Davidsometime recently when i wasn’t paying attention, a corner was turned.
i don’t know when it happened. maybe 2-3 weeks ago?
any of you play chess and know what endgame is?
in vietnam, our leaders said that we needed to win the hearts and the minds of the people for victory.
we never did. and we lost. for the most part, we represented ourselves well. of course there were exceptions.
now we’re in iraq.
one side keeps yelling quagmire! at the top of their lungs. and i do believe it is an an effort to make it come to pass. giving aid and succour to the enemy and all. sad that they play politics at the expense of lives.
but the other side has said to stay the course. and it infuriates some. but we have stayed the course.
how humorous that the outcome is being determined by forces outside of our immediate control.
sometime in the not too distant past we turned a corner.
the arab media and press have started to refer to the ‘insurgents’, or ‘freedom fighters’, or ‘anticoalition forces’ not as such anymore.
oh it still happens. but more and more i’m seeing reference to harabi.
we like to call them jihadis. at least i do. and mujahideen is not a bad term for muslims. it does not carry a negative connotation.
harabi does.
harb is the word for war. harabi sin’t quite the same thing as a person who fights a war. that’s a jundi. plural bing junuud. soldier/soldiers.
i’ve been searching hi and low for a good english interpretation of harabi. and i finally settled on one today.
i love the way the iraqi people are starting to refer to the (who i call) insurgents as harabi. they’re not mujihadeen anymore. they’re not quwat islamiyah.
harabi is brigand.
the people of iraq are starting to perceive the freedom fighters in iraq as brigands.
i hope the trend continues. because if it does. it won’t take too long before they are out of business.
don’t get me wrong. it’s not universal. some forces are still perceived well. and the nice thing is they are starting to break with the harabi.
especially the foreign fighters in iraq.
and that’s abu musab zarqawi.
at some point in time recently, the tide has begun to shift.
HUGE opportunities for us in the near future.
it’s cold and rainy here in Rota. thought this was supposed to be a cozy place?
half of decemeber, and all of january, it rains.
rest of the year is good though.
“it won’t take too long before they are out of business.”
Shall I quote you on that, like fookin’ Cheney saying the insurgency’s “in its last throes” how long ago? I think this has been the most violent year so far, with no end in sight.
I HOPE YOU’RE RIGHT, but I’m far from convinced. Foreign fighters have always been a small % of them.
“one side keeps yelling quagmire! at the top of their lungs. and i do believe it is an an effort to make it come to pass. giving aid and succour to the enemy and all. sad that they play politics at the expense of lives.”
Peaceniks never want quagmires or any continuation of unnecessary bloodshed, period. Your head is so empty it’s scary sometimes. Screw the hell off for saying that if I fear we’re approaching quagmire-hood– and say so out loud– then that has any power to give actual “aid & succor” that could cost US lives. That’s vicious bullshit and really an insult to our armed forces’ training and capabilities. Laying an IED doesn’t require the love of the US left. I think the insurgents should give up and go home, but do they listen to me?
You’re the only one playing politics, anus– unless W & co. drop troop levels between now and the mid-term congressional elections, then they are, too.
Just like Vietnam, you want to blame the Repuglican administration’s failures on the peace movement– well, kiss my ass, that’s not how reality works. Be a man about it, fer crissakes.
Gus, the politics from Washington are what lost Vietnam. Asshat. Go read some true history.
As for the leftist defeatism, where else would bin Laden have gotten his agitprop? He took it striaght from the speeches of Dean, Moore, and the rest of the clowns screaming at the top of their lungs.
Asshat Yup, the Pentagon Papers (3000 pages of analysis of our policies, etc. in Viet Nam since 1945, with 4000 pages of documentation, commissioned by MacNamara) revealed that the US military itself knew, early on, that the war would not likely be won and that continuing the war would lead to many times more casualties than was admitted publicly.
For the record, I don’t put Iraq in the same “quagmire” category– Nam was 58,000+ dead Americans, 150,000+ wounded. I’m more or less willing to “stay the course” until the Iraqis are up to the job themselves.
Bin Laden’s rhetoric has ignited the Islamic world with visions of unrighteous Arab gov’ts and Israel’s little Palestinian problem, with no need for the US left. In fact, it was the US right who put him in business in Afghanistan. What the hell “true history” have you been reading (or smoking, as the case may be)?