Bob Herbert's War

In the New York Times, Bob Herbert tries to make the point that he has absolutely no understanding of geopolitics and military affairs. In an article titled, "How Many Deaths Will It Take?" Herbert pretends to know something about the world order and what it takes to win a war.

Starting with the title, I ask the following questions:

How Many Deaths Will It Take?

This would be the appropriate title to an article about the number of attacks it would take on the US for John Kerry to respond militarily without asking permission from France, Germany, Russia, or China.

By BOB HERBERT
It was Vietnam all over again - the heartbreaking head shots captioned with good old American names:

Jose Casanova, Donald J. Cline Jr., Sheldon R. Hawk Eagle, Alyssa R. Peterson.

And they accuse Bush of exploiting the war for political purposes. How about printing the names of our military men and women who actually believe in what they are fighting for in a self-serving column? They believe in their fight, unlike Bob Herbert, who believes that the only thing worth fighting for is government hand-outs.

Eventually there'll be a fine memorial to honor the young Americans whose lives were sacrificed for no good reason in Iraq. Yesterday, under the headline "The Roster of the Dead," The New York Times ran photos of the first thousand or so who were killed.

Again, there is no way the NYTimes is simply exploiting the names of our fallen war heroes for political purposes.

They were sent off by a president who ran and hid when he was a young man and his country was at war. They fought bravely and died honorably. But as in Vietnam, no amount of valor or heroism can conceal the fact that they were sent off under false pretenses to fight a war that is unwinnable.

I guess anyone who joins our national guard is running and hiding. I wonder where Bob Herbert was at the same time? And PS: who says this war is unwinnable? Bob Herbert, military expert? And what false pretenses? Every developed nation in the world has an intelligence service that believed as we did that Saddam had WMD. We relied not just on our own intelligence, but that of England, France and Russia to reach our decision to fight. Plus, Saddam played a game of chicken and lost. Even assuming that he did not have WMD, he bluffed that he did, and the onus was on him to meet the deadline to produce documentation that his WMD programs had been dismantled. He didn't, we responded. What's false about that?

How many thousands more will have to die before we acknowledge that President Bush's obsession with Iraq and Saddam Hussein has been a catastrophe for the United States?

Bush was no more obsessed with Iraq than Al Gore was. Gore actually declared that he would have fought the same war several times prior to Gulf War II. Only historical revisionists would claim otherwise.

Joshua T. Byers, Matthew G. Milczark, Harvey E. Parkerson 3rd, Ivory L. Phipps.

Let's exploit the names of a few more soldiers that we (the NYTimes) are happy were killed so we could trumpet the 1,000 dead "milestone." Unbelievable.

Fewer and fewer Americans believe the war in Iraq is worth the human treasure we are losing and the staggering amounts of money it is costing. But no one can find a way out of this tragic mess, which is why that dreaded word from the Vietnam era - quagmire - has been resurrected. Most Washington insiders agree with Senator John McCain, who said he believes the U.S. will be involved militarily in Iraq for 10 or 20 more years.

I think Bob Herbert called this war a quagmire about two weeks after it began. I don't think he has ever viewed any action in Iraq by this Republican president as anything but a quagmire. The "resurrection" as far as Herbert is concerned occurred somewhere around the end of March 2003 and he has been happy to use the terms as often as he likes.

PS: Need I remind anyone that now nearly 60 years later, we still have troops in Germany and Japan, and that our troops in Germany were essential to their protection as late as the fall of the Berlin wall during Bush I's presidency. 10 or 20 years seems about right. And anyone who thought we would walk in, then out knows nothing about war and national security. Of course we'll be there for many years, and I don't think Bush ever promised anything different. He talked of troop reductions, but not complete withdrawals. Kerry, of course, has mentioned that we would like our troops to return home by the end of his first term. In my previous post, I mentioned how this will play directly into Al Qaeda's plans.

To what end? You can wave goodbye to the naïve idea that democracy would take root in Iraq and then spread like the flowers of spring throughout the Middle East. That was never going to happen. So what are we there for, other than to establish a permanent military stronghold in the region and control the flow of Iraqi oil?

"That was never going to happen." Sounds a little racist to me. Does Herbert believe Arabs and other Middle Eastern ethnicities cannot govern themselves? Or cannot make rational decisions based on what they observe? And is it naive? What are we supposed to do, allow the corrupt governments with access to bigger and more destructive weapons fester into eternity in a world as small as ours? Take no action, that is the definition of Democratic foreign policy.

PS: Controlling the flow of Iraqi oil is a necessary geopolitical goal. If we do not, then countries that may be first in line for it as those such as: North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan. Do we really want to give these countries, with the governments they now have in power, additional resources to gain the strength they need to become international rivals economically and militarily to the US? Remember, China didn't have the bomb until Clinton gave the Chinese "peaceful" supercomputers in exchange for campaign contributions. That technology pushed their program over the top. Access to cheap oil resources might give unfriendly regimes a similar boost in other areas that we cannot afford to allow them at present. Bob Herbert obviously does not understand this.

The insurgency in Iraq will never end as long as the U.S. is occupying the country. And our Iraqi "allies" will never fight their Iraqi brethren with the kind of intensity the U.S. would like, any more than the South Vietnamese would fight their fellow Vietnamese with the fury and effectiveness demanded by the hawks in the Johnson administration.

So we should obviously give up and return Iraq to a state of nature, where middle class Iraqis and insurgents will shake hands and sing Kumbaya upon our departure. Once this alliance is solidified, the insurgents will drop their arms forever, and peace will reign throughout the Middle East. Furthermore, we will never again be threatened by Islamic fanaticism. Of course, we should also switch sides and support the Palestinians at the expense of Israel. With our exit from Iraq, and our new hostile posture to Israel, we can remove all the metal detectors at our airports, courthouses, and baseball stadiums and enjoy the blissful Utopian life we've always been promised. Please, raise my taxes, too! Yay!

