Saturday - May 01, 2004

Category Image Cutting and Running


I don't know who these raggedy people are watching the Marine armor leaving Fallujah, but they're watching the worst news out of Iraq we've had yet.



I don't know who made this decision to pull our Marines out of an engaged battle, I don't understand why they made that decision, but it scares me unlike any other event we've seen yet. That's because it tells our enemy that no matter how desperate their situation gets, all they have to do is kill a few Americans and we will cut and run.

Early in the battle for Fallujah, the Marines had the enemy cornered, and were killing them by the score. Victory was near at hand, but someone in charge got squeamish. The Marines were ordered to halt their offensive while "negotiations" with some unnamed entity were conducted. While we pulled back, the enemy regrouped, rearmed, and began probing our positions, picking off Marines piecemeal while we could only conduct punitive raids and defensive actions.

This is like Korea and Viet Nam all over again.

War is about killing people. War isn't pretty. The worst way to wage war is to not wage it totally. Not only have we encouraged the enemy to resist, we have now taught the entire world that the United States, again, doesn't like it when times get tough. All our enemies have to do is kill one or two Americans a day and we will withdraw our troops no matter how much we overpower the enemy.

It's all very simple. Either we are in the right, or we are not. If we are wrong to wage this war then we should pull out. But we are not wrong. This war must be waged for moral reasons and we must win it for our survival. Why are we taking half measures? Why do we care about international reactions from peoples that already have shown that they hate us?

We are on the moral high ground. All others be damned.

This stinks of politics. This stinks of army bureaucracy. This stinks of do-gooder, feel-good decision makers. This stinks of the state department and the Squeamish Colin Powell. The army was responsible for Fallujah for a year and was unwilling to go in and clean it out. The Marines swore to take care of the problem when they took over and were in the process of doing just that. Now they have been stopped by someone.

I want the name of the decision maker. I want him to know that he has just wasted American lives. I want him to realize that putting a Baathist general in charge of pacifying Fallujah is the worst blunder we have made in this war yet. Nothing good will come of this. We have created another militia and we have told the world that we aren't willing to fight. We can never trust this Baathist general to destroy our enemy.

What is most likely to happen is that these Baathist holdouts and foreign mercenaries will not be destroyed, they will merely fall back and wait for their next opportunity.

Who was the idiot that made this decision?

I've said it before, not in this forum but elsewhere, that I am a one issue voter. Whoever can promise to destroy the biggest part of Islamic radical culture will get my vote. I've suddenly become concerned that Bush is not the best answer. I need a third party war hawk candidate. I know this war will last a long time. Decisions like this one early on will mean the difference between 2 generations or 20 generations. Emboldening our enemy like this is disastrous.

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