Is Clinton trying to take the award of most clueless ex-president from Jimmy Carter?!
Thursday, Oct. 6, 2005 12:46 p.m. EDT
Bill Clinton: U.S. Likely to Lose in Iraq
Ex-president Bill Clinton is predicting that the U.S. will lose the war in Iraq, saying “the odds are not great of our prevailing there.”
In an interview with the Ladies Home Journal due out next month, Clinton calls the Iraq war “a quagmire” and warns “it could go wrong.”
He reminded: “Since the end of World War II, the only major foreign power that succeeded in putting down an insurgency was the British putting down the Malay insurgency, but the British stayed 15 years.”
“So you can say for historical reasons, the odds are not great of our prevailing there,” he argued.
Despite Clinton’s prediction of U.S. failure, he said analogies to Vietnam were not fair.
“The reason this is not Vietnam is that 58 percent of the eligible voters showed up and voted in Iraq,” he told the Journal.
On the other hand, he said, the South Vietnamese government was “never legitimate” in the eyes of the Vietnamese.
Clinton spokesman Jay Carson immediately sought to tone down the ex-president morale-busting remarks, telling the New York Daily News:
“President Clinton has always been clear that there are reasons for optimism and that there clearly are reasons for concern with the current situation in Iraq. But no one has been clearer than President Clinton about the necessity of winning now that we are there.”
Still, Clinton’s latest comments come just two weeks after he publicly suggested the Iraq war was illegitimate.
“The administration . . . decided to launch this invasion virtually alone and before the U.N. inspections were completed – with no real urgency, no evidence that there was any weapons of mass destruction there,” he complained to ABC’s “This Week.”
Josh, will you please put your “quotes” in “context” because “anyone can” do “this.”
All I got from your post is that Clinton is saying the war COULD go wrong, and probably will, but you can’t compare it to Vietnam. What’s the problem here?
He reminded: “Since the end of World War II, the only major foreign power that succeeded in putting down an insurgency was the British putting down the Malay insurgency, but the British stayed 15 years.”
“So you can say for historical reasons, the odds are not great of our prevailing there,” he argued.
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I’m sure the troops LOVE quotes like this.
Then again, the troops despised Clinton, so they won’t be too shocked by these idiotic statements.
Josh-
I’m also sure the troops LOVE fighting in a war that has been mismanaged from the very beginning. It isn’t relatively mild (and truthful) rhetoric hurting the troops. It’s mistake after mistake from the Bush administration, mistakes that even Republicans are starting to admit.
And don’t even get me started on the body armor issue!
Your callous disregard for the troops sickens me.
Yes, how dare we criticize ANYTHING the government does! That is so unpatriotic! I’m so certain that Josh rallied behind every military move that Clinton ever did! All hail Bush! All Hail Bush!
great argument. claim i have disregard for the troops. body armor? john doesnt know his history, clearly. who cut the military as much as possible? gosh, that would have been president bill clinton. john doesnt have access to the net and reading materials in libraries, i assume.
he claims mismanagement of the war…great, his opinion. and?
he also doesnt realize the irony in the fact that reenlistment rates are at all time highs. wonder why that is? why would men risk life and limb to go back to iraq if they hated the thought so much? john clearly knows few if any troops…read the message boards around the net with comments from the troops- theyre proud to serve their country. anecdotal sure…but the record high enlistment rates and reenlistment rates are right there staring him in the face.
john also calls the claim that we might not win in iraq mild and truthful. but, its ME who has disregard for the troops! its a good thing we dont know an informal poll of the troops in general and their attitudes. john would be screwed.
todd. are you on something? you seem to have some sort of problem…or a habit you need to kick. no one is questioning what the govt is doing- clinton said “So you can say for historical reasons, the odds are not great of our prevailing there…” !!! please, make a reasonable argument that ANY troop would find that comment necessary, fair, encouraging, positive, etc.
Josh, how do you explain the fact that NEW recruitment is at an ALL TIME LOW. Granted, if you or I were in the military (which I think you should do since you support this war that much), and I bonded with my squad that much, I would probably re-enlist because I would feel loyalty to that group, no matter HOW I felt about the war.
And Josh, clearly you don’t realize who is gutting defense spending where it really counts. Look up the voting history of your boy Cheney and see the truth.
Uh, dude, the difference between Bush and Clinton is that Clinton had a grasp on history. He’s a fair minded individual who made an assessment of our situation. What exactly is wrong with that, other than you belive that NO ONE SHOUD CRITICIZE what this government does. You are blindly loyal.
no one has a problem with someone disagreeing with the govt.
clinton specifically said that theres a chance the US soldiers will lose in iraq. thats not disagreeing with the govts actions, thats just stupidity.
again, what soldiers do you think would support this statement?
