A brief commentary on today's vote on whether to "Stay the Course" or "Cut and Run". Pay little attention to it - it's all a bunch of typical Washington grandstanding. However, I did think about the term "stay the course" for a minute. This is probably the most inappropriate term possible for describing our troops in Iraq. Ask yourself this: Do we really do anything the same over there as we did 3 years ago??
While the overall goal is the same, they manner in which it has been done is extremely different. Think about the changes in body armor, tactics, Nation building, IED's, Armor Plating and dozens of other aspects. This is the first war against organized terror we've ever had, and I think the progress made and the way our troops have adapted has been remarkable. To put this in terms politicians can understand, you wouldn't tell your opponent your strategy, why would you do that to your soldiers? Hard deadlines only lead to a sense of failure and low morale if they're not met.
Stay the Course ?? You could put it that way, but you'd be wrong.....Enjoy the weekend!
2 comments:
It might be semantic Mike, but war against organized terror have gone on through the ages. The Mongol and Viking tactics quaintified by Prussian historians as "schrecklichkeit" or horror warfare were the basis for some facets of Blitzkreig and Mr. Goebbels propaganda department. We've fought some aspects of it before and found ourselves this time running into (in Iraq) the bastard cousin of the SS Werewolf continuation of hostilities in Germany after the surrender. Consider that some of Robert E Lee's generals were quite ready to fight it out to the last man in the Shenadoah valley, after the surrender or that the James and Younger gang spun out of Quantrills raiders in the Western Confederacy. We've called it different names, but we've still gone to bat against terror and brutal regimes, take the Spanish American War, be it an extension of the Monroe Doctrine, reaction to an incident akin to the bombing of the Cole or a just riposte to a brutal colonialist power.
Stay the course, like the apostle Paul's metaphor we are closer to the goal, despite the distractions of some that came to whine about the mosquitos, not to fish, while we're landing a few nice stripers. Maybe there wouldn't be any 'skeeters on the Clyburn bridge to nowhere.
Uhh..... Could you write my speeches for me?
Yes, guerilla warfare may not be new, but all those are examples of a state run terror campaign. This is a war against a group with no real central power.
The Confederacy is an excellent example. Grant's greatest fear was a guerilla campaign that might last another 5-10 years. Does anyone remember when the insurgency started that the estimates were 3-5 years? Sure, we had "Mission Accomplished", but there are a lot of missions here.
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