The daily reciting of the “body count” on the nightly news?
All that’s missing is the sound of Walter Cronkite’s voice, and the sense of deja vu would be overpowering.
Click your heels together three times and repeat “It’s not a quagmire, It’s not a quagmire, It’s not a guagmire.” There, now does it feel better?
I hope no one tries to turn the daily tally of dead in Iraq into a punchline.
On a given DAY in Vietnam, more Americans troops died than have died yet in the attempt to liberate Iraq.
4000 Iraqi children under the age 5 died needlessly every month under OUR sanctions (which bolstered the Hussein regime) according to the most conservative estimates.
4000 American troops haven’t even died yet in the entire year.
Here is the text of a speech made by John McCain on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, April 7, 2004:
Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I take the floor to respond to comments made by Senator Byrd, but also to general comments that have been made over the last 48 hours as we all recognize this is a very difficult time for us in Iraq.
I do not have to review with any of my colleagues the events of the last few days and the tragedies in the loss of these brave young Americans who are fighting and sacrificing for someone else’s freedom.
I have also heard a number of observers, including some Senators, who have compared events in Iraq to what we went through in Vietnam. I happen to know something about Vietnam, and I know we do not face another Vietnam. I need not go into the long history of our involvement in that nation, the reasons for our failure, but the realities on the ground in Iraq are clear.
There is no superpower that is backing these minority of Shias and Sunnis who are seeking to gain political power through the use of a gun, and there is no comparison as far as the sanctuary which this enemy has. We grant them no sanctuary.
Some have stated we are on the defensive. I would argue that, as we speak, in Fallajuh and other places, our Marines and Army are on the offensive, dedicated to the proposition that no group, no matter what their ethnic or religious beliefs are, will take control of Iraq.
Control of Iraq will be the result of a democratic process and a representative one, part of which is the turning over of power to the Iraqi people on June 30.
We have had this argument back and forth: Should we turn over power of the government to the Iraqis on June 30? I say yes, and I say yes recognizing two realities. One is that it will be a difficult process, and we have a lot more planning to do between now and June 30 for that transition to take place. The other reality, as far as the security situation is concerned, is that America’s military will be there in force for a significant period of time, and the American people need to be told that.
This is a long, tough, hard struggle. It is hard for countries to adopt democracies. It is incredibly difficult when they have never known democracy and freedom in the past. A little later, I want to talk a little bit more about what happens if we fail, as well as what happens if we succeed in Iraq.
Again, in Vietnam there was superpower support. There were arms and political support. We did not have a clear plan for victory, and dare I mention that in Vietnam many times we had more casualties in a week, sometimes less than a week, than we have had in a year in Iraq.
To make these comparisons with the Tet offensive or the entire Vietnam conflict is not only uninformed but I think a bit dangerous because, of course, the specifics of our involvement in that conflict fade, as they should, in the memories of the American people.
What is happening in Iraq today is we have a Sunni insurgency that consists of ex-Baathists and Saddam loyalists. They obviously are the only people who were better off during Saddam Hussein’s regime because they were the favored minority that were of the same religion as Saddam. They realize they will never run Iraq again because they are in the minority. Because they are in the majority, the Shia will probably dominate that government, but we also have a constitution in Iraq that guarantees the rights of minorities. We are there and a new government will be there to guarantee those same rights.
The realities are the Sunni minority will never control Iraq again. We have a small minority of Shias who are trying to grab some political power before the July 1 transition. There is very little doubt that Sadr’s followers are in a distinct minority and the majority of Shias still owe allegiance and have allegiance to the Ayatollah Sistani, who has argued, perhaps not forcefully enough, that we do not have the kind of armed conflict that we are seeing today.
Is this a difficult political problem? Yes. Is it the time to panic, to cut and run? Absolutely not. The vast majority of Iraqi people are glad we are there and they state unequivocally that they are better off than they were under the regime of Saddam Hussein. Lest time dim our memory, let us remember the mass graves that we discovered, the 8- and 9-year-old boys coming out of prison in Baghdad, the despotic, incredibly cruel practices of his two sons. The people of Iraq and America and the world are better off with Saddam Hussein gone.
Now, we can argue about intelligence; we can argue about weapons of mass destruction. That is why we have commissions. That is why tomorrow, in an almost unprecedented fashion, the National Security Adviser to the President will testify before the 9/11 Commission. I am confident she will perform admirably because she is an incredibly intelligent and capable individual.
