Ben Stein- A Few Respectful Thought About The War In Iraq

[bobbysue]

Ben Stein - A few respectful thoughts about the war in Iraq. (excellent read)
The American Spectator ^| 11/21/2005 12:10:11 AM | Ben Stein


A few respectful thoughts about the war in Iraq:

1.) Conducting the war against al-Qaeda and the terrorists is a major drain on the energies of this administration. It would be a major drain on the energies of any administration. For Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald to be further draining the energies of the administration with his perjury indictment of Scooter Libby would be a matter for the most urgent concern if the charges against Libby were serious. But since by common consent of every serious criminal lawyer I have talked to, they are simply matters of routine politics being made criminal so that Fitzgerald can get on the cover of magazines -- this is scandalous. That is, to bring perjury charges over a matter where there is no underlying crime is always considered highly questionable behavior by a prosecutor. But to do so against an official helping to wage a war is almost unbelievable. The comparison that comes to mind is a DA indicting a soldier fighting in Iraq on an old speeding ticket. Prosecutors have wide latitude to bring or not bring charges. For Mr. Fitzgerald to have such poor judgment as to weaken and enervate the only government we have over a total triviality that will almost certainly turn out not to be a crime is an abuse of prosecutorial discretion on a dismaying scale. It would be different (but not much) in peacetime. But in wartime, it is so bad that it unnerves the mind.

I am sure that Mr. Fitzgerald, like all of us, wants to be a good citizen and wants to do his job. I am also certain that he likes being famous. That's human nature. But what he is doing (I am sure not in intent, but in effect) is a great service to Abu-Musad al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden, and a great disservice to his country and to the law. It is not too late for him to drop the charges, dignify himself and his office, and go back to prosecuting criminals. I cannot believe this man would, if he thought about it, want to spend one iota of his energy helping the enemies of this country, but in my humble opinion, that's just what he's doing. I may be wrong.

2.) It is not just a guess, but a certainty that if the U.S. were to abruptly withdraw from Iraq, as the Democrats are urging us to do, there would be a bloodbath in Iraq far worse than what we have seen so far. There would be outright civil war, large scale massacres of civilian populations beyond what we have seen by an order of magnitude, and a Middle East in chaos as Iran, the Kurds, and the Sunnis fought it out for land and oil and power. The word of the United States would be mud. Is this really what the Democrats want? Can they really contemplate with calm equanimity the mass murders that will follow a sudden U.S. withdrawal?

I see a frightening pattern here: the Democrats wanted us out of Vietnam, and never mind the genocide that followed. The Democrats want us out of Iraq and never mind that the Baathists will fill the vacuum and all Iraq will be screaming in pain except the murderers, who will exult -- especially Osama bin Laden. Can it be that the Democrats really want to surrender to the same man who killed 3,000 civilians on 9/11 and laughed about it? Are we so weak that in only four years, after a war smaller in casualties than many unknown battles of the Civil War, we are already eager to surrender to the man who murdered women and children and made terrified couples hold hands and leap to their deaths from the World Trade Center? If so, there really is little hope for us as a people. My prayer is that careful reflection will convince the Democrats that while we are all unhappy about the war, war is hell, and surrender is far worse. Maybe the Copperheads in the Democrat party, like those who wanted appeasement of the slave owners one hundred and forty years ago, will be a minority, and those who want to keep up the fight for human decency will prevail even as the Neville Chamberlains speak of peace at any price.

3.) I have a voluminous correspondence with soldiers and Marines in Iraq. To a man and woman, they do not want to walk away and make their comrades' deaths meaningless. They hate the war. They hate the dying. They grieve. So do their families. But they believe in their mission and they do not want their brothers' losses to be in vain. Their voices should be listened to.

4.) Insurgencies by highly motivated people are extremely hard to stamp out. This is especially true in Arab countries, where bravery is fanatically motivated by religion and personal unhappiness. But suppressing rebellions has been done in Egypt, Algeria, and Israel. It takes a lot of ugliness to do it. This is war, especially guerrilla war. It is horrible that we are in this kind of war, but we are in it, and it will never be won except by the most severe means. Whatever we do, however, it will be nothing compared with the firebombing of Tokyo, the carpet bombing of every German city, the atom bomb on Hiroshima. That is the awful truth: wars are won by horrific measures. It is deeply tragic, but it's true. If we are not willing to adopt strict measures, we will not and cannot win.

It is all very sad. But Saddam Hussein was even sadder and more atrocious, the Stalin of the Middle East, and for all of the pain of Iraq -- and it is terrifying -- progress is being made. 5.) There is no end to the gratitude we must feel towards the men and women fighting this war, and their families. As Thanksgiving approaches, our number one task is to be thankful we still have brave men and women ready to sacrifice all for our lazy fat selves and our freedoms. Let us not use that freedom to betray their sacrifice.

