Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: War

  • Richardson Misunderstands Diplomacy

    This story and video shows why Richardson really doesn’t understand how diplomacy actually works. He’s going to withdraw all the troops and then he’s going to go seriously into diplomacy.

    Let’s not make a mistake about this. When we withdraw from Iraq, we’re going to lose most of our ability to impact the country diplomatically. What some people refuse to understand is that there are people in the world whose motivations are not good, who are not going to be persuaded by our good arguments, and who prefer killing us to peace. Once the threat of force is gone, countries like Syria and Iran will have no reason to cooperate.

    The threat of sanctions is futile and always has been. The sanctions will leak, and Iran (the sanctions target specified by Richardson) will go right on doing what they intended to do all along.

    I support withdrawing from Iraq, but I do so because we cannot create a democratic Iraq through military means. We are now pursuing a goal we cannot accomplish. It’s not because our troops are not good; it’s because a unified and democratic Iraq is simply contrary to the nature of the country itself. We need to withdraw for two reasons: 1) People are dying for an impossible goal–horrible strategy, tragic reality; and 2) We need those troops to take action elsewhere. We need them, for example, as a credible threat to add to the negotiating mix with Iran, amongst many other things.

    The idea that we’ll pull out our troops and then settle in to serious diplomacy is absolutely ludicrous. After the withdrawal we aren’t going to have any chips to throw into the game in Iraq. It appears some politicians are living in dreamland and don’t have the courage to recognize the negative side effects of their policies.

  • Good Ruling on Detainees

    A panel of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the fourth district has ruled that the government cannot detain resident aliens as combatants.

    The appeals panel ruled that Bush had overreached his authority and that the Constitution protects U.S. citizens and legal residents such as Marri from unchecked military power. It also rejected the administration’s contention that it was not relevant that Marri was arrested in the United States and was living here legally on a student visa. (Source: Washington Post)

    This is a case in which I strongly agree with the court’s ruling. It is very easy for the military or security authorities to claim that they need additional powers in order to protect us, and when we are frightened, we tend to go along. Many people who would be horrified, hire an attorney, and sue the government agencies responsible should their own home be illegally entered nonetheless cheer when such a thing happens in a police drama, for example.

    We need to think about these things as though they could happen to us. How would we feel? What recourses would we have? Now there’s a strong probability that the individual involved in this case deserves to be arrested, but if that is true, then it should be possible to find a judge who will agree to that. He can be charged with whatever offenses are appropriate and tried.

    There is good reason to provide special circumstances for the battlefield, where there can be much confusion and time is critical. There are even good reasons for such considerations to apply to U. S. citizens who are caught fighting against the United States. But none of those circumstances do not obtain in this case. This is just a matter of convenience for the law enforcement authorities, a convenience we can’t afford to provide them.

  • Honoring the Troops

    Ten years in the U.S. Air Force have made me look differently at the news and feel differently on Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Memorial Day, of course, is to remember those who have fallen, but rarely do I attend a Memorial Day service any more at which there is not something done to honor both serving troops and veterans. As the armed forces medley was played at the service Sunday night in our nation’s capital, there was still a thrill, even sitting in my living room, when I heard “Off we go, into the wild blue yonder . . .”

    When a civilian hears about a troubled spot in the world, he or she will often think about the grave hardship for those who are in that situation. If it’s one that might involve U. S. forces, there is perhaps a moment of wondering whose son or daughter is headed off to help deal with the situation. But for ten years when I heard about certain trouble spots, such as Grenada, Panama, and then Iraq in the first gulf war, I knew to pack my bags and wait for the telephone call that would surely follow. There’s a big difference in the way you think about it when you are going to pack your bags.

