Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
Good article and it is well written. The problem is the timing, why wasn’t it written sooner? The timing undercuts the whole issue. The article takes essential military issues and makes them political. My question comes from your title, “Manning the ‘Long War’”. I came out of the Viet Nam era, I hope we don’t find ourselves in that type of situation again. Just how long is long?
Lex, I want you to know, this is not about you. It is about Tom Donnely. This is a well written article on important issues, but it reminds me of fish. On the day of the catch, fine, but on the third or the fourth day, the fish take on a whole new life. Good grief, the seagulls won’t even touch them. These issues written in this format have good content. The timing is all wrong.
Grumpy
Grumpy – how long is “long” is exactly the right question to ask, and it devolves in part against the other questions Donnely asks – what mission, what force, what war?
I don’t think anybody wants to be in a position two or three years down track counting another 700-800 battle deaths in Iraq, but it’s safe to say that no one anticipated we’d still be doing that 4 years after decapitating the regime. Still, the question Donnely clearly pre-supposes is that this is a fight worth fighting. Public opinion seems increasingly to thing, “No.”
For my own part, I disagree, but only because I think that – bad as things have been – they can still get much worse.
Forgot to ask one question: What will it cost to LOSE the freakin’ war. You can ask all of those other questions later.
Yes, things can get much worst, and forgive me for being a realist but I believe that they will. First of all I don’t believe we have the political will to finish this correctly nor the time. Indeed I’ve given up on this war being managed correctly, especially as its an election year coming up. Not just any election either, the “Bush” is gone one. So as a result whoever becomes our next president, Republican or Democrat will want to look like the good guy when it comes to Iraq.
So what does this mean for the so called war on terror? It means for at Iraq at least the dragging of feet, and the lack of will needed to finish this right. Without a doubt mistakes were made, some of them having tarnished the image of America and the faith an average American has in his government. Those questions are questions that should of been asked and answered to the best of their knowledge before we invaded Iraq. Now we can only ask “What now?” and “What are the total costs, and did we get anything in return?”