Let’s be clear: Harry is simply drooling Move-On.org’s slander that General Petraeus “betrayed” his country.

That is disgusting. To attack as a traitor an American general commanding forces in war because his “on the ground” experience does not align with MoveOn.org’s political objectives is utterly shameful. It shows contempt for America’s military leadership, as well as for the troops who have confidence in him, as our fellow soldiers in Iraq certainly do.

General Petraeus has served this country for over 35 years with honor, distinction, and integrity. And this is not just about General Petraeus. After all, if General Petraeus is “cooking the books,” then the entire military chain of command in Baghdad, and all the staff, military and civilian, who have been working with General Petraeus are complicit, since Petraeus did not write his report in isolation. They are all, apparently, “betray[ing] us.”

MoveOn.org worked closely with Democratic congressional leadership— as an article in the New York Times Magazine makes clear. And consider this comment by a Democratic senator from Friday’s Politico: “‘No one wants to call [Petraeus] a liar on national TV,’ noted one Democratic senator, who spoke on the condition on anonymity. ‘The expectation is that the outside groups will do this for us.’”

So, veterans who served in Iraq ask the Democratic “leadership” in Congress: Does MoveOn.org speak for you? Do you agree with MoveOn.org? Or do you repudiate this despicable charge?

MoveOn.org has helped frame the core choice: Whom do we trust to run this war— MoveOn.org and its allies in Congress, or Gen. David Petraeus and his colleagues?

Once again, CAN flings their typical hate-America slanders, allegations and hearsay— naturally backed by not a shred of evidence.

Yep, that’s the al-Qaeda view of things. Once again, brought to you by the seditious Marxist liars of CAN.

As if Americans needed yet another illustration of the “Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left” http://www.amazon.com/Unholy-Alliance-Radical-Islam-American/dp/089526076X

CAN’D Lie #1: “…the burning embers of the society we have left for them does much to expose America's latent bigotry.”

Unless by “we” Harry means Saddam (and his Marxist allies in the West)— who brought death and ruin upon Iraq long before our invasion— then his slander of America is just more of the same typical seditious lies.

CAN’d Lie #2 “… the War on Terror really has never been about helping those in the Middle East reach democracy”

Which explains why we’ve seen free and fair elections in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan.

CAN’d Lie #3 “The Iraq war is largely about oil.”

Iraq controls it’s own oil revenues. The price of oil is at record levels. How does that happen if we’re there to control their oil?

These lying Marxist ghouls CAN’t come up with some new material? These CANNED old chestnuts are showing signs of mold growth.

“continued occupation of Iraq for the decades to come”

Hopefully we’ll be out sooner than the cases in Germany and Japan. But then we still have troops in Germany and Japan so who knows.

Lord, you were born a ramblin’ man. Cut to the chase!

Iran has been at war with the USA for over 30 years, the USA just hasn’t noticed.

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide. Jerry Pournelle

I know that I am grateful that I am blessed to have a son in the U.S Marines, on his second tour in Iraq, who is uninjured and inspiring to us and to all who know him. I know that there are moms who are not so lucky and Veterans Day brings them unavoidably to my mind. Getting through this weekend must be a lot tougher for the mothers of this war's wounded and dead than it was when men wore poppies and everyone stopped to commemorate the nation's loss. I do not know how these moms get through Veterans Day.

Military moms have trouble watching television or reading the newspaper when they read over and over that their children are fighting or were wounded or were killed for nothing. Military moms hear their officemates, their neighbors, their fellow parishioners, sometimes even their other family members disparage the war effort, or famously declare that they “support the troops but not the war” as if that is a rational statement. Military moms hear and see that their sons and daughters names are used by anti-war politicians and activists in an effort to score political points, using their children's blood and sacrifice as a cover. And military moms try not to be bitter, not to be angry, not to profane their children’s decision to protect and defend the United States. Military moms try to live up to their children who tell them: “Mom, don't get angry at them. I am fighting to protect their right to be jerks.”

Military moms of the wounded know that at military hospitals, the televisions are on the nature channel, the home and garden channel, the food channel, but not any of the major news channels because the families cannot bear to listen to the bias and watch the deliberate distortion of what their loved ones were doing. These moms are not political people and they do not understand those who look for ways to disparage rather than to honor sacrifice. They don’t have the time or the energy to get angry — they are too busy coping with the shock of their new situation, of their child’s wounds or death — so they look to each other for support and understanding. And, they form special bond among them which protects them from the surrounding ugliness.