So you’re argument is that we should all say what is in the best interests of the soldiers? Isn’t that the same as agreeing with Bush, since he put them there?
No, Todd…we should make public speeches attacking the president. Then, we should use the soldiers for political gain and say that it’s likely we might lose the war!
Yeah, you’re right, we should use the soldiers for political gain and continue to insist that we WILL win, in the face of overwhelming evidence that we won’t.
Like Bush is doing.
“in the face of overwhelming evidence that we won’t”
no wonder you dont understand the situation. youre as crazy as clinton.
Well, let me amend that… overwhelming evidence that we AREN’T. Time will tell if we ultimately will.
I also think this “crazy” Clinton was president for eight years and had approval ratings that makes Bush look like a serial killer.
so lets summarize todds points:
–he thinks that its unlikely that the US military will win in iraq (hope he doesnt have any buddies in the military! and if he does, lets hope he keeps these thoughts to himself)
–he seems to think saying that someone looks like a serial killer based on ratings is a reasonable argument
–he seems to have no problem with clintons terrible behavior, and sees polls to be more imporant as to what is imporant.
–he has no problem with clinton attacking the morale of the troops with his asinine statements.
–he thinks that clintons statement that we would lose in iraq is merely disagreeing with the govts policies (tho, his own admin had the very same policy in place- regime change has been the official policy of the US govt since 1998).
im not sure theres much to say to such an unreasonable person.
“im not sure theres much to say to such an unreasonable person.”
Sure there is Josh: Go Cheney yourself.
ooh, Jay’s back after deleting my last post on his silly little site. I see you guys are both totally willing to delete posts that make you look like fools.
Josh, you didn’t read what i wrote, obviously.
1. i said there is a lot of evidence that shows we aren’t winning now. I don’t know how history will judge this war in the future.
2. I was comparing Clinton’s approval rates at this point to Bush’s. It was a relative comparison and I used “serial killer” as an exaggeration to prove the point that Bush is MUCH lower. Only I complete idiot such as yourself wouldn’t see what I was saying there. You take things very literally, not unlike a child.
3. Clinton was saying that historically speaking, insurgancies are very hard to put down. If we can’t admit that fact as a society, we will continue to “stay the course” and make the same mistakes we’re currently making.
Well, as I suspected, every radical Rebulican blog took Clinton’s statement completely out of context (as they LOVE to do). The entire text of his statement is posted below. He offers some realistic approaches to winning in Iraq and the entire tone of the piece is very positive. Read it Josh and Jay. Really, really read it.
…..
Salvatore: Is it apt to compare the Vietnam war and the Iraq war?
President Clinton: Well, in the sense that it looks like a quagmire, yes. But it’s not Vietnam. In Vietnam there were a lot of really fine people who were aligned with us. There were a lot of fine people in the South Vietnamese army. The Vietnamese died alongside us, and in greater numbers. That is true in Iraq. But that doesn’t guarantee you success. But the South Vietnamese government was never legitimate in the eyes of a significant percentage of the Vietnamese people. They never had what you could call a really full, fair, and free election; they never really had a lot of grass-roots support. And the North Vietnamese, the Vietcong, who would be the counterparts to the Sunni insurgents, had the North Vietnamese army backing them up.
The reason this is not Vietnam is that 58 percent of the eligible voters showed up and voted in Iraq. That’s almost the same turnout as we had in 2004. Remember how we were patting ourselves on the back in 2004? They are fighting alongside us. They are dying in greater numbers. They did vote. And they are trying to draft a constitution.
Now, there are two factors that can keep Iraq from becoming a Vietnam. One is if the constitutional process can be successfully concluded so that the Sunni minority that dominated the country under Saddam, and now can’t dominate anymore, is not itself dominated by an alliance between the Shias and the Kurds. If a substantial percentage of Sunnis feel that they can participate in this government, that in effect they have sort of a federal system where they have a limited amount of self-government, as far as various regions, that they have a coherent national policy, that the oil money be distributed fairly, that will be very important.
The second thing is the level of our success in training the security and military forces of Iraq. There were terrible problems in the beginning, but they have really increased their professionalism and capacity. If they get to the point where they can defend themselves against their own insurgency, then they’ve got more than half the battle won. When that point is reached, they’ll want us to go. In other words, they won’t want us to hang around and tell them how to run their country. They don’t want to run it for the benefit of Americans. They’ll want to chart their own course.
Having said that, it could go wrong. Since the end of World War II, the only major foreign power that succeeded in putting down an insurgency was the British putting down the Malay insurgency, but the British stayed 15 years. So you can say for historical reasons, the odds are not great of our prevailing there. When Saddam was there, because he had a military state, he was essentially able to control his borders and keep the terrorists out. With the disintegration of Saddam’s regime and the absence of something comparable coming back, Iraq has become vulnerable really for the first time in the modern era to insurgents coming in from outside the country and stirring things up. That’s complicated the picture.