The fact is, to argue that we should have left Iraq under the rule of this incredibly cruel person who used weapons of mass destruction, who had weapons of mass destruction in 1991, was continuing to attempt to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and if in power would continue to try to acquire those weapons, certainly flies in the face of the facts about Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Senator Byrd says we should not have gone into Iraq in the first place and that we should not be there now. I respect the view. I strongly disagree with it, and I think the facts indicate that is not the case. We could argue for days about it, but right now at this moment we need to send a message not only to the Sunnis in Iraq and the minority of Shias in Iraq who are taking up arms and killing Americans that we are there to stay. We are there to stay and we will see it through. If we fail, if we cut and run, the results can be disastrous. Those results would be the fragmentation of Iraq, to start with, on ethnic and religious lines. The second result would be an unchecked hotbed of training ground and birthing of individuals who are committed to the destruction of the United States of America.
We will never solve the war on terror as long as there are millions of young men standing on street corners all over the Middle East with no hope, no job, no opportunities, no future. They are the breeding ground. They are the ones who are taken off the streets and taken into the madrasahs ? funded by the Saudis, by the way ? and taught to hate and kill, and who want to destroy America, the West, and all we believe in. Their hatred is not confined to the United States of America, as the citizens of Spain have found out, much to their dismay and tragedy.
What happens if we win? What happens if we see this thing through? It will be hard and it will be difficult and perhaps we need more troops. I have said for a long time that we needed more troops of certain types, but we have to see this thing through. And what will happen? What will happen is that we will affirm the profound and fundamental belief upon which this Nation was founded, that all men and women are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and they are not just in the Western Hemisphere; they are not just in the United States of America; they are not just in Europe. The people in the Middle East have the same hopes, beliefs, and yearnings for freedom and democracy, and they have a right to determine their own future just as have our own citizens and citizens throughout the world.
When they achieve that ? and it will be long and hard and difficult ? it will send a message to every despotic regime, every religious extremist throughout the Middle East, their day is done because in a democratic, free, and open society the people want to live in peace with their neighbors and with the world.
So there is a lot at stake. I grieve every moment, as every American does, for the loss of these brave young Americans’ lives. They have made a supreme sacrifice, and we will honor their memory, but at least their grieving families will know they sacrificed in the cause of freedom.
At this particular moment of crisis ? and it is a crisis ? I urge all of my colleagues and all Americans to join together in this noble cause. Yes, we are free to criticize; yes, we are free to make recommendations and suggestions; but the awesome responsibility lies with all of us, led by the President of the United States, as we attempt to carry out what is the most noble act that no country in the world has ever done besides the United States of America, and that is to shed our most precious blood and expend our treasure in defense of someone else’s freedom in the hope that they may enjoy the fruits of a free and open society in a democracy that is guaranteed to all men and women by our Creator.
I yield the floor.<<<<
tme, save your schaudenfraude for when American troops AREN’T dying, you wonderful person you.
Define quagmire, please.
What I get is:
Quagmire \Quag"mire`, n. [Quake + mire.]
Soft, wet, miry land, which shakes or yields under the feet.
``A spot surrounded by quagmires, which rendered it difficult
of access.‘’ --Palfrey.
Syn: Morass; marsh; bog; swamp; fen; slough.
I guess southern Iraq where the marsh arabs live is truly a quagmire. Other than that I don’t see how the rest of the place is any more than Kosovo or anywhere else we went to keep the peace in the aftermath of war and in the face of anarchy.
Actually, SteelyEyes, in that case,
the United States is trying to CREATE a quagmire. We recently reflooded the former marsh lands.
Saddam had drained the water where the Marsh Arabs live in order to make extinct one of the world’s oldest cultures–at the small cost of destroying food production for his country and causing famine. Then Saddam burned the shrubbery that was left in the area along with the Kuwaiti oil fields. Environmental groups call this the worst environmental crime of our times. You could see the smoke from outer space.
FYI
He dumped 50 million barrels of oil into the desert, contaminating aquifers of course.
He dumped 4 million barrels into the Persian Gulf ? a spill 25 times larger than the Exxon Valdez.
Can everybody sing “We Are the World” now?
Brian Smith-
“On a given DAY in Vietnam, more Americans troops died than have died yet in the attempt to liberate Iraq.”
That is simply not true.
This is true.
More American troops have died in Iraq than in any given MONTH in Vietnam.
