U.S. drawn deeper into Iraq clashes

More evidence liberals have no understanding of war.

You're claiming that America's continued occupation of Iraq is encouraging a civil war when in fact everything the coalition forces are doing is to prevent it and avoid genocide on a massive scale. Had we went with the liberals cowardly and irresponsible strategy of cut and run, that's exactly what would occur.

Your quip was a defamatory and disingenuous statement about our presence in Iraq when we're trying to help Iraqis break with the tyranny they suffered under Saddam and form a new federalist democracy. Coalition forces are also helping rebuild their infrastructure, on top of bringing peace and stability to the country.

Though liberals love to finger-point, we invaded Iraq based on a unanimous bi-partisan decision and the aim was to topple Saddam, not nation-build. The latter task fell on our laps because no one really anticipated the sectarian violence and strife that was unleashed with the elimination of Saddam. Let's also not forget Iran and Al Qaeda were/are also stoking the flames-hence our obligation to remain and finish the job.

Liberal smugness and cynicism only demonstrates their superficial understanding of not just the present war in Iraq which is actually one front, but the broader global war against "radical" Islam (I put it in quotes since that's the administration's understanding of the GWOT, in fact its a war against Islam).

Its fortuitous for us that Iraq has become the 'flame' that the terrorists 'moths' are drawn to in droves and where they come to fight and die in large numbers, rather than wreak their havoc and chaos in our streets. That's no leap of logic since other muslim terrorists in Europe have been learning their trade overseas in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan, so they could bring the war to their (and our) front door.

Iraq is also an excellent place for our military to hone their skills and learn to fight an asymmetric war, also how to turn a population against jihadists and help them build a democracy. Liberals moral relativism and ambivalence (and plain stupidity) over what is good and evil equates us with our enemies. Western culture is superior in every way to 7th century based Islamic culture and we better realize that and defend our values and way of life, if we want our civilization to survive.

Here's an interesting analysis by Christopher Hitchens on Iraq and a longer debate he was in, on this issue.

we are not defending our values by attacking someone else in their country and trying to replace their traditional forms of government with ours.

First off we're not attacking Iraqi civilians, we're attacking insurgents who were looking to fill the power vacuum after Saddam was toppled. Secondly bringing freedom/democracy to a tyrannical dictatorial state which has been described as a mass grave below ground and a concentration camp above ground is a great thing. Millions of Iraqis, 85% of the population put their lives on the line to support the US liberation of their country.

Thirdly, as I alluded to earlier, western culture is superior to Islamic. By reforming Iraq we can show muslims in the mideast that there is an alternative to their backwards and savage 7th century based culture. Liberals are really the last group to catch on that in fact whether we like it or not we are at war against Islam which is intrinsically a totalitarian fascist ideology that's set on global domination. It may sound like some plot-line from some cheesy action flick but its a fact and whether we invaded Iraq or not, muslims would still be at war with us for the simple fact that we're ungodly "infidels" destined to burn in hell and we must be (according to their religion) converted, subjugated or killed.

If Saddam's government had been primarily Shiite I suppose that then our allies would be the Sunni? The only flame is the US cooperating in sending our troops in harms way where they have been relatively easy targets in asymmetrical warfare and in the explosions of our vehicles.

I believe it was a decision based on pragmatism, shiites are the majority in Iraq so it only made sense to back them primarily-but the Iraqi government represents other minorities and have a power-sharing arrangement with the sunnis and kurds.

Our troops have been fighting under very restrictive rules-if civilian causalities were not a concern the insurgency could easily be crushed. We're not fighting a professional army, Al Qaeda and the sundry insurgents are nothing but a bunch of rag-tag fighters with IEDs and AK47s. Most of them have already been eradicated, the biggest group remaining is Al-Sadr's Madhi army-which itself is no significant threat.

A year ago however, we came very close to 'losing' this war-at least this is how Al Qaeda and the world would see it-that they defeated a superpower. The perception that we lost would have devastating consequences. America would be seen as unreliable, doesn't have the stomach for a fight, is ready to abandon its allies when the going gets tough, it would embolden our enemies who'd feel if they could defeat us in Iraq, they could beat us on our own soil, etc.

I credit McCain and Bush/Cheney by going against conventional wisdom for their surge strategy when everyone including some conservatives were screaming to extricate ourselves from Iraq. These men are heros for staying the course and making an unpopular decision. Most people now take for granted that AQI has effectively been eliminated-but they don't realize the difficult odds and enormous resistance that had to be overcome to save our nation's face and avert an even greater disaster than going in. Yes I didn't support the invasion-Iran, N Korea, Saudi Arabia and Syria should've been our main focus but something tells me they'll eventually get what's coming. This global war we're in is only heating up, I predict we'll be saving Europe's ass again like we did in WW2 as muslims push hard to take over.

If you ignore the facts on the ground then I can see why you think we've lost, its also a question of how you define victory. Liberals continue to change the goalposts whenever they've lost an argument-if their claim that we can't beat the insurgents fails, then they claim we'll never achieve political reconciliation and if we did, it becomes about something else. We took out Saddam, his regime and his military-within a matter of weeks when Iran couldn't do it in 8 years, that's a victory by any measure.

Dealing with insurgencies are always more challenging because although the combatants are much weaker than a professional army, they blend in with the population and use indirect means of warfare-terrorism, roadside bombs, etc. They know they cannot defeat us in a stand-up fight which is why they resort to such measures. In the case of Iraq, thanks to the surge the moment has solidly shifted in our favor-AQI's back has been broken and the insurgency has largely been suppressed.

Once the Iraqi military is strong enough to defend the country then we can exit Iraq victorious. That is the right way to leave, if the liberals had their way, Iraq would now be controlled by Iran or AQI and the sectarian violence we witnessed would degenerate to all out civil-war with many millions of Iraqis slaughtered. The mideast might also destabilize with sunni/shia countries backing their respective groups. Most people don't realize the cataclysmic nightmare scenario the surge helped us avoid.

The casualties we've suffered in Iraq is less than a tenth of what we absorbed in the Korean/Vietnam wars so I think we're in great shape by comparison. We've also not only learned a great deal since the cold war, our weaponry is significantly more advanced which is why the jihadist to US soldier kill ratio in our present wars is so high, its 100:1 or better in Afghanistan for instance.

You realize that America has the largest military budget in the world by a huge margin? By comparison muslim militaries are completely outdated, weak and inferior (apart from where they've bought advanced weaponry from the West). As stated earlier, we took out Iraq's military in short order and it was considered the pretty much the most powerful in the mideast, roughly on par with Iran. If we really wanted to, we could wipe out all muslim countries in a matter of hours. To suggest we as a superpower have anything to fear from Islamic states is ludicrous.

The only way we can be defeated (and muslims know this and are employing this tactic already) is to invade western countries, rapidly grow their population through mass immigration/high birth rates, till they're majorities and take over from within. However thanks to jihad/terrorism, they've caught our attention and the resistance to western Islamification has already begun.

This is not a civilizational war that we can walk away from, just as we couldn't avoid confronting Nazism-either we submit to Islam or we destroy it. There's other countries that export terrorism like Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria, so no doubt we'll eventually have to deal with them, hence this is just the start of WW3.

There's other countries that export terrorism like Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria, so no doubt we'll eventually have to deal with them, hence this is just the start of WW3.

...and surely the terrorists have won.