Is Bush headed for disaster?
 

In addition to projections of a nearly record budget deficit, Bush may have another nasty mess on his hands to explain come election day: The number of American G.I. deaths post-war has officially outnumbered the numbers who died during the invasion.

NYT op/ed link. Discuss.

People say not enough people have died to draw comparisons to Vietnam, but when you think about it, the protests over vietnam weren't about the number of G.I.'s dying... (as big as they were)

The poppy crop has been harvested in the 'Stan. W is just may have to deal with a heroin epidemic on top of everything else.

2Wolves

In case anyone has notice, major combat operations have ended.

Why have more soldiers died after the war ended then during the war itself? Because we have very well trained soldiers and superior equipment but like any other military are easy targets for guerrilla attacks.

Besides, how many soldiers did we lose to helicopter crashes?

Crashes are still considered part of it because they are combat decisions and who knows whether it was really a mechanical failure or if they pilot was tryign to evade fire.

And in all wars accidents are a % of casualties - friendly fire, weapon accidents, etc. all occur.

if american troops continue to die at a rate like this when the re-election campaign is going on, then gwb would be in serious hot water.

Bush IS the disaster. With many more to follow.

Arent the Generals and top ranking staff at the pentagon the ones Slick Willie promoted to their positions?

And at this rate there will be something like 500 or 600 hundred KIA's by the time it is all settled, that number seems pretty low for invasion and occupation.

I am almost completely satisfied with the job performance of my President.

Sure. And they're the reason the combat death tolls are as low as they are. The point is that the political goals are misguided, unclear, and inefficient. Our troops went into Iraq with no clear exit strategy and no concept of how to win the peace. Hence, they're easy targets for mudjaheddin-like guerrilla fighters and partisans. We're getting bled to death by degrees after the war has technically ended.

Actually, this invasion is eerily like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980. Winning the war was the easy part. Staying alive afterwards was the true test. Both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. invaded for less-than-legitimate reasons, experienced a relatively brief and relatively "easy" formal campaign, and then got stuck in a slow, steady quagmire of guerrilla attacks, bad PR, poor troop rotations and strategies, both on the ground and in exit terms.
Different decades, different military doctrines, same results.

Wow. 227 years of America, and what have we become? The Soviet Union. At least insofar as this comparison goes.

I'm almost positive this means that you're not over there. Funny, but the troops on the ground don't seem nearly as enamored of him as you...

Don't forget it wasn't about oil it was about WMD! LOL!

Bush dosen't have a clue!

No, I am not over there, been there, did it in GW1.

I am willing to bet though that I am better qualified on troop moral, having retired from the US Marine Corps with over 20 years.

But I hear ya, I wasnt to thrilled having a draft dodger giving me orders to go and fight.

And Brewmaniac, If it was about oil how come prices have skyrocketed?

Well, he might have to deal with it personally, but i doubt there will be much left over for the rest of us.

Seriously, i think its high time we realize we DID just walk in to another vietnam, and gave up some of our precious 'control' over the situation to get the UN in to help. I'd rather have a frenchman with an attitude giving us sass than have one of our boys come home in a box. Pride is cheaper than blood...

Damn. I hope Bush wins a second term. No way is some other poor bugger gonna be left with this mess. I want this presidency to be the biggest, darkest blotch on the face of history as possible. For the good of the future, it needs to be that way.

The USA is the USSR of the new millenium, anyway. If I was Old Europe I'd be working on a containment strategy right about now...

The worst thing about all this is that its prolonging the suffering of the Iraqi people. The Baathists, the Islamic Fundees, and the American soldiers are evil with three faces to the average person, and unless we see international intervention it simply will never end until the whole of Iraq looks like the Gaza strip.

Your military experience notwithstanding, I am not sure you are qualified on something you apparently can't spell.

*Insert flamewar about Bush avoiding his Air National Guard service*

Likely because oil companies are evil motherfuckers, and will squeeze that stone, whether they get blood or not. There was a headline on MSN today "How to beat ghastly gas prices." I thought to myself "Take public transportation? Don't drive unnecessarily? WALK YOUR FAT ASS TO THE STORE?!"

