Thread: Fox's Iraq War Cheerleaders Are Crestfallen Over Withdrawal

Originally Posted by pbrauer

What a bunch of douche-bags, they don't even mention that Bush's Status of Forces agreement with Iraq expires 12/31/11 and the U.S. and Iraq couldn't come to terms on a new one.

Many of the commentators in the Fox News stable were outspoken advocates of the war in Iraq. They have reacted to President Obama's announcement that all U.S. troops will leave Iraq by the end of the year by expressing disapproval and a desire to remain in Iraq for decades, despite the fact that the central justification for the war -- Iraq's supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction -- turned out to be completely wrong.

On the October 22 edition of Special Report, Weekly Standard writer Stephen Hayes and Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer trashed the Obama administration over the announcement. Hayes called the withdrawal "a major setback" and "a disservice to our men and women in uniform," and Krauthammer said it was a "big, big failure."

Krauthammer also endorsed keeping tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq "the same way that we retained forces in Korea, Germany, and Japan 50 years ago, to our advantage":

Fox's Iraq War Cheerleaders Are Crestfallen Over Withdrawal | Media Matters for America

So is this a thread about how awful Fox News is, or what? Thread's subject line is "Fox's Iraq War Cheerleaders Are Crestfallen Over Withdrawal ," so I'm not sure what the point is here. That warmonger-dog Fox reporters are bad people who want more American blood to be spilled? That as "cheerleaders" they enjoy American service-people dying?

What's your point?

Originally Posted by nota bene

So is this a thread about how awful Fox News is, or what? Thread's subject line is "Fox's Iraq War Cheerleaders Are Crestfallen Over Withdrawal ," so I'm not sure what the point is here. That warmonger-dog Fox reporters are bad people who want more American blood to be spilled? That as "cheerleaders" they enjoy American service-people dying?

What's your point?

Maybe you just don't understand because you think the war was worthwhile. So much money and blood, for what?? And these commentators want more?

From the onset I supported the war in Iraq and Afghanistan....now im all for getting out of Iraq...and after Kharzai making the statement last week that if there was a war between pakistan and the USA he would side with Pakistan..I say screw him and lets get out of afghanistan and in a month they will assisinate him like they have tried a few times already and we saved him....ITS UNREAL that he could make that statement

Originally Posted by lpast

From the onset I supported the war in Iraq and Afghanistan....now im all for getting out of Iraq...and after Kharzai making the statement last week that if there was a war between pakistan and the USA he would side with Pakistan..I say screw him and lets get out of afghanistan and in a month they will assisinate him like they have tried a few times already and we saved him....ITS UNREAL that he could make that statement

It IS unreal, but hardly surprising. Countries like Afghanistan will always see the US as interlopers no matter what we're trying to do. They give religious and cultural dictates higher importance than the prosperity of their nation. If Afghanistan and Pakistan had "worked" with the US instead of taking advantage we could've been finished there in a few short years. Since that whole exercise went so poorly, it's unlikely we'll repeat that mistake in Syria.

Originally Posted by nota bene, replying to the OP

So is this a thread about how awful Fox News is, or what? Thread's subject line is "Fox's Iraq War Cheerleaders Are Crestfallen Over Withdrawal ," so I'm not sure what the point is here. That warmonger-dog Fox reporters are bad people who want more American blood to be spilled? That as "cheerleaders" they enjoy American service-people dying?

What's your point?

I would propose that both of those are valid points. While they may not 'enjoy' the actual deaths, as you hyperbolically put it, they accept them as a necessary sacrifice for their agenda (world domination).

to OP:

Fox News watched the "Iraq war" like it was a movie! Stephen Colbert is more patriotic than Fox News and he's a comedian!

Originally Posted by Karl

I would propose that both of those are valid points. While they may not 'enjoy' the actual deaths, as you hyperbolically put it, they accept them as a necessary sacrifice for their agenda (world domination).

You owe me a soda and a keyboard. That world domination crap was more than even I could take without busting out laughing. Your posts should come with a warning, "Don't take a big swig of Sprite just prior to reading. You'll end up wearing it."

The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free

"America, it is frequently urged, cannot return to its traditional foreign policy of nonintervention. We live in a world that constantly exposes us to danger. Unless America acts as a world policeman, a conflagration far distant from us can soon spread and strike at our essential national interests. The lessons of 9-11 must not be forgotten. Fortunately, America is far and away the most powerful nation in the world. We can, if only we maintain a resolute will, act to promote world order: if we do not, no one else can act in our place.