    Now don’t get me wrong. My service was not some incredible series of hardships. As I was telling my wife, I was very anxious to go. It was what I had trained for and I wanted to do it! In fact, I had it rather light, compared to what our young people are going through in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. But what I did doesn’t even compare. I tell my family that I had the right perspective on war, assuming one has to be in it–looking down from about 32,000 or so feet. As an aircrew member (not pilot or flight crew, but working on an aircraft), I didn’t have to slog through sand hoping I didn’t encounter an IED, nor was I under hostile fire. But my experience gave me some extra sympathy.

    I remember a call from my best friend’s wife after the first gulf war. I had been so lucky as to be rotated out of Saudi Arabia before Desert Storm. I got back in the war in another area, and I will say simply that it was the lap of luxury by comparison. My best friend, on the other hand, stayed in Saudi Arabia and was extended for some time. New housing for which they had been waiting for months had become available and she had to move before he would return. Those of us at our unit who were back home managed to move her, and I got the task of assembling the kids’ swing set. The best I can say of that was that it stayed together!

    That word “extension” meant something different to her than it does to most people who watch television. It meant her husband wasn’t there to help with the move. It meant a son who was crying because he saw other people’s daddies coming home and wondered when his daddy was coming home. We hear things like, “Tours of duty will be extended 3 months,” (or 6 months, or whatever), and often we don’t think of the impact of that word on people’s lives. It’s not at all like having your boss tell you that you need to stay on a project you don’t like for a few extra months. To a serviceman, that’s three more months of danger for you, three more months of fear for your family, three more months for your finances to fall into disaster, three more months for your home to deteriorate, three more months of loneliness, and three more months of weariness. Yet you’ll do it, because you signed up for it, and it’s what you do.

    Back home people will appreciate the things you do mostly with words and mostly on holidays. I don’t mean to belittle words and special holidays. The moments in these various services and commemorations are important, but they are only words unless they become motivators to drive us to do better.

    I wrote a devotional for my wife’s list in which I asked whether we really thought that love, as defined in 1 Corinthians 13, was the sort of thing we talked about and wanted to listen to. To be honest, I don’t think it is. In that post I talked about a question my pastor asked on Sunday, about our view of celebrities and heroes. When we’re asked, we talk about how much we honor our heroes, but our actions show that we really care more about celebrities. The way you can tell is by checking what we listen to, what we watch, what we talk about, and where our money goes.

    It’s important that we think about this, because whatever happens in Iraq at this point, we are going to need our armed forces for some time to come. Terrorism isn’t over. We haven’t run out of rogue governments that will sponsor terrorist activity. The tendency for the civilian population is to forget about the troops quickly after wars. Right now, even with fighting going on, we are behaving in this country as though the war is over. There is the sense among many that if we can just get the troops home from Iraq, that will be it.

    But the state of the world is analogous to a ticking time bomb. It is not a matter of if we will again be the target of a terrorist attack, but of when. And when that happens we need to be ready to respond defensively, and ready to take action when appropriate targets present themselves. It is very easy for those who have opposed the war in Iraq (as I do) to slip into the assumption that this is it, that everything else can be solved through purely diplomatic means. But there are no purely diplomatic means. Diplomats only succeed because there are some unsung heroes holding the weapons of war. Even when diplomacy prevents a war, you can thank the folks who were willing to fight it. Nobody is stopped diplomatically where there is no force to back up the talks.

    To honor the troops we need to pay them better, equip them better, train them better, provide them better medical care, and honor them not just for a few moments at a time, or for a few weeks after they come home, but for the long term. You don’t have to pack your bags and flee from your home, because there are thousands of young men and women who will pack their bags and voluntarily head toward where the trouble is.

    A few moments of singing and talking doesn’t thank them enough for all that. If you don’t believe me, you go tiptoe through the minefields in a desert half way around the world. As I said, I’ve never done that. I had to go, but my life was comparatively comfortable. But I’m terribly thankful to this folks who have done it, or are doing it, or will be soon.