I think we should keep things in perspective here.

This is an unusual statistic. I heard it mentioned on NPR news yesterday, right before "Talk of the Nation" and thought it very strange. Would the New York Times prefer more soldiers died during the war? Think of it in reverse terms: more soldiers died in World War 2 than in the post-war occupations of Germany and Japan. Would we prefer America be embroiled in World War 2 than the quick liberation of Iraq? Of course not, no reasonable person would be.

Some posters have mentioned Vietnam. Over 58,000 troops were declared KIA in Vietnam in 10 years (vietnamwall.org). In Iraq, as of yesterday 281 soldiers have died, 143 after "combat operations" were over. Of those, 66 were KIA, with 77 in non-hostile actions (San Jose Mercury News, Aug. 27). The combat death rate (as it currently stands) of 66 since May 1 is half that of the accident rate of peacetime (John Hinderaker of the Claremont Institute).

In comparison, over the last 10 years, an average of 165 police officers are killed each year in the United States (Howard County Police Department, Maryland). This does not include the 72 that were killed in the World Trade Center. Yes, this gives us the meaningless statistic that more police officers were killed in the World Trade Center than US soldiers killed by insurgents in Iraq.

Last, according to Amnesty International 275 Iraqis died per day as a result of Saddam Hussein. To be willing to accept French "sass," so to speak, would mean that one would rather have 275 Iraqis die per day than the currenty fatality rate of just under 1.5 GIs per day. Or, in other words, one would be saying that 1 GI is not worth 183 Iraqis.

The death of a single soldier, police officer, or innocent Iraqi is never to be taken lightly. But cheap shots like that "statistic" demean what those brave soldiers have done for not only our country, but for a country halfway around the world. I would welcome, for example, French and Russian soldiers to help patrol Iraq. But considering they initially resisted lifting sanctions on Iraq (Sydney Morning Herald, April 18) as away to politically undermine the reconstruction, I would insist on an American commander -- an arrangement, it would seem, that Bush would accept (Ireland Online, Aug. 28).

(EDIT: Grammar and spelling mistakes. Darn it!)

Not the point i was making. At this point, now that combat operations are done, i don't see an issue with international cooperation. Nor is it logically sound to claim that since one opposses certain imperalistic facets of our occupation, that one enjoys Iraqi deaths under sadaam. Nor does the stastic of 275/day give any indication of why. I'm betting this includes sanctions, which right or wrong, were the West's imposition, not Sadaam's idea.

I get it...we are not losing troops hand over fist like we have in previous conflicts. And we stopped a pretty horrid situation. But we did so arbitrarily, based on a shadowy claim of natitional security. There are other nations with similar human rights abuses.... We did so with out help from other nations that could have blunted extremist opposition and terror. We continue to try to pacify the population, with no exit stratagy in sight. We continue to do all this at extreme cost, to the detriment of our domestic well being. I'm sorry...that just seems damn familiar.

Give me a break! Last week I heard that if it wasn't for the "New Military" that GWB and Rumsfeld designed we would not have been so successful, now it's they're Clinton's generals. Reality is that this administration has chosen to listen to the generals that already agreed with them and dismissed those who did not. Gen. Shinseki(I know that's not spelled right) reccommend almost 100,000 more troops for the action, but was dismissed by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and now it turns out he was correct.

The Bush Administration rushed into this war without evaluating the long term consequences and without a stong post war/disengagement plan. Whether you agree or disagree with the war, you have to admit that while the war strategy was effective, the plan as a whole was not complete or well thought out and this administration should be held responsible (just as any administration should) for the outcome.

Getting back to the topic, Bush is headed for disaster for one reason, the same reason that resulted in the unseating of his father...he is ignoring the economy.

His domestic agenda is a little on the lean side and giving tax cuts and mailing out checks was a bad idea when we have such a large deficit. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed getting the money, hell I got over $1500 back from his two rebates.

