Quote:
Originally Posted by Botnst
Circumstances are everything.
A more important quesdtion is not the capability of the military to win a war, the question is more accurately asked of the American people, who send their children to war and then surrender from afar.
B
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I agree 100%. The situation in Iraq was mishandled for the past three years. It is only now that we are doing what should have been done in 2004. However, the Democratic party and more and more Republicans are saying that all is lost there even in the face of things getting better.
You also have to remember that that the toll in Iraq is MUCH less than we saw in Vietnam and amounts to less than the losses on D-Day. The idea that we are doomed to fail in Iraq would have had Eisenhower, Patton, and MacArthur turning over in their graves.
As far as the other countries go, China is my biggest worry. They have the ability to paralyze us economically. They are also a unrepentant police state that should NEVER have been given Most Favored Nation status. They have modern American weapons thanks to Wild Bill Clinton and they have shown themselves to be ruthless (Tienanmen Square) I predict that there will be a day when they get tired of Taiwan and invade it. That would bring us into a conflict with them.
As far as Iran goes, there is a huge amount of people who want to be rid of the Mullahs. The Persian society has always been very cosmopolitan. It has only been since the Shah tried to modernize the countryside too quickly that the whole Islamic Republic thing came about. A Persian friend of mine, whose father was a cabinet minister under the Shah told me that she had supported the revolution thinking it would lead to greater democracy. Nobody expected Khomeni to take over. There have been large protests in the streets there that nobody reports on here.
I think that if we can do it right (big IF there) that country would be better suited for decapitation of its leadership than anywhere else.
As for Russia, they are slipping back into a police state as well. Look at the engineered elections they are gong to have with BOTH candidates hand picked by Putin. The thing is, their military has gone rapidly downhill and is now little more than a joke. Still they are dangerous and we should be trying to make them into more of an ally, as they were under Yeltsin.
Just my 2 cents...