Unofficial CS Presidential Poll

[AAlmeter]

It will never happen. We will never even be able to give them a slap on the wrist. There are too many powerful people in our own country that are of the "Israel over all" mindset. Imagine Bush imposing some sort of "punishment". Something mild...say trade sanctions or a 0.25% tarriff on all imported goods from Israel. Imagine when the spin machine gets that. Fringe liberals already walk around at rallys with Bush = Hitler posters. The mainstream libs would attack that move and convince numerous mindless voters that he is the second coming of Hitler. This need not be Bush, hell, they would do the same to Lieberman.

I think it was an unfortunate mistake that we made some 50-60 years ago that has brought us much trouble today.

[Puros]

Sorry, Tunelight, I didn't see your post until today. I have a few disgreements with your thinking but atleast you posted it and I respoect that.

And what was the connection between Afghanistan and Iraq? It wasn’t 9/11 which is why we’re fighting a war on terror isn’t it?

No, the war on terror is the connection of the two. When we were hit on 9/11 we were gleefully going along with blinders on. (Now, don't start this "Bush allowed it" stuff. The facts have shown that the policies of the past 20 yrs led to 9/11. The blame is squarely on the shoulders on the terrorist.) Terrorism has claimed lives all over the world, incuding American lives. In Bush's state of the Union address, he declared war on the machine of terrorism. Not just on Al Qaeda or Iraq or Afganistan. It was the insittution of Terrorism. It is truly a World War, whether we like it or not. It is argued that Bush is premptive but this ignores the War as a whole. Was D-Day premptive, or the Doolittle raid on toyko. No, they were a planned offensives in the greater war.

Afganistan, Al Qaeda, and Iraq are battles in in the War on Terrorism. that is the connestion.

This is something that is mistunderstood by the media, John Kerry, and many of his voters. Some people agree with the idea of The War on Terrorism but disgree on the way Bush is fighting it and have some very good idea as to how it should be fought. Unfortunately, Kerry doesn't show that he understands that. He looks at it as a metaphor like the War on Drugs. This is a fundenmental flaw of his. Sadly, the majority of his base believes that same.

Iraq is a great objective in the war. There are many reasons that we went in.

1) Iraq was sponsoring terrorism. 3 on the top 5 terrorist organizations were based out of Iraq. Saddam was suppling money to terrorist in Palastine and other countries.

2)Saddam was shooting at our jets in the No-Fly zone (an act of war and in direct opposition to the UN mandate in which spelled out the ability to go in and disarm him, by force if needed.)

3)The threat of WMD. Well, the reports of no WMD are interesting. The same organizations that said there isn't WMD are the same organizations that said they were there in the first place. And as fore rushing to war, it took Bush 7 months to finally go the war. That is plenty of time to move WMD anywhere. infact, many security experts (not politcal yesman, but people that make their living on being right) suggest that most of the WMD was moved across the border while we were "rushing" to war. So, it can be argued that the delay may have made the world less safe.

4)Oil yep, I said it. Oil Now, it is time to grow up and understand the practicaliies of war. War takes money to run and it takes money to rebuild a government. The Iraqi oil supply is very large and is enough to destablize the Saudi Arabia hold on the oil market (remember this, it has a very important connection later). Why did we securr the Oil ministration first instead of the Musium. Simple, where beautiful, an piece of art will not feed a nation, fund an independent government, or provide intelegence that would help our troops.

5) A free Iraq is an example to the rest of the Middle East. AAltmeter did a good job with that and I won't repeat it.

6) remember the destabilize Saudi hold thing. There are many experts that point to Saudi as to a major supporter of terrorism. Granted, most of it is behind the scenes and hidden. It is in the interests of Oil companies in Saudi to keep the Middle East unstable because it keeps their hold on the market strong. The quick answer is to not buy oil from Saudi but then Saudi would put pressure on our allies and we would be force to react. No, unfortunatley, Iraqi oil is a means to destabilize Saudi and its provocation of terrorism.

7) Iraq was the strongist opposition in the Middle East. Once it is was controlled it would provide a base of operations for any forth military options. However, the greater benefit is a direct pressure to other countries. Syria has already felt, they gave up the Iraqi command when Powel qietly suggested that all we to do is turn right from Bagdad.

