While Congress runs out the clock on President Bush’s Iraq War, some Vermont legislators hope to spark a state-by-state movement to quickly withdraw National Guard troops and stanch the flow of blood and treasure. On Jan. 30, state House members, soon followed by state senators, introduced legislation that called on Vermont’s Republican Gov. Jim Douglas to take “all necessary steps”… return to article
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Reader Comments (9)Page 1 of 1 pages“...there is no national security threat”
Wasn’t that the conventional wisdom pre-9/11?
9/11 Ñ That was when the World Trade Center was destroyed and several thousand people of various countries died.
It is hard to tell who is dumber these days Ñ the ones who got us into this mess or those who believe pulling out of Iraq will end the war.
We are there like it or not.
To complain about the cost in dollars ignores the cost so far in NYC and the potential cost of another such attack.
If anything the threat is greater now than pre-2001. Our borders are still not secure. The airport hassle gives an illusion that we have done something, but baggage is loaded uninspected by people from who knows where. Our food, toys, prescription drugs are less than 1% inspected Ñ no threat?
To pull out without a secure government and borders in Iraq would be a massive boost to the radical Moslems. While each person killed is to be mourned, those who willing gave their youth, their incomes and even their lives are about one fourth tthe number killed each year on our streets and highways.
The allied losses in WW2 (a shorter war) were over 400,000. If we had the attitude expressed in this article we would not be able to print such outrageous blather.
Wake up!
Posted by whattheheck on Mar 22, 2008 at 2:35 PM “So it’s worth asking why Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton remain so unwilling to alter their outdated and dogmatic views about the war. Both issued statements Monday denouncing Mr. Gates’s statement and the proposed pause in withdrawals; both stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that the changed situation in Iraq requires a rethinking of their plans for the rapid withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops. As Mr. Gates has recognized, to mechanically yank U.S. forces from Iraq according to a timetable inspired by American domestic politics, just when the troops appear to be succeeding, would be foolhardy as well as dangerous.”
So says the Washington Post, at least.
4000 killed in Iraq over 5 years, compared with ~ 42,000 x 5 = 210,000 highway deaths in 5 years. The latter being senseless and wholly without purpose, and the former being the cost of initiating a long overdue change in the middle east mindset, and the removal of a murderous, torturous dictator intent on fomenting terror and resuming WMD activities ASAP.
And if one actually reads the recent Pentagon report on Saddam’s links to Islamic terrorism and extremism, including yes, al Qaeda, that alone is cause to have taken action in Iraq.
Let’s get on board with the effort, people, instead of undermining it, especially at this hopeful yet fragile moment in time.
Posted by Natalie on Mar 24, 2008 at 4:53 AM As Natalie pointed out the Saddam connection is clear. The following URL summary gives the latest Pentagon report with info. from over 600,000 captured documents.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120631495290958169.html?mod=opinion_main_review_ _and_outlooks
Maybe we could just offer them Vermont.
Naw, they probably believe maple syrup is another decadent U.S. item.
I’ll bet there are still some Vermonters from the “Greatest Generation” who understand that no post 9/11 attacks here doesn’t mean the threat is gone. (And more than a few terrorists who would love to see troops be withdrawn prematurely.)
Posted by whattheheck on Mar 24, 2008 at 1:11 PM The willful mendacity of our dependably partisan media has certainly not served our nation well these past 6 years. Each and every opportunity to minimize threats and distort the true picture has been taken with palpable glee.
“NO IRAQ-QAEDA TIE”, screamed the big bold headlines upon the release of the 9/11 commission report, in a dishonest attempt to hide the fact that there were ties, just not official, “operational” ones. As if that would have been the kind that Saddam or Al Qaeda would have sought to forge. No matter, the public has been successfully indoctrinated into the belief that there were no ties whatsoever. And the dumb-ass Bush just lets it go.
Now to find out that the ties were indeed substantial and worthy of being disrupted.
Abu Ghraib front-paged for the world day after day, week after week, month after month. An incident not representative of our military as a whole, and one already having been corrected and under investigation. But no matter. The entire Arab world, along with large swaths of our own population, have been indoctrinated into believing our entire military is nothing but a bunch of torturous perverts.
Not to mention all the formerly secret surveillance tools compromised by the media under the guise of “shining the light”.
God help us if we ever really do have to fight a war again for our very survival. Let’s just hope a Democrat’s in office, like the last time.
Thanks WTH, for that WSJ article.
And here’s mine again hopefully in a more clickable form this time.
Posted by Natalie on Mar 24, 2008 at 2:32 PM Only $3 million dollars from DC for Vermont’s national guard?
Is it true that using National Guardsmen is 70% cheaper for the administration than using regular army?
It sounds like Bush & Cheney are getting a lot of Vermont boys’ blood at bargain basement rates and to no good purpose!
4,000 dead? That’s more than 9/11 and they don’t need to bother looking for us!