But if their military can successfully achieve the capacity to manage the insurgency without us, and if they can conclude a constitution that will attract the Sunnis, then at some point you will have a process at which those who are outside the system will want to get in.
So the answer is: It’s not Vietnam, but it’s not a success. Whether it will succeed or not depends upon whether those two things happen before Americans feel tired of American young people dying over there.
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1. todd seems to think i thought he literally meant bush was somehow like a serial killer. i just said that those terms are unecessary. im not clueless and i clearly know what he meant.
2. i dont care about polls period. theyre pointless. the media skews issues one way and that affects opinion. the legacy media skews far left, and most average americans still get their news from these people. so, of course they buy into the propaganda and have low opinions of certain people and situations the MSM want to attack and go after constantly.
3. clintons statement was absurd. he said theres a chance we might not win. theres an unwritten rule that expresidents keep their mouths shut, especially on issues like this…clinton refuses to abide by this rule because his wife wants to run in ’08. carter is infamous for butting in to issues he has no need to be in. like his letters to the UN to stop to thwart the US led removal of hussein from kuwait. and his letter before this new war to oust the brutal regime.
4. clintons comments are a morale killer for the troops. no one wants to hear a former president say ‘guys, we might lose over there!’ no matter if hes claiming this opinion is based on history. warfare has changed too much in the past few decades. the insurgency, if the iraqis truly want it to be defeated, will be defeated. no doubt. no reasonable military man would even make this idiotic statements. clinton did it to attack bush and the war itself- why? for the sake of his wife. as i said, its an unwritten rule that former presidents not do this sort of thing. clinton would abide by it if not for hillary, ive little doubt. then again, the man is an egomaniac, so maybe he would butt in either way.
5. you said that these comments were merely him saying he disagreed with the administrations decisions. hardly the case at all. it went much further than that.
6. youve no reason to think, based on the evidence, that there have been constant mistakes made in iraq. war isnt pretty- something liberals have seemed to forget in the past few decades (since vietnam really.) this attitude present in WWI or WWII would have surely meant a defeat from the allies of the US and a terrible situation for the world even to the present.
7. liberal wimpiness prevents a lot of victory in the entire middle east. if we were to plan to attack another nation, to oust another brutal, murderous regime- the left would claim lies, misleading, etc. based on zero evidence of any of these things, but theyd do the samer thing theyve done with this war. they did the same thing in vietnam- a war that all the military men agreed we were winning, but that we lost the war at home, which is what caused ultimate overall defeat. and the war at home was with the liberals who made false claims against the troops, performed acts of treason, and took part in other nefarious actitives that screwed us in the end.
even proclaiming that iraq looks like a quagmire is an idiotic statement. and it shows how wimpy lberals have become. in WWII, we might lose a thousand men in one day- in terms of warfare and history in general, no sane person would call iraq a quagmire. all deaths are terrible, but war, again, is not pretty- and again, this is what liberals seem to forget. they want a peachy war with nice outcomes, quick victories, no casualties, etc. if they dont have this- they proclaim quagmire! then use this as a political tool to attack the current admin. his comments, in whole, were meant as an attack on the bush white house. hes playing politics with this war, and ultimately with the troops themselves.
Shocked that you can look at the evidence and say we are winning over there.
1. Insurgancy is rising.
2. Even the pentagon itself realizes this, as they stopped releasing the report that counted and documented acts of terrorism. The report was very bad PR for them. Terrorism is on the rise.
3. Rumsfeld allowed looting. “In a free society, you are free to do what you want.” An insulting comment which is meaningless and wrong.
4. General Shinseki who recommended much larger troop levels then Bush actually used, retired under controversial circumstances.
5. don’t even get me started on how much controversy is surrounding the entire rational for being there in the first place.
6. More and more polls show that the public is no longer backing this war. These aren’t all “whimpy liberals”
Those are a few off the top of my head. You will look at this evidence of mismanagement and excuse it. I look at this and want my leaders to address the issues in new and original ways. I want to win over there. I want our troops to stop dying. You just want to continue to throw bombs at the left and anyone that criticizes your boy Bush. Again, you are more loyal to the man and not the cause.
Josh, do you really think the US can engage in perpetually ousting regimes? Do you think we have unlimited resources? Do you think that there are only a fixed number of bad guys in the world and once we take care of them, we’re done?
Be very careful about advocating for our government to declare war with every bad regime in the world. That is a very simplistic view of reality.
By the way, if Bush is sooo concerned about evil regimes and oppression, why doesn’t he protest Saudi Arabi’s mistreatment of women, and the genocide happening in Darfur? How about speaking out against China? I’ll tell you why: HE DOESN’T REALLY GIVE A SHIT.