It has been my honor to have met moms of wounded soldiers. There is a mom whose son suffered the worst traumatic brain injury of the war — a 40% brain loss — and still lived. She and her daughter have given up their lives to take care of him. The mom has cashed in her 401k savings, left her job, moved out of her apartment, gathered up her daughter and stays with her son virtually round the clock. She tells me her son can’t push the buzzer for the nurse, can’t rub his nose, can’t speak or respond. No one who has seen her is anything but moved by her selfless devotion.

There is another mom whose son has lost both legs, and has a virtually unusable right arm due to a suicide bomber who detonated about 10 feet away from the soldier. When her son was wounded, his wife was 9 months pregnant with their first child. The soldier’s mother just quietly copes with all the challenges she faces. Another mom is completely deaf, as is her husband and her brother. Her son, 21 years old, is still unconscious two months after he suffered a very serious traumatic brain injury — and she signs her love into the palm of his hand. There are no words big enough or descriptive enough to encompass all the respect these women deserve.

Most military moms look at their children in their uniforms and share their remarkably common memory: That child who couldn’t find a matched pair of socks in his drawer is now a logistics officer with responsibility for 25 soldiers, all their ammunition, all their vehicles, all their provisions? That child who couldn’t give a strong handshake to a grown up while meeting his eyes, whose military bearing is now second nature and who oozes self-confidence and poise — whose kid is that? Mine? How about a little boy who hated getting an injection and now repeats like a mantra: “Pain is weakness leaving the body” or revels in telling his family about his teargas-chamber training? And what about a boy who was captain of his football team who now, as a man, learns how to maneuver on prosthetic legs and dreams of coaching a high school team?

And those who are wounded or killed — their moms look at their “before” photos and know that “honor, courage, commitment” have to suffice because that is all there is.

That, and love.

It isn’t generally acknowledged but love has a lot to do with the military. Your child joins the military, and you are fearful and yet proud that he or she loves his country and wants to serve. You want him to do something to serve but not something actually dangerous— yet, you realize this is what he feels he has to do, that he won’t feel complete unless he does it and you love him enough to let him go. And he, in turn, learns to loves his fellow Marines or soldiers — he loves them in a way that those who do not serve, will not, cannot, know. He learns to put this love of his fellows above and beyond his own self — and thus his narcissism and sense of self-importance fades and his sense of selflessness and sacrifice increases. And so, in fact, you learn that while your son or daughter has learned to use weapons and fight, he or she has also unexpectedly learned to be a humanitarian.

The tragedy isn’t what has happened to our soldiers and Marines. The tragedy is what has happened to us. Perhaps we shop on Veterans Day, no poppies worn, no bells rung, no sirens blaring, no time spent to commemorate other people’s sacrifice for our liberty so that we won’t feel ourselves shrink into irrelevancy.

1:09— and that’s precisely why many of us oppose the war. Our friends, relatives, neighbors, and classmates who were wounded over there are not victims of IEDs or of Islamic fundamentalists, but of war. And as long as such a war continues, there will be more and more paralyzed, amputees, sufferers of PTS, etc. We should not be using tragedies to silence dissent— really, how much sense does it make to say, “Keep occupying because my son was injured! Keep more troops in harm’s way because of my loss!”??? Most of us have friends or family there; a few of my best friends since kindergarden are there, and guys I played sports with in high school. Thank god that none of them have been wounded or killed.

well said 4:12.

4:12 whined: “a few of my best friends since kindergarden are there, and guys I played sports with in high school.”

What an astonishingly arrogant remark. You think you’re concern for your “friends” somehow trumps a Gold Star mother’s love? Get over yourself, you malignant narcisist.

If they were really your “friends,” then you’d respect their VOLUNTARY decision to serve— and stop undermining their mission by giving sedicious aid and comfort to their enemies.

What you’re really crying about is your own bedwetting incontinence which clearly precluded you from matching their courage in bravely defending our country in time of war. Now the shame and pain has driven you to loathe your friends enough to publicly stab them in the back… on Veterans Day, no less.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he today that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition;

And gentlemen in England now-a-bed Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

The Battle of Iraq is nearly over. And the Americans have nearly won. Their enemies are on the run. Al-Qaida forces have lost or are losing their bases of operations. Its fighters are being killed and captured in ever increasing numbers. Iraq’s Sunni citizens, who, until recently, refused to take any part in the post-Saddam regime, are joining the army and citizens’ watch groups by the thousands.

