most captains say.
"Many of the brightest and most experienced captains of my generation are being driven out of the army by the prospect of a career filled with deployments every other year," said Captain Patrick Ryan, who added that he was certain to leave the army when his five-year commitment was done. "I think the army stands to lose a generation of battle-tested junior leaders."
Even "in the one-year time window between deployments, much of your time home is not really yours," Ryan added.
It is a sentiment echoed by many captains. "The pressures during the year at home are tremendous," said Captain David Sandoval, 35, commander of Company A, First Battalion, Eighth Infantry of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment.
There is constant training, new gear and technology to be mastered, new soldiers to fit into the units. And there is round-the-clock responsibility for the men under their command. Disintegrating marriages, financial problems, sick children and post-traumatic stress fall on their shoulders.
"We got back from our last tour and immediately there were rumors we were redeploying," said a captain who requested anonymity for fear of displeasing his superiors. "Some of these guys are 18, 19 years old. They'd just been through a year of combat. They went crazy. They started fighting, drinking, crashing cars."
Sandoval's company also had troubles upon returning home. "They're not all all right when they come home," he said. "There are domestic-violence problems. I'm part marriage counselor, part drug and alcohol counselor, part suicide-prevention counselor. It's an emotional roller coaster."
Today, here at Veterans for America as part of our Wounded Warrior Outreach Program, we are releasing two very important reports. In fact, we are delivering these reports to every Senator and House Member on Capitol Hill so that they can be better informed when General Petraeus testifies and when they weigh all elements of Iraq policy.
Our first new report - "The Consequences of Churning" - takes an in-depth, state-by-state look at the toll multiple deployments are taking on frontline Army units.
These units are going through high-intensity combat, are not getting adequate dwell time between tours, and are also being devastated by the fifteen month tours.
Our second new report -- "Weekend Warriors to Frontline Soldiers" -- examines the toll of repeated deployments on our National Guard, again breaking it down state-by-state.
Here we see that of the nearly 200,000 National Guard members that have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and almost half are returning with post-combat mental problems.
The problems of our troops are real and immediate, and they are getting worse. The Soldiers who are seeing the most combat are also being sent back to Iraq and Afghanistan the greatest number of times.
As part of our Wounded Warrior Outreach Program, we traveled to Fort Drum in New York State and saw, first-hand, the devastation that is happening right now. Devastation that gets worse with every tour, every deployment.
We are releasing these reports, and we have a simple message: enough is enough. The greatest threat to our military is the continued deployment of our troops under unfair conditions; it's as simple as that. As Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said, "The well is deep, but it is not infinite...People are tired."
The withdrawals must continue, our troops must come home, and we must be ready to help them.
We can expect a continued drumb-beat of irrational, delusional rhetoric from the Republicans throughout this election cycle. But "facts are stupic things," as Ronald Reagan infamously said. Perhaps that's why the facts just don't care about Rovian spin. And neither does the American public, apparently. It's time to end this war. It's time to support the troops, who are being held hostage by a gang of fanatics.
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