The sense of strength is paramount to the fanatical forces behind terrorism. It is writen about in many publications including Storin' Norman's book who spent most of his life in the Middle east. It is one reason he wanted to go to Bagdad in the first Iraq war because he knew that not going after Saddam would show weakness on our part to the terrorist and other fanatics.

I only have time for the above post.I'll get to the looting issue soon. Saty tuned.

[Wetterhorn]

Very, very interesting article that I thought you all would enjoy and may add to the understanding of the "War on Terrorism" as we head into the election! (I had to redact this article, but if you are interested in the entire article, you may go to http://www.hillsdale.edu/newimprimis/2004/october/default.htm)

What Would Patton Say About the Present War?
Victor Davis Hanson, Author, Between War and Peace: Lessons from Afghanistan to Iraq

What can we imagine George Patton might say about the present war? Lots. Based on what he himself said and wrote, his record in the field, and what scholars have written about him, I think we have some reasonable ideas. I'll begin with Patton's strategic thinking, then follow with suppositions about tactical and operational doctrine.

In 1945, the U.S. was providing annually the equivalent of several billion in today's dollars to the Soviet Union. Patton understood that in war one is forced as a matter of practicality to make such odious alliances. But postwar peace, whose future parameters would be adjudicated while the war was still on, was an entirely different matter. The idea of a United Nations organization was developing; and although many in the U.S. knew that Stalin had institutionalized mass murder, such concerns were muted because it was thought at worst that he was an aberration in an otherwise peaceful - and currently allied - Soviet system. Patton wanted nothing of that naiveté, and instead loudly reminded all that decisions made in 1945 would alter the future security of the U.S. Montgomery in this case was in agreement with Patton, as was Churchill, who likewise saw that the end of World War II might be the beginning of World War III. All three shared a common desire: to take Berlin and extend democratic government to the Russian border.

In a famous exchange, Eisenhower asked, of Patton's request to move eastward immediately, "What in the world for?" Patton without hesitation replied, "You shouldn't have to ask that. History will answer for you, Ike." Bradley protested and offered up the standard American fear of taking 100,000 casualties. Of course, the Russians did take over 100,000 casualties storming Berlin, a fact later used to argue for Eisenhower's prescience. But again, the Russians suffered such casualties because the Germans were fighting ferociously in order that everybody behind them might surrender to the West. Had the Germans known that the Allies were going to take Berlin, the city might have fallen after brief resistance in the manner that other German strongpoints had fallen in the west. What later became West Germany would have extended to Berlin, the allies would probably have occupied Czechoslovakia where the Third Army finished the war, and we would not have had to make later concessions to Stalin to save Austria and Greece.

Patton always realized that armed forces serve political ends and create an immediate reality on the battlefield that politicians argue over for years - that there are times when audacious commanders can create favorable diplomatic situations impossible to achieve by politicians even after years of negotiations. Well before Roosevelt or Eisenhower, he understood that the new Germany was an ally, and the old Soviets were now the new enemy of freedom.

Applying Patton's thinking to today's situation, we can first recognize the so-called "war on terror" as a misnomer. There has never really been a war against a method other than something like Pompey's crusade against the pirates or the British effort to stifle the slave trade. In fact, we're no more in a war against terror than Patton was fighting against Tiger and Panzer tanks. Patton, who understood the hold of a radically triumphalist Nazism on a previously demoralized German people, would have the intellectual honesty to realize that we are at war with Islamic fascists, mostly from the Middle East, who have played on the frustrations of mostly male, unemployed young people, whose autocratic governments can't provide the conditions for decent employment and family life. A small group of Islamists appeals to the angst of the disaffected through a nostalgic and reactionary turn to a mythical Caliphate, in which religious purity trumps the material advantages of a decadent West and protects Islamic youth from the contamination of foreign gadgetry and pernicious ideas. In some ways, Hitler had created the same pathology in Germany in the 1930s.

Because of the Internet and globalization, Islamic youth have first-hand knowledge of the U.S. - its splendor, power and luxury - that both attracts and repels them, creating appetites forbidden in traditional and tribal society. Thus the fascist terrorists, to be successful, and cognizant of this paradoxical envy and desire, offer a mythical solution in lieu of real social, political and economic reform that in short order would doom the power of the patriarch, mullah and autocrat: Blame the imperialist Americans and the Zionist Israelis who cause this self-induced misery. Even those who don't join the extremists, like most Germans of the late 1930s, don't mind - albeit on the cheap - seeing their perceived enemies take a fall, as long as the consequences of terrorism are mostly positive in a psychological sense without bringing them material suffering in recompense.

