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Monday, December 15, 2008
You want humiliation? I'll give you humiliation!
The headline in The Times today reads, "Britain faces humiliating Iraq withdrawal."
Trust me, after having now finished reading Ben Macintyre's excellent book, Josiah the Great: The True Story of the Man Who Would be King
Posted by Terry O'Neill on December 15, 2008 in International Affairs | Permalink
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But the Afghan campaign was were one of Britain's greatest heroes got his start. I am speaking, of course, of none other than Sir Harry Paget Flashman (VC KCB KCIE), a shining example of British gallantry and courage as ever trod Her Royal Majesty's soil.
Seriously, though, your point is well-taken. A humiliating exit is a helicopter on the embassy roof. Leaving behind a stable democracy well on the way to self-sufficiency isn't humiliation, it's victory.
Posted by: Exurbankevin | 2008-12-15 10:52:26 AM
THE most humiliating defeats the British ever had were at Yorktown in 1781, when they surrendered to Washington and Rochambeau's combined US-French army, and at New Orleans in 1815 when they fled in the face of Andrew Jackson's amateur who used them for target practice.
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2008-12-15 11:21:05 AM
I see no reason for the British or anyone else to feel humiliated by leaving the occupation in Iraq.
Its a forever war and they are winning. Not so much tactically or in body counts....but they're bleeding us to death financially. One has to wonder, do they want to kill our soldiers or collapse our economy?
One has to wonder if that isn't their real goal.
Posted by: JC | 2008-12-15 11:39:50 AM
How about 800,000 deaths in WW1?
July 1, 1916- 50,000 British soldiers butchered by German machine guns. Generals who knew nothing of "modern" warfare sending a whole generation of the finest young men into hell on earth. And people wonder why England is losing it's battle with radical invaders. It's taken a few generations to re-populate their army.
If radical Islam can only find a few half-wits to strap bombs to, how do they plan to defeat a culture that can find millions of volunteers who are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice? They've already resorted to using women and children as walking bombs.
If you can listen to "The Green Fields of France" without shedding a tear, you're not a real Canadian.
Posted by: dp | 2008-12-15 12:28:26 PM
Humiliation?
Sorry I can't think about British military humiliation right now because the picture of the Three Stooges Coalition walking 'back down the hill' empty-handed is the perfect humiliation for me right now.
Heh.
Posted by: Rocky Thompson | 2008-12-15 2:40:46 PM
Are you the same Rocky Thompson who did some boxing?
Posted by: dp | 2008-12-15 2:51:37 PM
dp: If Muslims who want to repel and invader by strapping a bomb to themselves are seen as "half wits," then what do you call our soldiers who are willing to die as they invade a foreign country?
Dying for any government is a half-witted idea. At least the Muslims can say they are fighting for their neighborhood.
Posted by: Duder | 2008-12-15 3:36:34 PM
Half-wit is a perfectly appropriate term. Muslim controlled countries have a literacy rate of around 50%, so half-wit is not a term I throw around for fun.
Posted by: dp | 2008-12-15 4:30:08 PM
So, what would you call a gang that goes around the world killing a bunch of illiterates?
What makes them half-wits? Because they die in a war or simply because they can't read?
Posted by: Duder | 2008-12-15 4:51:04 PM
Did you hear? Military recruitment numbers are up in the United States. Public perception is increasingly that Iraq is virtually won. U.S. ground troops stay in Iraq until 2011. After that, it is believed that military advisors will remain embedded with Iraqi forces. Estimates of Al-Qaeda in Iraq's numbers are now down to several hundred. At height of power, the organization had 12,000 terrorists. In addition, most of Sunni insurgents have been killed, captured, or flipped. Al-Sadr's militia have been greatly reduced in power by Iraqi operations in Basra and Baghdad. Infiltration numbers from Syria and Iran are down over 80%(less than 20 a month attempting infiltration from Syria). Funny, Obama the peacenik gets handed a won war that he opposed in the first place. The counterinsurgency tactics used are very similar to those employed during the Malayasian Emergency 1948-1960. The end result was communist insurgents effectively eliminated as fighting force by 1957. In 1960, last fragment of communists leave the jungle and cross the border. 2008 was Iraq's version of 1957. Al-Qaeda has even admitted that the battleground has shifted to Afghanistan. Iraq is won! It wasn't pretty or easy. Mistakes were definitely made. Rumsfeld was incompetent. But we won and we are better for it! As a national guardsmen told me, "The media was against us, the pentagon bureaucracy was against us,and worst of all it often seemed that much of the public wasn't really for us. I'd have a guy thank me one moment and then tell me that what I did there was pointless. The soldiers did the job and no one else. We won because we refused to accept defeat." Real class act these anti-war types. When the next Mumbai goes down may the anti-war hippies be in the middle of it. Let's see them try to talk their way out of it. Kill the terrorists! Kill Al-Qaeda and everyone linked to them. The world's not big enough for them and the west. It's survival of the fittest. If you don't have the will to fight them then the end result will be them slaughtering you Indian style. I'm sick of the political correctness. I'm sick of the pandering. I'm sick of their behavior being blamed on us(Westerners, U.S., Israel, Britain, etc.). They are finally getting what they deserve! You deal with Mumbai by: 1.)Arming the public, 2.) Better training and intelligence, and 3.) Hunting down and killing every scumbag linked to the attackers. If they do a dirty bomb, then you respond by reenacting Hiroshima in the area that they are based. You show them that if they push it, the end result will be their extermination.
Posted by: Lance | 2008-12-15 5:24:00 PM
Yes, Iraq is won. hohoho You sound like Bush on an aircraft carrier.
Then you think we should murder hundreds of thousands of innocent people because of a criminal act. You sound like Hitler in Stalingrad.
The war is won, but we'll continue fighting!! If you believe that innocents don't count in a war, then you must respect Al Queda for 911.
Posted by: Duder | 2008-12-15 5:32:06 PM
Duder, you're a moron. The vast majority of Iraqis killed since 2003 were killed by their fellow Iraqis, not by the Americans. That journalist at Bush's press conference would have done better to huck his shoes at the mirror.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-12-15 11:46:06 PM
No I'm bigger and tougher than he was. heh.
And I had the name first, just not in public.
Posted by: Rocky Thompson | 2008-12-16 10:10:34 AM
I thought as much. You sounded a bit too polished.
Posted by: dp | 2008-12-16 11:07:30 AM
Hey duder, innocents do count! I lost two relatives on 9/11. Their crime was that they were American. My opinion is hunt down Al-Qaeda and their associate organizations. Hunt them down and send them to hell! I'm sick of liberals who say they feel my relatives' pain but that we must not upset our delicate Muslim brothers. Any true muslim brother of mine should want Al-Qaeda and other muslim terrorist organizations dead. They would cheer the death of Saddam. Iraq is won. Al-Qeada and the Taliban are about to get a beatdown in Afghanistan. We will win because unlike the Russians, we have no territorial intentions. Also, the Taliban hasn't got the backing of most of the Afghan population. In addition, the British did conduct some successful pacification campaigns in Afghanistan in the 19th century. In fact, they eventually avenged the 1842 disaster(check out 2nd Anglo-Afghan War).
Posted by: Dennis | 2008-12-18 3:42:38 PM
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