[Grimmlok]

A few things wrong with his article:

1) You're not actually at war. No declaration of war has been signed, no articles of war are being observed, and no enemy is present to wage war on. The eumphamism of 'war on terror' is actually just a bunch of police actions carried out by military personnel. The occupation of Iraq is also not a war, considering major conflict ended with Bush landing on that aircraft carrier with the ridiculous "mission accomplished" banner flapping overhead. It's an occupation.

2) Why again the constant and unwavering connection between Iraq and 9/11? It's patently false. The only reason Iraq is now a seething cauldron of Al Qaeda types is because Bush turned Iraq into such a quagmire. It became an instant clarion call for every fundamentalist weirdo to concentrate in and swell their numbers. Osama is on Afghanistan and Pakistan, Try looking for him there. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and yet ol Ben Stein here seems fit to repeat the same stupid proaganda.

3) The only thing different regarding Vietnam vs. Iraq, is that Vietnam was even more stupid of a conflict. It wasn't about the Vietnamese, it was the cold war, east vs. west, Us vs. Russia and China. The US soundly had their asses handed to them in the jungles, and only short of using nukes would they have succeeded, albeit having turned said jungle into glistening trinitite. Iraq is a case of 'you broke it, you bought it.' This is the only point where I'll agree with Stein: You cannot pull out now, if you do there will be a massive civil war. You broke it, it is YOUR LEGAL DUTY as occupiers to provide stability and to get the country back on its feet.

4) All this hemming and hawing over Saddam is particularely silly, considering nobody gave a fuck about him being the Butcher of Baghdad when it suited narrow US political and strategic purposes. the US turned a blind eye when he gassed the Iranians and Kurds, and for gods sake you even armed and funded him. It's only when he stopped listening to the orders given by the CIA (much like Noriega in Panama) did the US feel compelled to go in, using 9/11 as a pretense because people were stupid enough to listen to Bush falsely connect the two, and the added incentive being ready access to massive Oil reserves made available by the sure to follow US installed puppet government.

[Hazeleyed_Honey]

What a bunch of crock that this guy is spewing in his article.

In order to understand what is happening now, you need to understand the past of the Middle East and its history. The West has done this ALL before.It is a continuing expansionist conquest of the Middle East to take on Iraq as its base for taking full control of that region and spread it like a domino effect to the rest of the Middle East to make it fit its status quo.

Saddam and Al-Zarqawi have NO connection. If anything, Al-Qaeda and Saddam dislike each other. Al-Qaeda is more of an extremist religious fundamentalist terrorist organization. Whereas, Saddam was a secular leader. Osama did not like Saddam. Under Saddam's regime, he supressed Islamic fundamentalists.

If anything, Iraq ONLY became a recruit haven for jihadists and terrorists AFTER the Iraq war and Saddam were brought down. That is the instability of what the U.S. occupation did to Iraq. Bush's terrorism only counter-spinned and created more terrorism from within. It is a never-ending cycle.

It is Iraqis and former military generals that are behind the insurgency in Iraq. Now, the former secular Baathists and Iraqi Islamic fundamentalists have actually come together because of this war whereas under Saddam,they were opponents. They make a stronger force together now because they have one common goal-to kick out their enemy which are the U.S. and allied government forces.

[Grimmlok]

Oh, that's another mistake for Bush: Disbanding the military that was already present in Iraq. It tends to make them dissaffected.

[deckchick]

Jesus H Christ....

I love this part.

It would be a major drain on the energies of any administration. For Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald to be further draining the energies of the administration with his perjury indictment of Scooter Libby would be a matter for the most urgent concern if the charges against Libby were serious. But since by common consent of every serious criminal lawyer I have talked to, they are simply matters of routine politics being made criminal so that Fitzgerald can get on the cover of magazines -- this is scandalous. That is, to bring perjury charges over a matter where there is no underlying crime is always considered highly questionable behavior by a prosecutor

But they can send Martha Stewart to jail for perjury....

The only thing I do agree with is the fact that the actual troops who are there fighting need to be supported. I totally agree with that. They are doing the best they can with sub par equipment and a horrific enemy that has no qualms about killing themselves and others.

What a bunch of ass-kissing drivel. Ben needs to go play on his game show and shut the fuck up.

[Grimmlok]

"Win Ben Steins Republican Spin-Money!"

[deckchick]

Originally Posted by Grimmlok

"Win Ben Steins Republican Spin-Money!"

[bobbysue]

Originally Posted by Grimmlok

"Win Ben Steins Republican Spin-Money!"

Reminds me of that talk show hosted by Al Franken, except knowone listens to that...