Patton would also agree that the remedy for this disease includes aid and reconstruction - helping the defeated to re-build under democratic auspices that would allow real reform. In fact, he was sacked as pro-consul largely because he was said to be too interested in jump-starting German reconstruction at the price of accommodating Germans once affiliated with the Nazi party. But Patton would insist that it is only by military defeat and subsequent humiliation first that the supporters of terrorism against the West will understand the wages of their support for Islamic fascism. Once people in the Middle East, like the Germans, see that the Islamic fascists are defeated - and that all who support and condone that ideology are synonymous with it and thus must pay for their complicity through some measure of sacrifice and suffering - radical bellicose Islamicism really will end. Patton was quite clear about defeating, humiliating and then helping Germans - the proper order of such a progression in attitude being absolutely critical.

Applying these lessons to the first Gulf War, Patton perhaps would have thought it mindless to mobilize an entire expeditionary army - a rare event for a democracy - and then confine it to the Kuwaiti theatre of operations, given that the problem was never merely the occupation of Kuwait, but the tyrant in Baghdad who had a prior record of frequent aggression. From the moment he took command in Normandy, Berlin was on Patton's mind as the only ultimate goal.

As far as encouraging allies to go along, again, Patton always talked more in terms of a fait accompli: The general's job is to create favorable conditions on the ground that his politicians can deal with from a position of strength, rather than vice versa - an American army that achieves victory will have more allies than it knows what to do with. Go to Berlin if Berlin is the problem. Confront the Soviets if the Soviets are the problem. Don't refuse to take Berlin and then try to negotiate with the Soviets over Berlin. Hesitancy does not earn advantage. Similarly in Iraq today: If our goal is to give President Bush leverage with the Europeans and the tyrannical Middle East, then we should continue to destroy the power of the insurgency in Iraq, proving to friends and enemies alike the consequences and advantages of American power.

"Always Audacity"

Patton had two phrases that he used almost ad nauseum. The first, from Danton, was: "Audacity, always audacity, still more audacity." The second was "the unforgiving minute," a phrase from Kipling that referred to certain times in war when the collective will of a people or an army can without warning collapse - critical moments that must be capitalized on. Unlike Eisenhower and Bradley, who thought the August 1944 collapse of the German army was likely and thus the war would end before Christmas, Patton knew that if the Panzers were saved from near death, they could be ready to kill again and under far more favorable circumstances. That is exactly what happened at the Falaise Gap. Later at the Seine River, near the Siegfried Line, and when attacking the Bulge, Patton saw that a sweeping hook, rather than a head-on assault, might bring on a total collapse, but only if risks were taken and old plans ignored in light of new realities. Again, the conservative, doctrinaire approach of cautious attack proved the far more costly tactic.

These lessons also apply in recent times. In the first Gulf War, Saddam put almost 250,000 Iraqi troops in bunkers in the sand, and even after weeks of U.S. bombing they were still operational. In response, General Schwarzkopf marched hundreds of miles around the flank, leaving many of the entrenched Iraqi positions behind and headed toward Basra, his long flanks covered by air support. But although we copied Patton's tactics, we forgot their purpose - stopping at the so-called Highway of Death because of the television images of "thousands" of enemy dead. Pentagon staffers worried at the time that 20,000 enemy soldiers had been killed, thus causing a global uproar. We know now that the real number was in the hundreds - and that when we stopped before Basra, fleeing Iraqis did not, and they killed thousands of mostly defenseless Shiites and Kurds over the next few weeks. And over the next 12 years, Anglo-American pilots flew thousands of missions in the Iraq no-fly zones, all as a precursor to the second Iraq war. In short, we forgot Patton's most important lesson: the purpose of outflanking the enemy is to demoralize and annihilate the enemy, thus removing the reasons to go to war in the first place.

In the 2003 Iraq War, on the other hand, Americans drove 400 miles from the Kuwaiti front up to Kurdistan, often bypassing resistance on the way to Baghdad. Never has an armored column traveled so quickly with so few casualties. It was comparable to Patton's march from Normandy to the Siegfried Line. And the same institutionalized army critics of such Patton-like tactics emerged, decrying vulnerable flanks, oblivious to the protection offered by 1,000 planes in the sky. Indeed, Patton was often evoked as we moved quickly, creating conditions of shock and awe, demoralizing the enemy who crumbled and fled. But again, these are fluid, not permanent, situations. If an enemy is demoralized but not destroyed, he may well come back encouraged and with less respect, interpreting magnanimity as weakness or incompetence. Fallujah and Najaf are proof enough of the tragedy that can follow when a defeated enemy is not completely crushed.

