Obama Revisited: The Surge Will Fail

I said before we invaded that Iraq ouwld be a mess for many years.
Too many different factions want power.
How long till they are using the weapons we ONCE AGAIN armed them with against us?

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Democracy does not magically fix all problems in a fragmented society.
As a matter of fact it has not been working to well for us lately.
 
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He was wrong. It happens to us all occasionally. I see no reason to have a hissy fit over it.



Obama was one of a few that voted to CUT OFF FUNDING in Iraq--in his cut and run strategy. Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton didn't go along with that move. This while our troops were on the ground fighting. He deserves absolutely no credit what-so-ever for this VICTORY.

He stated the surge would fail--he critized General Petrayous--he criticized everyone who was for the surge in Iraq. He even stated it would fail while first campaigning to become President--and when it was already known that the surge was working.

Then he goes on to state that we spent 1 trillion on this war-over the last 7-1/2 years--while he has spent twice that much in the last 19 months--which hasn't done a dam bit of good.
 
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Can you BELIEVE this man is now the COMMANDER of Chief of our Troops.

And now taking CREDIT for DOING ABSOLUTLY..........NOTHING.

Friggen sick

Oh I can't agree with that, I don't think there is much of Obama "taking credit." I certainly didn't hear it. His surrogates and sycophants are, but not him.

While I agree that it was the Surge which he opposed that gave him the situation he truly did inherit (winning in Iraq), there was still a lot of places where he could have totally fucked this up and he didn't. So I do give our President credit for correctly executing this plan (and no doubt overseeing details along the way) and getting us here. It's sick and stupid that he played partisan political hack during the election, but he is to be commended for setting aside that stupid campaign rhetoric once he was in charge.

Now with a much better position, I can laugh at the extremes selling bullshit. It was Obama's plan first (ha!), Bush was clueless until he wasn't, Obama hampered the original plan (um, no), Obama did nothing (far from it, he kept Gates and that's significant).

I'll sell some armchair bullshit of my own: the anti-war left was wrong when they said the US could not win this. They were wrong when they said that Obama was going to fix it. They were wrong when they said that Bush was wrong and Iraq was going to degenerate into chaos because of the surge.

But, I say that in today's context. Iraq is a sovereign nation today. This is a day to celebrate. Head down to the next VFW picnic in your town and bring some beer. Throw your own victory party for those who delivered it.
 
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and the surge was only marginally successful at best. Sure... it stopped sectarian violence, but the Anbar awakening had a big part to play in that as well... and the MAIN purpose of the surge was not just to stop violence for stopping violence's sake, but to stop the violence so that the sunnis, shiites and kurds could resolve the differences that had them at one another's throats. THAT NEVER happened... and as we pull our combat forces out of Iraq, we see the sectarian violence begin to ramp up again, and we see the inevitable expansion of Iran's influence over the shiite majority in Iraq.

Obama was absolutely right in 2002 when he suggested that we avoid a war in Iraq to begin with. We would be MUCH better off today if we had concentrated on the guys who attacked us and not worried so much about Saddam....he was a paper tiger and we have wasted more blood and treasure than any of us can even measure on this stupid stupid war. Next summer and our complete departure cannot come soon enough for me.

How would that have worked out with Zarqawi relocating Al Qaeda operations to Iraq? How would that threat have been thwarted?
 
Hey Main, you still up in the Great White North? You better get movin!!

Anyway, I think hindsight is 20/20 in the case of attacking Iraq: really, how could you positively confirm WMD in the hands of a kook until you look for them yourself?

However, there certainly wasn't any reason to stay any longer than it took to confirm this.

Yes, yes, yes....no doubt Iran would have tried to absorb shiite-Iraq, and the Saudi's would need to watch their backs, and some poor country might decide to absorb Kurds (yuck) and Iraqi-sunnis that didn't flee to London....but who CARES???

one of dubya's rare foreign affairs victories was getting Saddam to allow weapons inspectors back IN to Iraq in the months before our invasion. If dubya had just been a bit more patient, he would have found out that he didn't need to invade Iraq to disarm Saddam... AND... the whole premise for why Saddam's supposed stockpiles of WMDs were SOOOOO critically important was the BULLSHIT lie that a secular pan-arab ba'athist would EVER be stupid enough to give ANY weapons to radical wahhabists whose primary mission was the dissolution of his very nation state... it is a testament to just how fucking stupid and gullible Americans are that the majority of us bought into that ridiculous notion to begin with.

Saddam did three things a whole hell of a lot better than we do them:

1. he acted as a very effective foil to Iranian regional hegemony.
2. he kept radical islamists from gaining any significant foothold in his country
3. he kept sunnis and shiites from slaughtering one another.

We would be better off today if we had let him continue to do those things and spent our blood and treasure annihilating Al Qaeda.

p.s... and the house is going on the market (tentatively) next spring and we're Merida bound as soon as it sells.