How about the Iraqi dead? Somewhere between 80,000 and 300,000 dead? Maybe even a million? How many of those were Iraqi army? Not that many? Civilians? Women? Children?
That doesn’t even begin to count the numbers of widows and orphans in a country where the internal services are still a shambles!
There’s no way to count the number of enemies that we now have that we never would have had otherwise, but I would wager that it’s the biggest number of all! That does a lot for “Homeland Security”, doesn’t it?
Yeah, I would say that Vermont has the right idea!
>^.K!
Posted by Poeticat on Mar 24, 2008 at 5:35 PM One tragic irony of the Iraq war and the phenomenon of Al Qaeda and other extremists joining the battle there has been a high profile demonstration to the world, the Muslim world most importantly, of the true nature of this beast. They’ve demonstrated a willingness to kill fellow Muslims indiscriminately, and the lifestyle they attempted to impose on areas they once controlled proved extremely unpopular.
They have literally worn out their welcome in much of the Muslim world, as their popularity has plummeted in most countries, especially Iraq. I doubt Bush, et al, were smart enough to have anticipated and planned this beforehand, but it seems to be one beneficial side-effect.
Had America not responded forcefully to 9/11, and had given up in Iraq after Al Qaeda & Co. challenged them there, the terrorists’ stock would have gone up, not down, as folks scramble to follow the strong, unchallenged horse.
If we can see this thing through, and the Muslim world continues to learn the lesson that radical Islam is bad and America is good, ultimately our image will improve and maybe even start to shine, just as the idea of terrorism being a legitimate tactic will continue to erode.—Or so it seems to me.
*Osama bin Laden’s recent tape was a reminder that al-Qaeda offers only destruction and death. Al-Qaeda terrorists murder those who don’t agree with them—including Muslims. Their attacks on mosques, shrines and even wedding celebrations confirm that they don’t care about innocent Muslims. As one woman in Algeria put it, “They are criminals who want to sabotage the country.” That’s a message bin Laden’s words don’t convey, but his actions do. Six years after Sept. 11, good and decent people of many faiths and cultures are increasingly rejecting his brutal methods.
Posted by Natalie on Mar 25, 2008 at 3:31 AM One of the greatest handicaps facing the U.S. is our short attention span. It seems to shorten with the increase of the speed of communication. Combine that with the lack of historical perspective and we get articles like this one.
• The U.S. Revolution lasted eight years.
• As a percentage of population it had the highest death toll of all our wars.
• Since we had virtually no army at the beginning in a sense nearly all casualties were “civilian.”
• The brutality in that conflict is comparable to that of any war.
To measure any war in dollars is useless and short sighted. That may decide strategy on Wall St., but to do so in a life and death struggle is insane.
The cries of, “It’s all about oil the oil!” are also misdirected. We had 30 years to cut back on our consumption and did essentially nothing except increase our use. Now we are compounding the problem by pushing ethanol and causing a rise in cost of food stuffs for a questionable energy source. Several presidents, both parties and most of us are responsible for the problem.
THINK!
How long would the U.S. (or any modern country) survive if oil were shut down? (The Muslim radicals know this even if many of us seem not to.)
The results: No transportation — sea, air, ground. No work. Soon not enough food production. Think of a long, cold winter and a blistering summer. (At least our pathetic TV programming would disappear.)
Complete breakdown of services — Call for help? No phones. No police or ambulance to the rescue. No power for hospitals…
Complete anarchy would soon follow.
Add up that cost if you can.
Did someone say, “No national threat” — ????
Posted by whattheheck on Mar 25, 2008 at 9:17 AM Isn’t terrorism a ploy by which groups or individuals try to instill fear in the masses, influencing politics, religion and encouraging divisiveness in an otherwise united society?
Would that include fearmongering as exercised by administrations or political groups within well established governments?
Anybody come to mind?
Can the greatest “national threat” comes from within?
Our revolutionary forebears seemed to think so - that’s why they developed a government with a system of checks and balances that were never meant to be subverted in the name of politics!
>^.K!
Posted by Poeticat on Mar 25, 2008 at 9:35 PM Poeticat,
re: fearmongering
Sometimes fear is prudent. While we should fear disinformation as “fear designed to influence opinion,” the reverse was applied immediately post 9/11.
We were told, “If you change your life style the terrorists will have won — go out and spend.”
Rather than tell us what we could do to help prevent terrorism (gov. fear of panic?) it was to be business as usual and stupid PC airport searches. Both parties have played PR games with regard to the seriousness of the threat to our country.
The Republicans did it going into Iraq and now many incumbents in both parties are doing it by focusing on the 4,000 deaths. (The toll is the lightest of any US war thus far in duration/killed terms.)
Churchill and Roosevelt were in agreement during WW2 that an honest bit of bad news can be handled by citizens and soft peddling bad news is counter productive.
Too bad we have a President who doesn’t read.
Posted by whattheheck on Mar 27, 2008 at 7:22 AM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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