{"id":3594,"date":"2008-10-03T07:32:48","date_gmt":"2008-10-03T11:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=3594"},"modified":"2008-10-03T07:38:15","modified_gmt":"2008-10-03T11:38:15","slug":"the-iraq-war-does-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=3594","title":{"rendered":"The Iraq War does matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s barely on the radar screen any more, but there are lessons of the Iraq War that matter in this election. It was a necessary war no matter how the Left wants to make it about weapons of mass destruction that weren’t found. I’ll never concede that point. It was a costly and foolish endeavor to keep Hussein in his “box” as the pundits liked to say. Countless surface-to-air missile assaults on our pilots made it clear that Hussein was never going to be a rational actor.<\/p>\n

Everyone seems to forget that Bill Clinton deployed combat troops to the Kuwait border with Iraq no less than three times during his eight years. Terrorist training camps existed in Iraq, whether Hussein supported them or not is irrelevant, those camps would never have been closed without US intervention there.<\/p>\n

The infrastructure to begin weapons development existed. Hundreds of tons of yellowcake uranium were found. Hundreds of chemical weapons were uncovered. The fact remains that Hussein was a threat to world peace, no matter how much the Left plays down his capabilities.<\/p>\n

After Hussein, al Qeada became a threat to world peace from Iraq. They thought they had a chance to get some world-class propaganda by driving the US out of Iraq, because the US Left was ready to capitulate at a moments notice. George Bush dashed al Qeada’s hopes when the Democrats won Congress and he increased the presence in Iraq.<\/p>\n

That brings us to this election. In the Wall Street Journal this morning, Robert MacFarland, a Reagan Administration National Security Advisor writes “Obama was Willing to Lose in Iraq<\/a>” which chastizes the presidential hopeful for his short-sighted cavalier attitude towards losing in Iraq;<\/p>\n

A profoundly important point is being missed in the campaign debate over which candidate was right on Iraq. In 2006, when conditions on the ground were trending downward and a decision was required either to continue the struggle or to cut our losses, Barack Obama stated that the proposed deployment of more forces, the “surge,” was doomed to failure and instead called for a phased withdrawal of all forces within a defined period.<\/p>\n

In short, Sen. Obama was willing to lose. It was an astonishing display of ignorance to be so cavalier about defeat, almost as if losing a war was tantamount to losing a set of tennis — something without lasting consequence.<\/p>\n

I recall very vividly April 30, 1975, the day we acknowledged defeat in the Vietnam War — the day Ambassador Graham Martin and others were evacuated ignominiously from the roof of our embassy in Saigon. Only later did it become clear how damaging that defeat was.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In Vietnam, when the overall strategy was failing, the US sought negotiations to end our involvement. When the overall strategy in Iraq was failing, we changed the strategy. It took decades to recover from the politicians’ defeat in Vietnam. If we had capitulated to Congress in regards to Iraq, it would have taken far longer and cost far more in terms of lives, homeland security and defense spending.<\/p>\n

Obama and Biden both claim they were right and Bush and McCain were wrong on Iraq. Well, that’s easy to say and harder to prove. When the war is fought from a podium, it’s easy to be cavalier about our national security. It’s not so easy on the battlefield. Biden and Obama have never spent a day in uniform, they’ve never had to sacrifice, their battles have all been fought in the air conditioned, carpeted splendor of legislative office. They don’t understand the cost. Cost to them is the number of votes they surrender when they embrace a policy with which their constituents disagree – the constituents in their echo-chambers.<\/p>\n

The Iraq War does matter and everyone who thinks it doesn’t can’t see past the end of their collective nose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s barely on the radar screen any more, but there are lessons of the Iraq War … The Iraq War does matter<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}