This disastrous line of thought has embroiled us in futile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; now neoconservatives urge us to take drastic action against Iran, lest that nation secure nuclear weapons. Once more, the contention supporting a strike at Iran is that the United States must act as a hegemonic power to maintain a stable world. Christopher Preble provides an outstanding critical analysis of this dangerous doctrine in what must count as one of the best defenses of a restrained and rational foreign policy since Eric Nordlinger's Isolationism Reconfigured.[1]

Even those inclined to give credence to the siren song of a Pax Americana must confront reality. Though America may be the world's mightiest nation, it cannot achieve the grandiose goals of the interventionists. America is strong, but not strong enough.

But our military power has come up short in recent years. Although the U.S. military scored decisive victories against those individuals in Afghanistan and Iraq who were foolish enough to stand and fight, it has proved incapable of enforcing a rule of law, or delivering security, in many parts of post-Taliban Afghanistan or post-Saddam Iraq… We know that our men and women in uniform can accomplish remarkable things. But we have also begun to appreciate their limitations, the most important of which being that they cannot be everywhere at once. (pp. 37—8)"

"The financial burdens of hegemony are difficult to overestimate. America spends more on the military than all other industrialized nations combined. Defenders of our current policy counter by saying that our defense spending is no higher than many other countries as a percentage of GDP, and lower than some. Preble dismisses this as irrelevant:

There are a very few poor countries that spend a larger percentage of their meager GDP, but that translates to far less military capacity in real terms … what a country spends as a share of its GDP doesn't tells us very much about how much it should spend. (p. 67)

Talk of percentages occludes the immense amount of money the hegemonic policy demands. As an example, the Iraq War, according to an estimate by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, will cost

between $2.7 trillion in direct costs to the federal treasury, to as much as $5 trillion in terms of the total impact of the war on the U.S. economy… Although critics challenged aspects of the Stiglitz/Bilmes research, two of their central arguments are beyond dispute — and they apply not merely to the Iraq War, but to all wars. First, we spend more money on our military when it is at war than when it is at peace. Second, having waged war, we pay more over the lifetimes of those injured and disabled than we would have paid if they had never fought. (p. 39)"

The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free by David Gordon

Originally Posted by Catawba

But our military power has come up short in recent years. Although the U.S. military scored decisive victories against those individuals in Afghanistan and Iraq who were foolish enough to stand and fight, it has proved incapable of enforcing a rule of law, or delivering security, in many parts of post-Taliban Afghanistan or post-Saddam Iraq… We know that our men and women in uniform can accomplish remarkable things. But we have also begun to appreciate their limitations, the most important of which being that they cannot be everywhere at once. (pp. 37—8)"

The US military has not "come up short." It has performed it's primary task, that of engaging another professional military force and winning, to very near perfection. In a standup fight, the US military outfights any other beyond anyone's wildest dreams. I would also wager, that the US military could engage and outfight multiple country's "professional military" and emerge victorious in all engagements with ease. Not being everywhere at once isn't exactly the problem.

America's new foes are a completely different breed. They don't hide in a hardened shelter, they hide in a hut with a grandmother and granddaughters. They don't wear uniforms to clearly identify the fighters from the civilians. America's foes don't launch offensives from bases located safely away from civilians, our new foes launch from orphanages and mosques in the hopes that counter-battery fire will kill civilians in the area. Their most powerful weapon is not an RPG or a Katyusha rocket...it is the Press. Where photos of their own mangled children, whom they arranged to get injured, are broadcast to the detriment of the attacker. The US military is indeed ill-prepared for this kind of war. The former foes of the US and USSR had never conceived drawing fire on their own civilians, or fighting by strapping bombs onto the mentally handicapped and sending them to blow up crowded markets. At least the former foes could agree on a semblance of humanity.

I do agree with the author that we are seeing the limitations of the military. The US designed it's military for a standup fight with a powerful foe, the USSR. It was never designed to be a police force. Armies are very bad at being policemen even if individuals are conscientious and careful. They don't have the proper structure and operational outlook. Changes have been made. A greater reliance on HUMINT (HUMan INTelligence services) rather than total reliance on ELINT (ELectronic INTelligence services) was a good move. Current weaponry is being redesigned less for maximum effect and more for an exactly right amount of effect to avoid civilian casualties. But all of this is happening very slowly.

The US military and the Western Press are both culpable in the emergence of this new macabre style of war, where civilians are more valuable as a statistic than as human beings. The US military should not be sucked in by the obvious ploy to get civilians killed and the press' ignorance that an obvious ploy existed at all. The actions of both encourage the new war and thus help propagate the horrors we see today.

My feeling is that the troops were withdrawn to the home front due to civil unrest. I don't think people realize how big the popular protesting is about to get in the coming year.