There's validity in what you say, but I still say nuke hollywood.  I don't need these ignorant play-actors telling me what to think.

I've always said there are legitimate arguments for and against the war.  What irks me is the Liberals who are cheerleading for the enemy for purely political reasons while offering no constructive criticism, and some on the "right" who say "see, I told you so" whenever anything goes wrong.

The fact is the case was presented, the decision was made.  The country should have come together to work for victory.  And it was possible to achieve, but only if those who say they despise tyranny and love freedom would have been behind the effort. 

But the country isn't together.  It seems as if the only people who are "together" are the Axis of Evil, so we might as well just say the hell with it. Let's pull our troops out of every foreign land and sit back and see what happens.  Then, when Washington D.C. is a radioactive wasteland, along with New York and every other major U.S. city, everyone (left alive) can say..."see, I told you so."

What you say has some merit. Personally, I didn't think the war in Iraq was a good idea at the time.

That is, however, irrelavant at this point. We're there and leaving now would be a far worse error than invading in the first place. Our country took a generation to recover from the debacle that was Vietnam -  coincidentally another place that perhaps we shouldn't have gone, but leaving abruptly turned out to be a far, far greater mistake. Unfortunately, we don't have decades this time to gaze at our navels and figure out what went wrong.

We in the west are in a literal fight for our lives, and our way of life. Pulling out of Iraq without an unambiguous triumph would be disasterous. Anyone that doesn't understand that is naive, ignorant, or an enemy of our country.

So again, whether or not we should have gone to Iraq matters not nearly as much as what we're going to do now.

Squalls,

There is a difference in saying some of our policies in Iraq were wrong and saying the whole enterprise was wrong.

Going into Iraq was right all the way down th line. But we have made too many mistakes while there! THAT is the trouble. NOT having gone in there in the first palce.

I know plenty of conservatives who now tell me they think going into Iraq was a mistake.

We can all play that game.

I know plenty of conservatives who tell me that the mistake was not "going into Iraq."

The mistake was the usual. America has not gone into a war to win since World War 2.

That's the mistake. And it's disgraceful. To echo Patton -- Americans don't "dislike" war; they dislike not winning a war.

And the object of war is not simply to know that your side won. It's so that the beaten enemy knows full well, 100%, no doubt about it, that they lost.

Germany and Japan know they had been totally and utterly defeated. That was winning a war.

And the corollory is: try that again and we'll come back and kill a whole lot more of ya right back to the stoneage. Understand? and you're damn right they undertand.

We have a total disconnect here.

The powers for good (our side), believe it is right that America is the only superpower, and that the US has the moral duty to defend itself (prememptively if necessary) and project its power; yet they insist on fighting that fight by the PC rules of the people who do NOT believe those principles.

They believe in moral equivalency. They believe that the US is the problem. And we let their "immoral" morality control how we let our young men and women defend themselves in armed conflict.

Now THAT make me very angry.

Proud member of the all-powerful and vast
militarist/industrialist/capitalist/zionist-bagelist complex

Chem: You're right and have stated it exceptionally well.

Never relent.

"America will never be destroyed from the outside.  If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."  ~Abraham Lincoln

This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave. 

So many good points people!

I watched brothers and sisters last night and my jaw dropped open on that scene. I became enraged when I began to think of how courageous a liberal would have been presented in the same situation as opposed to last nights conservative for courage to admit to being a hypocrit. Will we ever see a limosine lib portrayed on the screen?

It was also "nice" for the "sweet land deal" with the army saving the family from financial ruin. I suspect that will return in an upcoming show as well undermining our conservative protaganist. Perhaps Harry Reid will make a special guest appearance as a real estate broker...

You impute honorable motives to Rangel, I do not.  I think to the Democrats, more is at stake in this question than fighting and winning a war for our nation.  To him, this issue revolves around the political survival of his party.

As posted before:

The key to the draft question is that currently the military is about 83% conservative according to the best available polls.

Why do the liberals wish to reintroduce the draft?  So that in 20 years in a whole host of possibly tight congressional races they will have a potential of a candidate saying "I am a veteran."

As it stands now, a conservative candiate in 2026 will be able to say "I was a company commander/Platoon leader/ Squad leader in Fallujah/Najaf/ Al Anbar."

what can the current Democrat candidate in 2026 say?  "I was a Code Pink demonstrator harrassing wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Hospital."

THAT is why the dems want a draft....  To get their own credibility back, forcibly, on their seed corn....

aero:

"You have to be willing to fight for what you believe in or risk losing it"

I believe this 100%. I have agreed with Lincoln's statement about America being destroyed from within and posted that a few times. Bullies will not go away if you appease them You just make them stronger and more demanding.