Mobilizing Public Support

Finally, Patton had very strong views about the character of the American soldier. On the one hand, he appreciated that Americans grew up driving cars, that they were mechanical and practical, that they were highly individualistic, that they liked to move, that they were restless - thus that they were ideally suited for mechanized warfare. Yet he conceded that Americans also had a limited attention span, easily became impatient, were averse to standing in place, and required constant encouragement about the larger purposes that had brought them so far from home.

If we are in a real war, Americans must move quickly on Fallujah and Najaf rather than "contain" such "no-go" zones. Syria and Iran should be warned that their continued sanctuary and aid to terrorists are synonymous with a state of war with the U.S. Patton would advise us that static occupation, negotiations with undefeated insurgents, and mild rebukes to neighboring terrorist sponsors are not only futile, but against the American character of decisive advance and unconditional surrender once war is upon us.

Like Thucydides, Patton appreciated that the emotions that sophisticated people sometimes think are so unimportant - such as fear, pride and honor - are in fact what drive us humans, and therefore must be addressed in any total war. We chuckle at his attention to dress, protocol, medals, speeches and theatrics; but this obsession was not vanity as much as recognition that soldiers are proud and sensitive beings, and must be rewarded and punished in visible ways, war being the essence of human emotion. By the same token, military operations are more than just ground taken and held. They are powerfully symbolic, conveying to third parties either hope or dejection when they see armies routed from the battlefield.

Today, millions in the Islamic world are watching the West struggle against Islamic fascism. Perhaps deep down inside they prefer, logically and with some idealism, to live under Western-style freedom and democratic auspices. And yet nationalism, pride, religion and ethnic solidarity war with reason, combining to produce far greater resentment against a powerful America, even when it brings the very freedom that the Arabs for decades have said they wished. A modern Patton would not be bothered by such inconsistency. Rather he would make sure that he had not only defeated the terrorists and their supporters, but had done so in such damaging fashion that none in the Middle East might find such a repugnant cause at all romantic, bringing as it did utter ruin as the wage of the wrath of the United States.

Patton, who was both learned and yet not smug about the power of the primordial emotions, understood perfectly the irrational nature of warfare and the effect that utter defeat or glorious victory has upon an otherwise rational people. No wonder he hated war defined as a purely bureaucratic enterprise or a purely material and industrial challenge, inasmuch as neither can change the hearts of men that need to be changed. Instead, they usually increase the body count and rarely lead to lasting peace. We should remember wild-eyed George Patton in our Fallujahs to come.


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Copyright © 2004. "Reprinted by permission from IMPRIMIS, the monthly journal of Hillsdale College (www.hillsdale.edu)."


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[AAlmeter]

Great article and a great man.

Its amazing how the television has changed our ability to effectively conduct a war.

[summerkc]

[SIZE=6]BUSH DEFEATS TRUMAN!

....I MEAN KERRY![/SIZE]

[MitchellF]

The media, especially ABC and CBS are doing the predictable. They are dragging out calling the vote in Ohio in a last ditch effort to allow the democrats to get all of their cheating done. Obviously they have not had enough time. NBC and Fox are the only networks with the stones to call the obvious. Bush is ahead in Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico and has outright won Ohio. He has won the popular vote by over 4 million votes. What does it take for CBS to concede that their campaign work for Kerry has failed? Imagine how much Bush would have won by if the networks had not been reporting 100% optimistic news for Kerry and even 50% good news for Bush. It would have been a complete blowout. The media has been defeated and they better learn their place in this world of the new media mainly the internet news sites that have more of a tendancy to report the truth. It is a good day despiste all the desperate attempts by the media and their candidate.

[friendoofop]

Congrats to the president.........and a nod to Kerry for conceding to Bush when he knew he was beaten. We don't need another 2000, so lets hope Kerry doesn't change his mind (again?) and fight it.

So who's got the link to the 'one finger victory salute' video?

[The Dutch]

Originally Posted by friendoofop

So who's got the link to the 'one finger victory salute' video?

http://static.vidvote.com/movies/bushuncensored.mov