Local sheikhs in Baghdad, following the example set earlier by Sunni sheikhs in Anbar province, are ordering their people to fight with the Americans against al-Qaida. For their part, the Shi’ite militias know that they are next in line for defeat. As a result, Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his Shi’ite militiamen to cease their attacks.

The numbers speak for themselves. Over the past month, some 46,000 Iraqi refugees returned home. Since May, the number of civilian casualties has decreased by 75 percent. US military casualties have also dropped precipitously after the death rate rose in recent months of hard fighting. Neighborhoods in Baghdad that had ceased to function under al-Qaida’s reign of terror have come back to life.

Businesses are reopening. People are rebuilding their homes. Even churches are reopening their doors. This is what victory looks like.

Yet the promise of Baghdad is a lone ray of light in an otherwise darkened field of failed US policies. As President George W. Bush prepares to enter his last year in office, America’s international standing is at a low point. The forces of jihad, while being defeated in Iraq, are rising everywhere else. The price of oil races toward the once inconceivable price of $100 a barrel. New jihadist mosques open daily throughout the world. Pakistan is a disaster. Iran is closing in on the bomb.

To understand America’s manifold failures, it makes sense to begin with a look at why Iraq is different. For the new, successful American strategy in Iraq is not only different from what preceded it there. It is also different from the US strategy that is failing everywhere else.

The new American strategy in Iraq is based on a fairly simple assumption: The US goal in Iraq is to defeat its enemies, and to defeat its enemies the US must target them with the aim of defeating them. This is a strategy based on common sense.

Unfortunately, common sense seems to be the rarest of commodities in US foreign policy circles today. Outside of Iraq, and until recently in Iraq as well, the US has based its policies on the notion that it can bend its adversaries to its will by on the one hand signaling them in a threatening way, and on the other hand by trying to appease them where possible. And this is the heart of the failure.

In the lead-up to Iraq, it was clear to US strategic planners that of the three states - Iraq, Iran and North Korea - that Bush labeled as members of the “Axis of Evil,” Iraq was the least dangerous. It sponsored terror less than Iran. Its weapons of mass destruction programs were less developed that those of Iran and North Korea.

As a result, there were some voices - particularly in Israel - which suggested that given that the US was uninterested in targeting more than one country in addition to Afghanistan, the US should direct its fire at Iran rather than Iraq. But for their own reasons - among them the collapse of the UN sanctions regime on Iraq, the fact that Iraq alone was under UN Security Council authority, and Iraq’s relative weakness - the Americans chose to go after Saddam.

They assumed that the invasion itself would strengthen America’s deterrent capability and so work to America’s advantage in its dealings with Iran and North Korea. Here, then, we see that the decision to invade Iraq was based in part on a continued American reliance on a strategy of signaling rather than confronting Iran and North Korea. If this hadn’t been the case, Iraq probably would have been cast to the side.

Initially, the American strategy met with stunning success. Iran, North Korea, Syria and indeed the Arab world as a whole were terrified by the victorious American assault on Saddam. Unfortunately, rather than build on their momentum, the Americans did everything they could to assure these states that they had no reason to worry that a similar fate would befall them. Rather than maintain the offensive - by sealing Iraq’s borders and then going after insurgents’ bases in Iran and Syria - the US went on the defensive. And so it allowed Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia to support and direct the insurgency. As a result of America’s show of weakness, the lesson that its enemies took from its campaign in Iraq was that to deter the Americans, they should intensify their support for terror and their weapons of mass destruction programs.

Once deterrence collapsed, the Americans chose a mix of appeasement and threats that had no expiration date. Last year’s North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear tests, the war in Lebanon, the Hamas takeover of Gaza and Iran’s intensification of its nuclear program are all the result of the failure of this model of US foreign policy making.

These policies are of a piece with the US’s general posture toward its adversaries. And that posture is unfortunately based on a hugely inflated view of America’s deterrent capabilities and Washington’s failure to craft policies that are suited to its interests and goals.

Today, the most glaring example of this state of affairs is Pakistan.

America has two primary goals there. First, it seeks to prevent Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and technologies from proliferating or falling under the control of jihadists. Second, it seeks to defeat al-Qaida and the Taliban.

After September 11, the Americans gave Pakistan’s military dictator a choice: he could help them defeat the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan or he could lose power. That was a good start, but then the Americans began losing track of their priorities. After Gen. Pervez Musharraf agreed to Washington’s ultimatum, the Americans put all their eggs in his basket. And they thereby lost their ability to deter him and so influence his behavior.

Certain of unconditional American backing, Musharraf played a double game. He helped the US in Afghanistan and then allowed the Taliban and al-Qaida to escape and re-base in Pakistan.