The Iraqi insurgents - whether one agrees with them or not - believe they are fighting for their homeland, their religion and their families. The Americans are not at all clear what they're fighting for. Saddam is gone. There were no weapons of mass destruction. The link between Saddam and the atrocities of Sept. 11 was always specious and has been proven so.

From what I've read outside the NYTimes, the "insurgents" don't seem to represent the feelings of about 90% of Iraqis, yet Herbert things we should concede the country to them. There are two versions of Islam in Iraq that don't really seem to get along too well. Yet the fanatical insurgents represent BOTH sides?

Saddam is gone. Yes, thanks to our war. And now we are supposed to just LEAVE? Does Herbert even consider the consequences of that scenario?

I also doubt that anyone was convinced of the Saddam/9-11 evidence prior to the war. In fact, both Bush and Cheney both said numerous times that there wasn't any. Yet Herbert sites this as a claim for our presence in Iraq? If he took the time to listen to Bush, it wasn't that Saddam participated in 9-11, it was that he might soon participate in such a plot. That's call p-r-e-e-m-p-t-i-o-n.

At some point, as in Vietnam, the American public will balk at the continued carnage, and this tragic misadventure will become politically unsustainable. Meanwhile, the death toll mounts.

And if the American people are not sufficiently aroused to my viewpoint, I will continue to write poorly researched and reasoned articles in the hopes that they are as dim as I am.

Elia P. Fontecchio, Raheen Tyson Heighter, Sharon T. Swartworth, Ruben Valdez Jr.

Excuse me while I exploit the names of a few more soldiers. Thanks for dying for my article.

One of the reasons the American effort in Iraq is unsustainable is that the American people know very little about the Iraqi people and their culture, and in most cases couldn't care less.

Particularly me, Bob Herbert. I assume they do not want to live in peace, are all in cohoots with the terrorists, and would rather be ruled by whatever strongman takes over their government when the Americans leave tomorrow, as I hope for.

The war in Iraq was sold as a response to Sept. 11. As it slowly dawns on a majority of Americans that the link was bogus, and that there is no benefit to the U.S. from this war, only endless grief, the political support will all but vanish.

Are the "majority" of Americans those in Bob Herbert's circle of Democratic friends? Columns like Herbert's seek to convince Americans that the War on Terror must be fought against only those entities directly involved in 9-11. Those who have an inkling of understanding of the Middle East know that it is not just one country or one man who is capable of such atrocities. There are plenty of leaders, governments, and Islamic "brigades" who sole interest is destruction of the Western way of life. And the Bush Doctrine of p-r-e-e-m-p-t-i-o-n seeks to get those leaders out of power who are most likely to actively seek such destruction. But everyone should observe Bob Herbert's despair and agree with him that there is no benefit to the US from this war. I guess that's because it doesn't result in a tax increase on the rich or expand welfare.

(This could take awhile. In a poll done for Newsweek magazine this week, 42 percent of the respondents continue to believe that Saddam Hussein was directly involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.)

Any thinking person would be able to recognize the difference between a poll prior to March 2003 and one after when there is more information available. Yes, thinking people can percieve a link between Saddam and the 9-11 terrorists, if they happen to read information available outside the Democratic talking points coccoon. Certainly there is nothing definitive, but people also still believe that pumping dollars into schools will solve academic achievement deficiencies, too.

We've put our troops in Iraq in an impossible situation. If you are not permitted to win a war, eventually you will lose it. In Vietnam, for a variety of reasons, the U.S. never waged total war, although the enemy did. After several years and more than 58,000 deaths, we quit.

Not that any lost American life is without value, but a couple things: 1) 3,000 people died on 9-11. As Bob Herbert himself asks, How Many Deaths Will It Take? 2) The predicted American casualties by many left leaning experts for the initial assault on Baghdad was 10,000 lives. Nearly a year and a half after the start of the war, 1,000 losses looks quite good (relatively, of course) in comparison. Further regarding the quagmire, we were losing 500 soldiers a month at its worst in Vietnam. In this war, a bad month is a fraction of that. Quagmire like Vietnam?

We won't - and shouldn't - wage total war in Iraq, either. But to the insurgents, the Americans epitomize evil. We're the crazed foreigners who invaded their country and killed innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, by the thousands. We call that collateral damage. They call it murder. For them, this is total war.

According to most military experts, the insurgents are typically fanatical Islamists, foreign fighters, and misguided youth. They are former Baathists and those struggling for political control of localities through the strongarm tactics they undoubtedly observed in their formative years. Do they represent the everyday Iraqi? Doubtful. Do they wage war on their behalf? Again, doubtful.

President Bush never prepared the nation for the prolonged violence of this war. He still hasn't spoken candidly about it. If he has an idea for hauling us out of this quagmire, he hasn't bothered to reveal it.

Quagmire. Again, if you were unprepared to be at war in Iraq a year and a half later with deaths over the span of our time there of less than 100 per month, then you obviously are not well read in the history of warfare, have no common sense, or are writing an article designed to cloak your personal objections to the war as alleged "failures" of a president you don't like.

The troops who are fighting and dying deserve better.

What, that their loved ones die in random terror attacks at home?

E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com

Please do.

UPDATE: The Washington Post has an article that proves that Herberts choice for president, John F. Kerry, is perceived as a weaker choice regarding Iraq, regardless of the tragic loss of 1,000+ American lives in Iraq. Thankfully, this proves that everyday Americans are more geopolitically and military strategy savvy than Mr. Herbert and Mr. Kerry.