  • CIA Prewar Assessments and Fallout

    I found the following article interesting but in no way surprising:

    Months before the invasion of Iraq, U.S. intelligence agencies predicted that it would be likely to spark violent sectarian divides and provide al-Qaeda with new opportunities in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a report released Friday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Analysts warned that war in Iraq also could provoke Iran to assert its regional influence and “probably would result in a surge of political Islam and increased funding for terrorist groups” in the Muslim world.

    The intelligence assessments, made in January 2003 and widely circulated within the Bush administration before the war, said that establishing democracy in Iraq would be “a long, difficult and probably turbulent challenge.” The assessments noted that Iraqi political culture was “largely bereft of the social underpinnings” to support democratic development. (Source: Washington Post via MSNBC

    They obviously got all that right. I had been wondering how the experts could have missed the obvious problems with the rosy view of democratization resulting in a stable and peaceful new Iraq. It seems that they didn’t do quite that badly. They were excessively optimistic, however, on how long it would take to clean up and on the oil revenues that would result.

    The fact is that the war, as it stands, is a defeat. I would argue, however, that it is not a military defeat, but a political one. The objectives were not attainable. Every reasonable military objective has been obtained. The idea of going into Iraq and removing weapons of mass destruction or of toppling the nasty regime of Saddam Hussein were both obtainable goals. There were no weapons of mass destruction, so nobody could do that. Saddam Hussein has been toppled.

    At this point, our problem is that we’re expecting our military to create a democratic society, something they are in no way equipped to do. I cannot imagine how our government thought this would work. In an off-hand conversation the other day, I commented that it might be possible given a decade and perhaps 1.5 million troops. But even then I would suggest that the only option would be to create a strong and hopefully benevolent dictatorship or oligarchy favorable to our goals.

    As it is, we are trying to support a government that has next to no chance at all in its present form. Further, no likely governing group is Iraq is likely to fulfill all our goals, i.e. being a free government and suppressing international terrorism.

    In the 21st century style of war, the war on terror, we need greater strategic flexibility. Right now we need credible force to use in negotiating with countries such as Iran and North Korea. Because we are tied up trying to do the impossible in Iraq, we don’t really have the necessary force available.

    None of this–none whatsoever–is the fault of the troops who have done an extraordinary job in the face of the muddled and ill-considered objectives they were given. They should come back to victory parades, not because we as a nation have won, but because they have done even better than that. They have fought hard and effectively even without and end in sight.

    During the first gulf war, I knew approximately when I was coming home. Oh, there was the standard military shuffling of the paperwork, but then soon I was on a plane. We came home to wonderful welcome. Stores were offering discounts and everyone was celebrating. We had been in what the U.S. population likes–a short, victorious war with very light casualties. I was and am proud to have served.

    Our troops right now deserve no less. In fact, they deserve much more. They have labored through the heat of the day. Not only that, we need them for the future, and we need more volunteers like them. What is missing in the current debate over getting out of Iraq is any sense of further strategy for the war on terror. When we leave Iraq, no matter what the circumstances, radical Islam will still exist, terrorism will still exist, and there will still be states supporting terrorism. What are we going to do about them.

    Having muddled and impossible goals is bad. But having no goals at all is even worse. A strategy of reacting to individual acts of terrorism is not going to win the battle. Money will have to be spent on technology and personnel to improve security. We’re going to need the troops many more times. We need to be thinking about that.

  • Elgin Hushbeck’s New Blog

    Elgin Hushbeck is a friend and also business associate (I publish his books in the Consider Christianity series). He is a contributor to the Running Toward the Goal podcast.

    He’s started a new blog at Townhall.com, and for better or for worse his first blog touches an issue on which we disagree, the war in Iraq, under the title Is there a War on Terror?. I’m not going to get into answering it now, as I think I’ve blogged enough on the war for the moment, but Elgin’s post is a thoughtful view from the other side of this issue.

    I will comment only so far as to note that I agree that there is a substantial threat to be faced, and that complacency has set in. I simply don’t agree that even in the face of that the invasion of Iraq, at least with the stated objectives, was a good strategic choice. But that is a long discussion part of which we have already had in person.