Musharraf also failed to be forthcoming on nuclear issues. He barred American investigators from interrogating Pakistan’s chief nuclear proliferator, A.Q. Khan, and so denied them key intelligence on other countries’ Pakistani-supported nuclear programs. Yet having based their Pakistan policy on their assumption that Musharraf was irreplaceable, the Americans pretended nothing was wrong.

And now they are confronted with a disastrous situation. On the one hand, thanks to Musharraf’s hospitality, al-Qaida and the Taliban control large swathes of Pakistan and have declared jihad against their host, thus placing Pakistan’s nuclear arsenals in greater danger. At the same time, they use their Pakistani bases to intensify their insurgency in Afghanistan.

On the other hand, as has been his consistent policy since seizing power in 1998, Musharraf continues to ignore the seriousness of the Taliban-al Qaida threat. The purpose of his recent declaration of martial law and suspension of the Pakistani constitution was not to enable him to better fight the jihadists. It was to break his liberal political opposition whose members demand democracy and an end to his military rule.

And in the midst of this, the Americans find themselves with no leverage over the still irreplaceable Musharraf.

A similar situation exists in Saudi Arabia. There, too, the US squandered the leverage it gained after the September 11 attacks by giving unconditional support to the Saudi royal family. The Saudis immediately understood that the best way to ensure continued American support was to extend their support for terrorism and funding of radical, pro-jihad mosques while raising the price of oil. As in Pakistan, the worse the situation became, the more the Americans supported them.

And then of course there are the Palestinians. Here American policy has been a double failure. First of all, it has destroyed American deterrence toward the Arab world.

To divert American attention away from their support for jihadist terrorism, the leaders of the Arab world sought to convince the Americans that the only way to end their support for terror and jihad was by resolving the Palestinian conflict with Israel.

Rather than stop to question the validity of the Arabs’ strange assertion, the Americans believed them. Over time, this belief led them to neglect their actual goals - ending the Arab world’s support for terror; preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and maintaining oil prices at around $30 a barrel - in favor of a secondary and unrelated issue.

Aside from that, it bears noting that it is largely because of the strengthening of jihadist forces in the Arab world that there is no possibility of achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Rather than understand this, the Americans have allowed the Arabs to send them on a wild goose chase that will never end.

The very fact that this week US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice thought that it was more important to come to Israel for the ninth time this year than to deal with the crisis in Pakistan shows clearly just how deeply the Americans have internalized this Arab fiction.

Then there are the Palestinians themselves. As Bush announced in 2002, the US’s main goal regarding the Palestinians is to force them to stop engaging in terror and jihad. All other American policies regarding the Palestinians were supposed to be conditioned on the accomplishment of this goal. Yet as in Pakistan, over time the Americans neglected this goal in favor of an easier one - supporting Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah. To strengthen Abbas and Fatah, the Americans have cast aside their goal of ending Palestinian terror. As a result, today they have no leverage over Abbas. As with Musharraf in Pakistan, strengthening Abbas is the only policy the Americans have toward the Palestinians, and increasingly, toward Israel. And as in Pakistan, the threatening reality on the ground is a consequence of the fact that their policy ignores their actual goals.

Two conclusions can be drawn from contrasting America’s victory in Iraq with its failures in so many other theaters. First, the only way to successfully fight your enemies is to actually fight them. And second, basing policies on pretending to deter leaders who are not deterred is a recipe for failure. Until the Americans accept these lessons, Iraq aside, the international environment will grow ever more threatening.

Thank you for a beautiful copy and paste from http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/11/americasstrategiesfor_victor.html

Wow! I made a link! A link that doesn’t take up the entire page. Imagine that.

I just have one thing to note: all this talk about Marxists, etc - so people are coming forward and saying that today’s Socialists are more of an enemy than our mentally-deficient leadership? I would rather have a Karl Marx leading this country than your President Bush, who continuously proves himself to be not only stupid, but incompetent as well.

Moderators, please delete the previous entry and put in the link instead. Plagiarism is a crime.

@8:55 - wow, is it possible for someone to suffer from head-up-his-* syndrome anymore than you? You didn’t even address the real issues of this war, you just went on to mock the poster, completely uncalled for. Did you even read the post?

Cognitive Dissonance: You know the war was and is a bad idea, but you supported it. Now that things are falling apart, you therefore rally in support of it even more strongly because to admit that you were wrong opens up uncomfortable cognitions that you could have been wrong all along.

Don’t worry, there’s help for you. I hope you get it in time.