With all the good that has happened in Iraq, with all the progress that has been made in only a year, and with so few casualties, it really shows how stupid tme is to try to even compare this to Vietnam.
The liberals are getting desparate!
Chrisr,
Unfortunately, you’ve been given slanted statistics.
Vietnam War had 392 fatal casualties from 1962 through 1964 (out of 17,000 American troops)
So in a hard month, the monthly rate in Iraq can exceed the average monthly rate in the early years of Vietnam, which featured HARDLY ANY casualties.
But over 98% of Marine deaths in Vietnam came in 1965 through 1970. If the casualty rate in the other services met the Marine levels, that means 26 deaths per day over six years.
Last I read, before Fallujah, U.S. military deaths totalled 25 over 5 days, so we would need 5 times the number of casualties to meet that rate amd we would need that rate sustained for over 5 years.
I should be careful to specify that MANY days in Vietnam had casualties which outnumbered the current total amount in Iraq.
Brian: Blow me, you wonderful person you. I don’t much care what McCain says, and I don’t think he really believes it either. If he’d been elected we wouldn’t be there in the first place, but right now it’s extremely important for him to be seen toeing the party line. This is a personal thing for GWB, and the fact is that the stupid bastard has no problem killing thousands of people to settle an old score.
So it’s not a quagmire, fine. The fact is we’re stuck knee deep in shit over there, with no way out and no end in sight. The daily “body count” on the evening news will continue. Maybe Walter will come out of retirement and read the death toll off every night, just for old times sake.
McCain toeing the line? McCain wrote the law for regime change as our national policy and has always supported arming the Shiite and Kurdish resistance and then invasion! From the first day, he’s been critical of the administration’s military handling of Iraq and from the beginning has called for more AMERICAN troops.
tme, grow up. On occassion, your lack of logical prowess is astounding, like when you determined that Nader was being payed by Bush–what a QED that was! You’re old enough to remember Walter Cronkite reading the news? Incredible. Are you old enough to change your own diapers?
Just don’t be gleeful about casualty rates. However you feel about the war, you can have some respect.
Where you get the idea there’s no way out I can’t figure. We didn’t burn our ships and planes on their shores when we arrived. We can leave any time the order is given, mission accomplished or not(the left would love to see that).
Why we’re there is pretty well immaterial now. We’re there and we have a goal. We can either accomplish the goal and leave or quit and leave. Nobody ever said this thing would be free, bloodless, or short.
People that are against it seem to be running out of logical and reasonable things to bring up so they are fielding lots of bullshit and innuendo now.
We lose a few more guys and suddenly we’re trapped. Take a look at the history books about Dunkirk if you want to see what trapped is. I think the damn militia boys up against our Marines are the ones that should be feeling trapped about now. We’re giving a shitload better than we’re getting and they’re running out of support.
How the fuck did you determine that I was “gleeful”, you stupid son of a bitch?
I remember that what turned the general population against the Vietnam war was the daily reading of the “body count” on the nightly news. Now that has started again. Every day is a new update on how many young lives have been wasted by a totally corrupt and dishonest administration. Now the American public is starting to wake up to the fact that this war is not and never was about anything but one man’s vendetta.
Bush wants and needs to turn control in Iraq over to someone else well in advance of the election, hence his June 30 deadline. But there isn’t anyone to turn it over to. He could call in the UN, but that would be like admitting defeat.
If elections were held now Iraq would become the Islamic fundamentalist country of West Iran. But we can’t pull out either, because the anarchists would have a field day. He has to try to maintain control until he’s sure an election would be won by the people he wants to win, so we’re stuck in a quagmire with no end in sight, and the daily “body counts” will go on and on.
McCain is toeing the line because any sign of dissent in the Republican party now would cost them the election, and he won’t be responsible for that. Bush lied to get us into this shit, and now McCain is probably enjoying watching him twist at the end of his own rope right now.
The whole fucking thing sucks. I know quite a few people over there, and can bet that at least a few of them won’t come home. All for a lie. So you can gleefully suck my dick.
Brian Smith-
I think we might have a misunderstanding.
I was saying that the TOTAL Iraq deaths thus far exceed any total deaths for any months in Vietnam from Jan 1966- Dec 1971.
The most US deaths in any month in the Vietnam war (in between those two dates) was 543 in April 1969.
I know that the US deaths in Iraq will, I hope, never reach the Vietnam level.
But lives are lives and I think that tme’s point was that the killing in Iraq, after a year of occupation, hasn’t gone down.