    I think many readers of this blog will enjoy Elgin’s posts in this series, some because I annoy you and Elgin won’t, others because he’ll annoy you and you’ll have to think of more arguments, all of which will be to the good.

  • Anti Any War

    One has to wonder what some politicians are thinking, when one considers the following exchange (via MSNBC):

    It wasn’t so easy for Obama to avoid the firebombs from the two peaceniks on stage. Kucinich upbraided his rival for talking tough about the use of force against Iran. “I think that it’s important for people to reflect on the real meaning of that, that you’re setting the stage for another war,” Kucinich said.

    Obama replied that “it would be a profound mistake for us to initiate a war with Iran.” But that wasn’t enough for the former Alaska senator Mike Gravel. “Who the hell are we going to nuke,” he cried out. “Tell me, Barack. Barack, who do you want to nuke?” The Illinois senator, who has placed his opposition to the war at the heart of his campaign, could only smile. “I’m not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike, I promise.”

    One of my major reasons for opposing the war in Iraq is that it ties large numbers of troops in occupation duty, troops that might be needed in place like, well . . . Iran. And I find it profoundly troubling that some people find a way to portray Barack Obama as trigger-happy. I’m afraid his record supports nothing of the sort.

    I also must confess that I certainly hope we will not end up at war with Iran, but being ready for such a war is critical, considering that unlike Iraq, Iran actually is developing nuclear weapons. There’s a tremendous potential for danger there.

    I’d like to add one note here on withdrawal. One of the problems one encounters on opposing Republicans in this country seems to be that one has to ally oneself with Democrats. Neither party seems to be able to do all that well wielding power. It is very hard for the party that does not hold the executive power to manage military activities. I am totally in support of congressional oversight. I believe congress should be involved, but conducting a war in Iraq by means of a war in Washington is unlikely to produce good results.

    In addition, those who are looking for withdrawal now should consider the long term. When we invaded Iraq, I believed the long term outlook was bad. There would come a time when we would be facing continuing casualties and the American people would tire of the war. I’d be willing to stand up to popular opinion on that on one condition–that the war was actually ever going to be finished. I don’t believe it will. Now people are speaking of withdrawal as though it is going to produce peace. There was no peace there before we invade, and there’s going to be even less peace left behind if we withdraw. Should opponents of the war succeed in forcing a withdrawal, especially one based on a timetable rather than a restatement of obtainable objectives, then you can expect that the news will be filled with stories of people dying because we withdrew.

    I think the war was sold to the American people on the basis of unreasonably happy expectations. To some extent withdrawal is being sold on the same basis. Iraq’s natural state is not peaceful–it never has been. Peace, joy, and brotherhood will not be the result of our withdrawal. This will also not be the last time that force may be used. Hopefully the next time it will be used in a precise and well-planned way. Probably not, but I can always hope.

  • War Failings: Clear and Attainable Objective

    There’s a good article on MSNBC.com titled: Fundamental failures led to current Iraq crisis. My arguments against the war have been primarily based no the first point:

    Lesson 1: Select an attainable objective
    While the Administration tried to build a case against Saddam on the basis of weapons of mass destruction, a principal motivation, ironically, was to take a short-cut to peace in the Middle East. Troubled by the theocracy in Iran and by Muslim revolutionaries who have sworn to destroy all of the regimes in the region, the Bush administration tried to inoculate the Middle East with democracy.

    The other points are excellent from a military point of view, but without an attainable objective, they would clearly be pointless. “Attainable” also has to be judged in the context of the available resources including political will. I think the actual objectives in Iraq fail these tests almost from start to finish.

    When we fight for an unattainable objective, the only result is dead people. If we fight, but don’t provide the means to obtain the objectives, again, the only result is dead people. In other words, sound strategy is critical.

