Dean

Ok. Time for another rant.

Howard Dean gave an interview in, of all places, San Antonio yesterday in which he (in his infinite wisdom and judgment, as evidenced in his election run) gave his views on the war and what we are doing here in particular. What he said on there was tantamount to a slice to the throat of the guys fighting uprange. Included in the crap he spewed forth:

"I've seen this before in my life. This is the same situation we had in Vietnam. Everybody then kept saying, 'just another year, just stay the course, we'll have a victory.' Well, we didn't have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional 25,000 troops because we were too stubborn to recognize what was happening."

You know, before I came here I didn’t know what we were doing. I didn’t know the strategy that was being utilized. But since I’ve had the privilege of being here (incidentally, has Howard Dean even come to this side of the planet recently?) I know what we’re doing. I know why we’re here. And it absolutely INFURIATES me that jackasses like him say things like this when there are troops from his OWN STATE fighting and dying here with the only hope to continue being that the leadership at home supports them and what they are doing. You absolutely cannot compare this to Vietnam. It is a completely different situation. But wait, he goes on:

"I think we need a strategic redeployment over a period of two years," Dean said. "Bring the 80,000 National Guard and Reserve troops home immediately. They don't belong in a conflict like this anyway. We ought to have a redeployment to Afghanistan of 20,000 troops, we don't have enough troops to do the job there and it’s a place where we are welcome. And we need a force in the Middle East, not in Iraq but in a friendly neighboring country to fight (terrorist leader Musab) Zarqawi, who came to Iraq after this invasion. We've got to get the target off the backs of American
troops.”

What, in the name of all that is holy, is he talking about as an expert on military affairs? He has absolutely NO military experience. And why exactly it is that Guard and Reservists don’t belong in a conflict like this anyway? I’m sure that the victories they’ve attained and hard work they’ve done, never mind the injuries they’ve sustained, are a demonstration that they don’t belong here. I, for one, am damn glad they’re here. As far as re-deploying to Afghanistan, on what planet does he think that we’d be more welcome there than in any other middle-eastern country? I wish I could pass on to him the details of what I have seen. We are no more welcome there than in Iraq. By saying that he is just demonstrating his complete ignorance of what is going on here. And as far as a target on their backs, my man—you have just made the target all the more clear for the insurgents.

The reason we lost in Vietnam is partially due to the fact that the bad guys had one strategy—maintain a will to fight longer than the American people will. Every time we gain a victory here and push the bad guys back some assclown like this guy announces his complete ignorance to the world at the expense of American soldiers. As a result, I think this only emboldens the insurgents. This is what they have been waiting for. This is what they want, for morons to step up and start pleading their case to the American public. If we leave now, the target will not be so much on the backs of American troops as it will be on the backs of American people everywhere.

What makes this even more dangerous is that this idiot is the de facto LEADER OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. What they (and mind you, I don’t think the Republican Party, or politicians in general, are too spectacular either) want is a timeline to get out. If we had set a timeline in World War II Hitler would never have quit. Millions more would have died, since all they had to do was wait it out until that “magic date” that we had set to get out. That’s all they’re waiting for. For our will to fight to collapse. In a couple of weeks the Iraqis will have their own elections. The media doesn’t often connect the military with the elections (I guess they are just sort of “happening” up there) and they fail to mention that if we were not here, those elections would not happen.

Dean’s counterpart in the GOP, Mr. Ken Mehlman, had a good counter:

"I can't remember any time in history where the leader of a national party, one of our two national parties, predicted that America would lose a war we were engaged in. I think it sends the wrong message to our troops, the wrong message to the enemy, the wrong message to the Iraqi people."

Yes it does.

American politicians that are as reckless as this are endangering the lives of American soldiers.