I think that he might have gotten in over his head with Iraq. It's one thing to "liberate" a country from it's "leadership", but it's another thing altogether to police the anarchy that results from that "liberation". His undoing will be the continued guerilla attacks against American troops, no American likes to hear of American soldiers dying, and his seeming indifference to the domestic economy. There will be no re-election for Bush, just like his father.

No offense intended, I was merely interpreting your statement as poorly as possible for partisan effect -- my apologies, I meant it as just a rhetorical device.

I don't think anyone enjoys Iraqi deaths under Saddam, merely that the effect of maintaining the status quo would have produced this rather unseemly side effect. You're exactly right that the deaths per day include sanctions. But what are the alternatives? The most popular at the time was more inspections, with the threat of more sanctions for non-compliance. And here we just established that Western imposed sanctions quite possibly severely hurt the Iraqi populace. We could lift the sanctions, but there's not much more at our disposal by the point we get to sanctions, to substitute in place for non-compliance. Gigli wasn't out yet, remember.

I must disagree with you here. When this line of argument is brought up I'm always reminded of the parable of the beach full of stranded starfish and the boy throwing them back into the ocean, one at a time. He can't possibly help them all, or even help enough to make a difference. But as he said, getting ready to hurl a starfish back into the water, "It makes a difference to this one."

We probably can't liberate all the world's oppressed. First, we don't have enough resources, and second, we would be denounced as imperialists. Though if I could, I would gladly suffer the second to accomplish the first.

The New York Times itself has an article with the lead "The Bush administration has signaled for the first time that it may be willing to allow a multinational force in Iraq to operate under the sponsorship of the United Nations as long as it is commanded by an American." (New York Times, August 28, by Douglas Jehl) I think this is a good thing. I think finally, the world is ready to accept the liberation of Iraq. I just hope that bitter partisanship doesn't undermine the reconstruction as much as it did the slow buildup to liberation.

-- Alvin

Bush is toast (Yayy!) As for having the UN in to help out...no way. You started it, you finish it. Can't ignore the UN when it suits you, then come crying back.

This is an unfortunate part of any occupation. It happened when we occupied Germany and Japan. Some of you might not remember the bitter war that was fought. Now they are allies and friends. It took almost 10 years to put those Countries back in order. A Country was invaded an army defeated and a Country occupied with 100's less losses than a average year of homicides in NYC. Yup, time to cut and run. (insert expletive here)

None taken...

Well, there are other, cheaper starfish that want us to intervene....Liberia. But you don't see us there. Thus, why i make the claim that using human rights to support the invasion is aribtrary. That's never been the cause of war before, nor did that take center stage UNTIL the wmd's didn't show up. Then Blair started trotting out the "history will forgive us" speech. It's an okay arguement, but it doesn't mitigate the fact that we invaded a nation on fiat...

Bennifer does have a use! Lmao...

But...without actual evidence of WMDs, and aside from the slow starvation induced by UN sanctions, Saddam is just a two bit dictator, no different from other regional powers. He may have talked to Al Queda? Big Farking Deal. We know the Saudis have ties...we know several other states have ties to Islamic Jihad, Al Fatah, Hezzbollah, and other terrorist organizations. And they regularly brutalize their citizenry.

I agree, to an extent, about liberating such oppressed and destabilized nations. But, i don't think i approve of doing so under soley our national authority. First and foremost is a question of practicality. Becuase it is only US/UK troops...it is easy to cast us as the invader, and to call upon more moderate elements in these nations to support extremist opposition. Dealing with Saudi terrorists is a pain in the ass...do we really want to deal with a generation of Iraqi terrorists that have a grudge against the occupying forces?

It's a horrible situation over there. I dont' know what the best thing to do about it is, but the sooner we can get our soldiers out of harms way the better.

Willy: Agreed, sort of. I think a withdrawl now is just about the worst thing that we could possibly do. I was against this war and still am, but now that we're there, we BETTER stick it out. Way too many people depending on us now.