  • American Civilization, Christian Faith, and Cultural Clashes

    How’s that for a broad title? 🙂

    I’m going to annoy quite a few people with this post, but I have noticed for a number of years that Christians in America often conflate Christianity and American patriotism. This goes to extremes with certain Christian reconstructionists who actually believe that America is the new chosen nation, destined to accomplish God’s will in the world. This manifests itself in a determination to make America a home of “Christian” values, meaning their particular brand of Christianity, and not anything actually having to do with Jesus. Further, it manifests itself as we identify America’s interests with Christianity’s interests.

    One of the most disturbing aspects of this was those American Christians who regarded the invasion of Iraq as advancing God’s kingdom, because the American and UK troops paved the way for Christian missionaries. Christians who move in on the heals of invading forces should give serious consideration to the damage done to God’s kingdom when it is attached to the sword of a state. Christianity has spread best when it was carried by persecuted missionaries, and it has deteriorated quickly when backed by the sword (or gun, or tank).

    I grew up as the child of missionary parents. About half of my childhood and youth was spent overseas. I grew up watching cricket, and not baseball, and knowing soccer as football, and not American football. In fact, when I first watched American football I couldn’t comprehend why it was called “football” as they only thing people seemed to use their feet for was to run. The rare occasions on which someone actually kicked the ball produced less points than running.

    Now many Americans look at me immediately with pity, regarding my childhood as deprived. No baseball? No football? You poor thing, missing the essentials of childhood! Well, I disagree. I recall as a teenager riding around town in Georgetown, Guyana, and arguing with a very good Guyanese friend about the recognition of the People’s Republic of China as the proper holder of the Chinese seat on the security council, and not the Republic of China on Taiwan. “You Americans don’t understand how the world thinks,” he told me. And he was right.

    On the other hand I learned a great deal by growing up that way. I was the only white kid in my youth group, and I have never since been able to look at being a minority in quite the same way. I now love baseball, mostly because my two stepsons, one of whom is a professional pitcher, dragged me into it. But I can truly understand how the subtleties of the game drive a newcomer wild. I also understand how non-American Christians can look at us and wonder how we can regard some of our attitudes as “Christian” when to them they appear purely American and somewhat unChristian.

    Early during the war on Iraq I was on a mission trip in the transcarpathian region of the Ukraine, and I found that there were young ethnic Hungarians being pressured to sign up as “volunteers” to be sent to Iraq. Their perspective and that of their families on the internationalization of that war was quite different. Now I’m not trying to blame any particular person(s) for the plight of those Hungarian young men, but it was wrong, and they had a very different perspective from most Americans at that time.

    This morning I read a post by Peter Kirk at Speaker of Truth. Peter and I have generally agreed on the war up to now, but I can see from this post that his opposition to the war is even deeper seated than mine. I don’t intend to debate those points, but rather I’d like to ask American Christians to go and read the words of a dedicated British Christian in opposition to our war on terror and the way it is being conducted. I noted also in my mornings blog feeds this agreeement from another Christian across the pond.

    I think it is important and fair for me to point out, however, that this was a response to another blogger from across the pond Adrian Warnock, with whom I have frequently disagreed. His post was a response to a human interest story from Chuck Colson. To his credit, Colson does admit that there are moderate Muslims and that the cultural clash he describes is with “radicals.”

    All of this brought back to me the issue of just who is a terrorist. I have no problem at all regarding those who flew aircraft into the twin towers as terrorists. They were evil people and they committed an evil act. I do believe there are evil people, you see. Those who train their young people to go out as suicide bombers qualify, in my view, as evil.

    But there is a state of desperation that makes people vulnerable to becoming victims of such evil people. Now here’s where people are going to say that I’m making excuses for terrorists, and blaming American victims for the evil deeds of terrorists. But let me use the analogy of rape. If a woman I love were raped in a bad section of town, I would not blame her as the victim. The person who committed rape committed an evil deed. Rape is not the fault of the victim.