A quagmire is a sticky situation in which bad shit goes down and no reasonable solution presents itself. We are in a quagmire right now, but not yet of Vietnam proportions. If you don’t think so, then you are being naive.
Nobody has all the answers to whats going on in Iraq. Our formula for dealing with these people has to change from what it was two weeks ago. All anyone can do is hope that we can diffuse the situation somehow before it gets any worse.
Chrisr, I understand you now, although I don’t know how useful it is to compare total Iraq casualties with one month of Vietnam casualties, unless your point is that the deaths in Vietnam have so far dwarfed the number in Iraq.
It seems like you want the connotations of the word quagmire, but I’ll have to disagree with you there. However, I do agree that there are no defined answers. June 30th or when? Who are we turning sovreignty over to? Will the Iraqi defense forces be capable of negotiating with and if necessary battling local militias? I do think it’s better that the Sunnis and hostile Shiites play there hand now, rather than after the handover. But yes, I agree, we’re going to have to walk a tightrope to lay the foundations for a true democracy to develop in the future out of representative government. I wish other people had their say–Carl Levin, Biden or Bob Kerrey, or McCain–but it’s not the case.
An encouraging factoid is that Iraqis all over the country have respect for Paul Bremer, because they believe he is working impossibly hard for their betterment and nationhood. This signals that part of the Iraqi heart understands our intent is noble, though it may involve bloody travails.
We must wait and see.
tme,
The word “gleeful” was a bit wrong. I know you want it to sound like one, but it’s not a “quagmire” for us. June 30 or later. We just take out most of the troops out of the country. We put new ones in a heavily fortified military base in Iraq to replace our forces in Saudi Arabia. The Iraqis get screwed.
So it’s not a “quagmire” like Vietnam, but on a global level, it could be one hell of a f*$@ up.
Totally corrupt and dishonest administration? Pretty heavy rhetoric there. I think a close inspection of any of the previous 3 or 4 administrations would show about the same levels of integrity and honesty.
I’ve yet to see politician at any level above the local one that was honest and above reproach. They all twist the facts to get their agenda through. I guess the problem is partly to blame on the electorate because they tell us what we think we need to hear rather than the truth. They probably think we can’t handle or process the unadulterated truth, and at some levels they may be right.
I don’t see 40 of 50 more dead guys as a quagmire. I don’t think the sky is falling because a few thousand out of 24 million are shooting at us in an attempt to run us off. There’s no mass uprising, just a few guerilla fighters here and there. Kill enough of them and like anyone else the rest will decide they’re done. Remember reading about the fanatic suicide charges the Japanese used on our troops? How about the Kamikazi planes? You don’t get more dedicated than that but after enough killing even the Japanese got tired of seeing their bretheren die and they gave up.
We have more people, more weapons, control of the ground and the air, and unlike the British in the Revolutionary War we have some pretty good background in guerilla warfare and how to counter it.
“The most US deaths in any month in the Vietnam war (in between those two dates) was 543 in April 1969.”
chrisr:
That’s a fasinating stat that I wasn’t aware of. I would have THOUGHT that the height would have been during the TET Offensive…but as I thought about that stat, I realized that we were also doing a lot of counter-offensive work and Hill Fighting.
Are those the reasons for that high casualty rate at that time?
(Great discourse, guys…)
Mufasa
Speaking of Japan, force, “giving up” and Modern War…
By the end of the WW-II (BEFORE the two Atomic Bombs)we had charred 98% of the Japanese cities with low level, incendiary fire bombing with 200-300 B-29’s per sortie. Nothing or NO ONE was spared or “off target” except Kyoto (the spiritual and learning “center” of Japan and it’s oldest center).
This type of overwhelming Force in the world today would not be politically tolerated unless a majority of the World felt they were threatened.
Mufasa
One last thing about the Hill Fighting of Korea and Vietnam (since there is a subtext of casualties in this discussion).
People often speak of the Civil War as being 15th century tactics using 20th Century Weapons…
A wonderful Professor of mine thought that Hill Fighting was worse…think of using MEDIVAL castle-seige tactics while 20 and 21st Century Weapons were raining down on you…
Needless to say…casualties per 100 men was EXTREMELY high…
Mufasa
Brian Smith–
here is a number for you 7. Which is the number of people I have served with who have died in afgan and iraq… They died so you can live another day of your sick, pointless life; so what i am basically saying is fuck off.