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By Dennis Byrne
RealClearPolitics
That's not what the au fait class of jabbering media and pols says, as they repeat, reinforced by each other's dictums, that Iraq requires a political solution, whatever that means, but we don't find out because the analysis doesn't go much deeper than that. They just know that President George W. Bush's new plan for victory in Iraq must be a "political solution."
The truth is that just about every war we've fought (except possibly the War of 1812) ended with a military solution. At least the ones we won. The Civil War didn't end with the political solution of the South voluntarily giving up slavery. America's victory at Yorktown was a military one in that we kicked the British out of our country. World Wars I and II ended with Germany's and Japan's military defeat.
Korea has waited half of a century for a political solution, but without the military reality of pushing the North Korean and Chinese communists back to roughly the 38th parallel, we'd be talking today not about a nuclear North Korea, but a nuclear Korea.
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2 comments:
Mr. Byrne:
It is not just the media that believes a political solution is the only possibility. The Baker Commission, a bipartisan group, came to the same conslusion.
Bush's speech tonight offered little hope that victory can be achieved. For one thing, he exaggerated the consequences of a pullout, claiming that the insurgents would inflame the Middle East and use oil revenues to do it. They have shown no signs of exporting their war, and their only interest in oil is in sabotaging the pipelines. Perhaps the biggest reason his solution will not work is the ineptitude of the Iraqi military. Rebuilding it from scratch is like rebuilding Marshall's football team. That school had the most losses of any college team in the 1970s, and the Iraqi army looks just as bad.
Bush did not choose 20,000 troops for political expediency. He picked that number because it is all we can muster. Without greatly enlarging the miliary, which will take years, our options are limited. So this is just a last ditch effort to avoid admitting defeat.
I can't say i disagree with the accusation that apolitical solution is meaningless at this stage of the war but so is the presidents Military solution... 20,000 more troops. If it is that simple now why did'nt we just keep the 20,000 there rather than ship them home only to return? Truth is we need an additional 100,000 to make a military difference but in this administration you get fired for stating the facts.
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