    But at the same time I can do several things that might prevent such an event. I can get training for those I love in how to keep from being a victim of crime. I can advocate improved law enforcement in the community where this action happened. I can advocate better education and better opportunities in that neighborhood to improve their lives, increase their realistic hopes, and reduce the likelihood that they will turn to crime. (Since someone is sure to point this out, let me add that I don’t believe rape is some kind of manifestation of low income level. What would make the community safer would be a population that was willing to help prevent crime and keep their own neighborhood safe. On the other hand, I believe robbery is often the result of an absence of hope.)

    Now taking action to prevent an attack does not mean that I blame the victims. It means I want to make it less likely for the victims to be victimized. This applies as much or more to terrorism. Noting that there are causes of terrorism does not blame the victims. It might just point the way to improving our chances in the war on terror.

    Somehow many of us in America have gotten the idea that if you just kill enough terrorists, terrorism will end. People often point me to Israel as a specific case. “We need to respond to terrorism like the Israelis do,” they tell me. But the Israelis are still living under constant threat of terrorist attack. Now I don’t want the Israelis to give up and go away. I think they have every right to defend themselves. I don’t blame them for going after terrorists on their home ground or taking security measures. But it’s important to notice that those measures alone have not brought an end to terrorism.

    I am not one of those who believes that we don’t have to fight a war on terror. But I think that as a duty to ourselves we need to be very careful how we fight such a war, and precisely who gets injured and killed. Families in Iraq and Afghanistan are not generally going to distinguish carefully whether their loved ones were killed by an act of terror, or by an act of war by a legitimate government. They’re going to be angry. I’m fairly certain it’s impossible to conduct a war without errors, and that someone is going to get killed who is not supposed to. But doesn’t that make it even more critical to be very careful where and when you go to war or take any violent action and make sure that the violence is intelligently aimed at a good end?

    If this is a cultural war, we aren’t winning it, except in our own minds. I think it’s funny that some pro-war folks here in the United States accuse me of not realizing we’re in a cultural clash, while at the same time acting as though we’re in a purely physical clash. Do you believe you will win a cultural war solely through physical violence? Do you think that we’ll win a cultural war by randomly attacking various countries?

    There are Muslim radicals based in many other countries of the Middle East. If we have a cultural clash, we should include Saudi Arabia on the other side. Surely their treatment of their own people qualifies as just plain wrong. Yet they are our allies. Bluntly, we aren’t behaving at all as if it’s a cultural clash. People in a cultural clash use ideas, and when they do use violence, they use it very carefully.

    One last point–if this is a cultural clash, we need cultural allies. We need physical allies as well. I have been told repeatedly by supporters of the war on Iraq that if those wimps in other countries, especially Europe, who don’t want to stand up to terrorism don’t want to support us, #*%$ them! We can take care of it ourselves. But that view is simply idiotic. Look at what’s going on now. Our reserve and guard troops are exhausted. Yes, they’ll keep going and going like the energizer bunny, but it will be harder and harder to recruit and eventually we’ll be past the point where even a substantial draft will take care of it. Beyond that, there are still other military powers in the world. We’re not up to being a world empire, either physically or morally.

    If we think this is a cultural clash, we need to arm ourselves to act in the cultural arena. Right now we’re failing. A good start on that would be to listen to some folks in the rest of the world. They don’t see us as we see ourselves.

  • Turning Point? What Turning Point?

    From the Washington Post:

    Feb. 22, 2006, is the day the Bush administration says everything in Iraq changed.

    Before that day, military and administration officials frequently explain, Iraq was moving in the right direction: National elections had been held, and a government was forming. But then the bombing of the golden dome shrine in Samarra derailed that positive momentum and unleashed a wave of brutal sectarian violence.

