Reply to Charlie's Screed

In the comment section of Justin Levine’s post I Couldn’t Vote Republican This Time…Literally, found on Patterico’s Pontifications a commenter took me to task for my post Cutting Our Nose Off to Spite Our Face. Commenter Charlie though didn’t attack my premise that we lost the election by somehow sending a message to the Republicans he complained that the war was predicated on a lie and the lives lost were in vain, and that is why the Republican's lost the election. Of course he can say it a lot better than I.

“Thunder run… what you dont care to notice it that the 2900 brothers and sisters died in vain because of George Bush who sent them into harms way needlessly…(funny how you dont even mention the wounded or Iraqis) . Better to admit to the tragedy that has happened than send another 2900 more to their deaths..that is if you really care about them and not just George Bush lying butt.. Maybe Republicans will realize how trully anti democratic and manipulative Bush and crew are. In any rational country he would have been impeached years ago for his reckless destruction of both America and the Republican party..

If Bush and crew had been open and honest in the lead up to this war and we had had a fair debate and not one in which right wing pro war talk show hosts had teamed up with the likes of Bush and Cheney and Rove to bulls**T the US into needlessly starting this war, we might have escaped this war and all its tragic implications for this country.. Well you bullied everyone into supporting this venture and now you can reap the rewards! Believe me the worst of the wars results are yet to come..sadly for us all.
Comment by charlie — 11/8/2006 @ 7:13 am”

My reply follows:

Charlie, first I don’t believe that my fellow brothers in arms were sent to war needlessly, unless of course you consider projecting freedom a needless cause. The tragedy is that the war is being won on the ground everyday but being thrown away by the media outlets and Democratic talking points. So is the war a total loss? Hardly, it isn’t going well for the enemy at all unless you consider that everyday your small “insurgency” is losing more men each day than the “occupiers” and your only real tactic is killing innocent civilians, for attention grabbing headline and in the hope that the local populace will give up their hope for a better life. No Charlie, the war in Iraq, one of several fronts in the Global War on Terror by the way, is going very well, if it wasn’t you wouldn’t be hearing from the men and women on the ground that they want to stay and finish what they started.

Next thing I’ll be hearing from you is that it was all an illegal war and all for oil but that once again is hardly the case. To remind you illegal means - against law: contravening a specific law, especially a criminal law or against rules: not allowed by the rules of something such as a game. Since only one person voted to not authorize the President to exercise his powers under the War Act it can hardly be considered illegal what we are doing in Iraq under US law. On the contrary, 21 other countries agree with our position and sent troops to assist with the invasion and subsequent re-building in Iraq and 70 countries have supported us in efforts around the world to combat terror. Furthermore, it is not a War for Oil, for a war for oil would look a lot different. To quote Bill Whittle, on what a war for oil would have looked like:

“US troops would have sped to the oilfields with everything we had. Everything we had. Then, secure convoy routes would have been established to the nearest port – probably Basra – and the US Navy would essentially line the entire gulf with wall-to-wall warships in order to ensure the safe passage of US-flagged tankers into and out of the region.

There would have been no overland campaign – what for? – And no fight for Baghdad. Fallujah and Mosul and all those other trouble spots would never even see an American boot. Why? No oil there. The US Military would do what it is extraordinarily well-trained to do: take and hold a very limited area, and supply secure convoys to and from this limited area on an ongoing basis. Saddam could have stayed if he wanted: probably would have saved us a lot of trouble, and the whole thing would have become a sort of super no-fly zone over the oil fields, ports and convoy routes, and the devil take the rest of it. Sadr City IED deaths? Please. What the f**k does Sadr City have that we need?

No Charlie, your argument does not hold up under scrutiny.

Now about your insistence on Bush somehow lying to get us involved in war, might I remind you that the Democratic leaders that are now insisting that they were lied to saw the exact same intelligence reports that the White House did and came to the same conclusion; Saddam was a threat and needed to be removed. In point of fact, the New York Times reported on Monday that the Iraqi Documents that have been released by the Intelligence Community proved that Saddam was within a year of having a nuclear weapon in 2003, in that sense the White House saved the US from facing a madman with a nuclear weapon.

So if Bush lied to get us into the war in Iraq and the Democratic leaders saw the same intelligence reports and came to the same conclusion who is the village idiot? He can’t be some all powerful being that can sway intelligent people to do his bidding, while at the same time being a complete and utter fool.

The problem you present when you state that the US was tricked “into needlessly starting this war, we might have escaped this war and all its tragic implications for this country,” is that you believe the only option was to not fight at all, and my position it was better to fight now and not latter. I am going to have to agree with you on one statement you’ve made, I too believe the worst of this war is yet too come, especially if we pull out and leave a major power vacuum in Iraq before we finish the job.