I think you make some very good points.

HOWEVER, some seem to have been removed from historical context, which include:

1. Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, and the US leadership in reclaiming that nation's independence

2. 9/11

3. Saddam's use of WMD

4. Saddam's use of SCUD missiles

5. Saddam's squirrly treatment of UN sanctioned inspections

Under all these circumstances, I see no reason the USA shouldn't have invaded Iraq to take an objective inventory of the situation, and, finding no WMD, gotten the hell out, leaving some Friendly Baathist General behind to run the circus.

Not to mention Saddam's open support for terrorism, his lack of ability to handle and/or implicit support for Ansar al-Islam precursors, his genocidal history, his Oil For Food alliance, and foremost his pattern of doing anything and everything possible to gain power. I don't buy the simpleton argument that he and Bin Laden were diametrically opposed due to differences in perspective of Islam. I don't buy the "blood enemy of Iran" bullshit. He had no problem sending checks to the families of Fatah terrorists which were backed by Iran, he had no problem sending his emissaries to offer Bin Laden safe harbor in Iraq.

I realize this is inconvenient for those who want to return to the days when Saddam was merely a bad man "over there," the focus of Democrats making political hay by talking tough but not doing much.
 
while we disagree about the dangers presented by Saddam, I would agree to your get in get out scenario as a solution I could live with.

We achieved all of our military objectives (in the conventional "win the war" sense) in 2006. By early 2007 it became an exercise in nation building and in my opinion that's when it was time to go. Not redeploy to Kuwait, Turkey, and Bahrain, but go. Declare victory and GTFO. Come back if needed, but end that war then.

Major blunder by Bush, IMO.
 
He was wrong. It happens to us all occasionally. I see no reason to have a hissy fit over it.



Obama was one of a few that voted to CUT OFF FUNDING in Iraq--in his cut and run strategy. Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton didn't go along with that move. This while our troops were on the ground fighting. He deserves absolutely no credit what-so-ever for this VICTORY.

He stated the surge would fail--he critized General Petrayous--he criticized everyone who was for the surge in Iraq. He even stated it would fail while first campaigning to become President--and when it was already known that the surge was working.

Then he goes on to state that we spent 1 trillion on this war-over the last 7-1/2 years--while he has spent twice that much in the last 19 months--which hasn't done a dam bit of good.

Ok true, but that was just campaign bullshit. He certainly didn't cut and run when he took charge. He certainly didn't fuck up a working plan. He at least deserves credit for that.
 
He was wrong. It happens to us all occasionally. I see no reason to have a hissy fit over it.



Obama was one of a few that voted to CUT OFF FUNDING in Iraq--in his cut and run strategy. Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton didn't go along with that move. This while our troops were on the ground fighting. He deserves absolutely no credit what-so-ever for this VICTORY.

He stated the surge would fail--he critized General Petrayous--he criticized everyone who was for the surge in Iraq. He even stated it would fail while first campaigning to become President--and when it was already known that the surge was working.

Then he goes on to state that we spent 1 trillion on this war-over the last 7-1/2 years--while he has spent twice that much in the last 19 months--which hasn't done a dam bit of good.

Ok true, but that was just campaign bullshit. He certainly didn't cut and run when he took charge. He certainly didn't fuck up a working plan. He at least deserves credit for that.

He deserves credit for getting the hell out of the way.....nothing more.

And what you say on a political campaign has consequences.

The problem with some voters is they can accept what proves to be lies during a campaign and write it off as politics as usual.

Problem is politics as usual isn't working very well for us these days.
 
Obama was one of a few that voted to CUT OFF FUNDING in Iraq--in his cut and run strategy. Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton didn't go along with that move. This while our troops were on the ground fighting. He deserves absolutely no credit what-so-ever for this VICTORY.

He stated the surge would fail--he critized General Petrayous--he criticized everyone who was for the surge in Iraq. He even stated it would fail while first campaigning to become President--and when it was already known that the surge was working.

Then he goes on to state that we spent 1 trillion on this war-over the last 7-1/2 years--while he has spent twice that much in the last 19 months--which hasn't done a dam bit of good.

Ok true, but that was just campaign bullshit. He certainly didn't cut and run when he took charge. He certainly didn't fuck up a working plan. He at least deserves credit for that.

He deserves credit for getting the hell out of the way.....nothing more.

And what you say on a political campaign has consequences.

The problem with some voters is they can accept what proves to be lies during a campaign and write it off as politics as usual.

Problem is politics as usual isn't working very well for us these days.

I agree.
 
Obama does deserve credit for letting his generals handle Iraq - for the most part it has proven a successful endeavor since he took office.

As for Afghanistan - not so much. What a clusterfu-k that has become...
 

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