    This is what gets me about people’s reaction to this war. I simply do not understand the number of people who have changed their mind about it. I’m especially annoyed with politicians like Hillary Clinton who seems to think she was deceived about the war. I commend John Edwards for saying he was wrong and apologizing. Nonetheless, I simply question all of their good judgment, and I have to ask what it is about this war that is surprising such as to cause them to change their minds? What on earth did they expect would happen?

    The one doubtful issue was the presence of weapons of mass destruction. I opposed the war even if such weapons existed in the region not because I think a nation like Iraq, then or now, should have such weapons but because I didn’t think that was the most useful place to get them anyhow. People overestimate the value of a large country, friendly to terrorists, as a base. No doubt it is useful, but terrorists are often, unfortunately, more creative than their opponents. Governments keep thinking massive logistics, coordination, detailed planning, and command and control, while terrorists work around those things as necessary.

    Nonetheless, even though I personally didn’t think it merited such priority, destroying materials and weapons would have been a reasonable goal for a war. It could be accomplished, finished, checked off, and declared a victory. The Iraqis were acting guilty, and there was enough evidence for a warrant.

    But again, even so, there was the problem of what you’re going to leave behind. From a military point of view, you need a specific objective and the means to accomplish it. From the political point of view, and even from a more strategic military point of view, you need to see a situation develop from accomplishing those objectives that is better than the previous situation. Is Iraq less or more dangerous when all is said and done than it was before? And that is where I see the problem. Our troops didn’t fail. Certainly there have been problems of tactics and logistics, and political maneuvering that is not the greatest. But the one big problem with this war was there before we went in and remains there now. It hasn’t changed. There simply is no “after the war” scenario that is going to make things better than they were before.

    We want contradictory things. Democracy, but no Islamic republic. The will of the Iraqi people, when the Iraqi people themselves divide into community without a strong, common national interest. Iraqi sovereignty, but measures that guarantee the security of the United States.

    If we could accomplish all those goals, the cost in lives would be reasonable. I know many people will protest, but I’m a veteran myself, and when you go into the military, you know you might die. You may not think that you, personally will die, but you must be ready to put your life on the line for your country. If I were still in the military, that would be what I’d do. Further I expect politicians to be able to look at the folks in the military services and ask whether their lives will be well-expended. A peaceful, stable, democratic Iraq without weapons of mass destruction would be worth such lives.

    The problem is that it isn’t going to happen, not with any amount of resources and lives we have at our disposal. That’s the tragedy of all this. There’s no turning point. Our troops have done well with the resources and the goals they were given, but the goals were badly laid out–not just badly stated. They were bad goals.

    I recall a national championship game in which Nebraska played Florida and defeated them overwhelmingly. A radio commentator and Florida fan were discussing the game the next day on a call-in show, and the fan asked what was the turning point of the game. “Turning point?” said the commentator. “The turning point was the singing of the national anthem.” In the case of Iraq, the turning point was when the military was sent in to do a job that was not politcally feasible. No blame should attach to them for not accomplishing the impossible.

  • Political Battles and Teamwork

    In a church I used to attend there was a gentleman, already gone on to glory by the time I arrived, but whose presence still lingered. Whenever there was an argument in the church council about how to proceed, it was certain that his memory would be invoked at some point. There were two reasons he stood out so in church debates. First, he fought for his point of view fiercely until the decision was made. Second, once the council vote was over, even if he lost, he was part of the team.

    In one remember instance he had strongly opposed an extension of the church’s facility. He thought it was a bad use of money. He disapproved of the timing. He believed that the church could not afford it at the time. The vote went against him. What next? He was the biggest fundraiser for the new project. He was a team player.

    One of the problems I see in this country now is that elections have become a 24/7/365/100 (as in 100 years) project. We never quit campaigning. We never quit debating the candidates. We are constantly in a state of political conflict, not just in Washington, but throughout the country. This can be good and bad. It can involve all the people in constantly making, and reviewing decisions. But it can also make it hard for us to come together, behave like a team, and carry out those policies on which we do agree.

    (more…)