[The following is a translated excerpt from the French graduate school textbook Histoire des Etats-Unis, published in 2150.]
âŠDemocrats were naturally despondent after the election of 2004, for no one foresaw that Bush's successes in his second term would set the stage for the election of Mrs. Clinton as President in 2008—even though today it seems impossible that the people of that ancient time could not have understood the obvious consequences of their actions. Read the rest...
Oh: my stars. HALO 2 comes out tomorrow. Well, I'll buy it, but I won't play it yet. Better to spend the hour reading news and blogs about Fallujah than to play soldier on a TV screen. This is one of the big battles of the Iraq campaign; this is where the loop that began in Somalia is closed and welded shut.
Paul Harvey, of all people, noted that the hard phase of the battle would involve house-to-house combat, "just like Vietnam." Sigh. It's now the all-purpose metaphor. There could be a war on the moon with armies on dune buggies launching crossbows at each other, and someone would pronounce it a repeat of a disastrous battle in the Mekong Delta. But he'd be 108 years old, the last boomer, a brittle old survivor - not the Greatest Generation but the Generation that Grates, determined that any conflict should be seen through the prism of his youth with "White Rabbit" playing in the background. Times have changed. It's FLIR and Kid Rock now, I think. Stay tuned, and keep them in your thoughts.
The Marines, I mean.
Posted by: Steve ||
11/09/2004 8:59:15 PM ||
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#1
A Vietnam vet friend (MSG), working as an ROTC trainer in the early 80s had a solution for those "still fighting the last war". He made it a point to get his cadets self-identifying themselves as "Veterans of Future Wars" (VFWs). The method in this madness was to get them thinking ahead, not behind. He said "The battlefield of the past was two dimensional. Today's battlefield is three dimensional. Tomorrow's battlefield is four or five dimensional, so get yourself *thinking* in those terms today." By God, he was right.
Holy Snit, how biased can he be, everything is America is in trouble, America will lose, Americans are really the villans, cmon scott, catch up
The much-anticipated US-led offensive to seize the Iraqi city of Falluja from anti-American Iraqi fighters has begun. Meeting resistance that, while stiff at times, was much less than had been anticipated, US Marines and soldiers, accompanied by Iraqi forces loyal to the interim government of Iyad Allawi, have moved into the heart of Falluja. Fighting is expected to continue for a few more days, but US commanders are confident that Falluja will soon be under US control, paving the way for the establishment of order necessary for nation-wide elections currently scheduled for January 2005.
But will it? American military planners expected to face thousands of Iraqi resistance fighters in the streets of Falluja, not the hundreds they are currently fighting. They expected to roll up the network of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his foreign Islamic militants, and yet to date have found no top-tier leaders from that organization. As American forces surge into Falluja, Iraqi fighters are mounting extensive attacks throughout the rest of Iraq. Far from facing off in a decisive battle against the resistance fighters, it seems the more Americans squeeze Falluja, the more the violence explodes elsewhere. It is exercises in futility, akin to squeezing jello. The more you try to get a grasp on the problem, the more it slips through your fingers.
This kind of war, while frustrating for the American soldiers and marines who wage it, is exactly the struggle envisioned by the Iraqi resistance. They know they cannot stand toe-to-toe with the world's most powerful military and expect to win. While the US military leadership struggles to get a grip on a situation in Iraq that deteriorates each and every day, the anti-US occupation fighters continue to execute a game plan that has been in position since day one.
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#4
Al-Jizz, huh? I wonder who was bankrolling him these days. Did they beat out Jihad Unspun in the bidding war for this useless prick?
The pedophile's lawyer must want some bread up front.
#7
How much did the dishrag terrorist press pay Ritter for this dibble. He should be ashamed with our men fighting and being murdered by that imported lice.
Posted by: Mark Espinola ||
11/09/2004 23:29 Comments ||
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#8
Ritter is a dick.
And on top of that he knows jack shit about MOUT.
ANd somehow it escaped hisnotice that hundreds of deaths were inflicted in the past month with airstrikes on any and all enemy leaderhip targets. not just in Falluja, but also Ar Ramadi and all the way up to the ourskirts of Baghdad.
HE forgot that we learned a lot about fighting in Arab cities in Najaf, and that the locals are sick and tired of the foreign fighers in their midst.
Ritter is a disgrace wiht his lies, distortions and pandering ot anit-American causes. Some Marines ought to pay this ex-marine a visit, in the dark of night, and talk to him about common sense.
#10
Since there are obviously going to be few jihadi survivors of this little demonstration of overfreakingwhelming force by a large contingent of thoroughly p.o.ed Marines, I bet this nebish will claim that they all made wonderful tactical retrograde operation into Syria to fight another day, outsmarting the dumb americans.
I bet Fallujah will need every penny of reconstruction they can beg for.
#1
" . . . Compared with the impersonal state, the family can be more effective in providing a positive ethical framework; strengthening economic independence from the state and creating a sense of identity and belonging."
"Many who claim to be progressive think it is out of place to argue that the family can inculcate moral and positive values. Those on the left have focused on poverty and economic inequality as the major causes of crime, removing morality and ethics from the equation altogether. The right has frequently laid the blame on the media and negative popular culture."
"We must realize that crime does not arise from a single factor only; a strong and positive family institution in a more equal economic environment can be a powerful bulwark against crime."
" . . . The state cannot do everything, but it can do something - it should encourage a vibrant and independent family institution."
Wow. EXCELLENT points--but independence means people would be thinking for themselves, that individuals and families would be stronger (something quite undesirable to the deconstructionists among us).
#5
Geldof and Bono both. You have to dig to find their words because MSM largely ignores them. One of them said essentially "Clinton talked the talk, but Bush walks the walk."
"You'll think I'm off my trolley when I say this, but the Bush administration is the most radical - in a positive sense - in its approach to Africa since Kennedy," Geldof told the Guardian.
The neo-conservatives and religious rightwingers who surrounded President George Bush were proving unexpectedly receptive to appeals for help, he said. "You can get the weirdest politicians on your side."
Former president Bill Clinton had not helped Africa much, despite his high-profile visits and apparent empathy with the downtrodden, the organiser of Live Aid, claimed. "Clinton was a good guy, but he did fuck all."
#1
Politicaly, SSI reform is going to be almost as much fun as welfare reform. And 2 years after the fact evryone on the left is going to be scratching their heads and asking "where are the sob stories?" "where are the starving kids elders in the streets?". They won't get it, even when the flying saucers are overhead and life will go on.
Posted by: N Guard ||
11/09/2004 8:01 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