[UndercoverGator]

Whatta ya expect from Ben? He used to be part of the Nixon or was it Reagan administration.

[deckchick]

Originally Posted by UndercoverGator

Whatta ya expect from Ben? He used to be part of the Nixon or was it Reagan administration.

He was Tricky Dicky's speechwriter...

[pacific breeze]

Originally Posted by bobbysue

Reminds me of that talk show hosted by Al Franken, except knowone listens to that...

Speak for yourself, bobbysue, speak for yourself.

[bobbysue]

Originally Posted by pacific breeze

Speak for yourself, bobbysue, speak for yourself.

The Big Apple Snubs Air America
By Byron York
The Hill | May 5, 2005

“This show is about...relentlessly hammering away at the Bush administration until they crack and crumble this November because, don’t get me wrong, friends, they are going down!”

So said Al Franken, the comedian-turned-radio host-turned-political prognosticator, opening his very first show on the liberal Air America radio network March 31, 2004.

Well, as it turned out, George W. Bush didn’t go down in November. But Air America’s ratings did.

The numbers are now in for Air America’s first year of broadcasting, and they aren’t good.

For one thing, the network is only on the air in about 50 of the nation’s 285 radio markets. And in most of those, it is broadcast on small stations, often with weak signals. So it is impossible to compare Air America’s ratings to those of its conservative competitors, such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, who are heard on hundreds of stations.

But we can compare them in at least one place — New York City.

Last year, Franken, whose program airs on WLIB in New York, boasted that he was beating Limbaugh, who is heard on WABC.

“We beat him,” Franken said of Limbaugh in June 2004. “The period we’re opposite Rush, we — we beat WABC, so we think we beat Rush.”

Turns out that wasn’t the case. When the final ratings came in, Limbaugh remained unscathed.

But there’s no doubt that Franken, aided by an astonishing hype campaign led by The New York Times, had a good start. In his first quarterly ratings, spring 2004 (made up of April, May and June), he won a 2.6 percent share of the audience of listeners age 25 to 54 — the most important group for radio advertisers — to Limbaugh’s 3.2 percent share.

In summer 2004 (July, August and September), Franken did even better, winning a 2.8 percent share of the 25-to-54 audience against Limbaugh’s 3.2 percent. About that time, officials at WABC gave Air America credit for a decent showing.

“They’re doing better than I expected,” Phil Boyce, the program director at WABC, told me last September. “Obviously there is a market for this in New York.”

But then something happened. October came, and then November — months Franken might have been expected to do well, since the presidential campaign was reaching its final stage and his audience was almost beside itself with anti-Bush fervor. But his ratings in New York went down.

When the fall 2004 (October, November and December) ratings came out, they revealed that Franken had pulled just a 1.8 percent share of the 25-to-54 audience — well behind Limbaugh’s 4.1 percent share.

Boyce was a happy man.

“Rush captured the election’s excitement,” Boyce said in January. “Franken didn’t.”

Now we have ratings for January, February and March of this year, and they show Franken with a 1.9 percent share to Limbaugh’s 3.2 percent share.

And that’s just Franken versus Limbaugh. Air America’s overall ratings in New York are far, far worse.

The station on which it is heard, WLIB, used to broadcast a mix of Caribbean music and talk. In its last quarter before switching to Air America, it won 1.3 percent of the total audience in New York. Despite all the publicity, Air America is now actually drawing lower ratings than the old music format; in the most recent figures, Air America score a 1.2 percent share of the New York audience.

And that is in true-blue New York City, where you might expect a liberal talk network to do well.

Now it should be said that Air America is succeeding in a few places. It is going gangbusters, for example, in Portland, Ore. But its overall failure to mount a challenge to conservative talk radio raises an obvious question: Why?

For one thing, many of the network’s hosts aren’t terribly good. While talented, they didn’t have any background in radio, and their passionate interest in politics wasn’t enough to make them polished radio performers. They’ve gotten better in the past year, but not that much better.

Second, even though Air America officials firmly believe that their hosts are more civil than those hard-liners you hear on conservative talk radio, Air America has at times served up a pretty ugly message. Take the time in May of last year when host Randi Rhodes suggested that President Bush be assassinated the way Fredo Corleone was assassinated in The Godfather, Part II. Now Rhodes has done it again, bringing up the kill-Bush idea in a skit aired this week.

Of course, part of the problem could be Franken’s inclination to refer to the president as a “moron,” an “idiot putz” and a “stupid schmuck.” Who knows?

Whatever the problem, Air America, bolstered by some of the same investors who brought you the Democratic 527 groups, will soldier on. And maybe some day they’ll figure it out.

[HWBL]

Originally Posted by deckchick

Jesus H Christ....


The only thing I do agree with is the fact that the actual troops who are there fighting need to be supported. I totally agree with that. They are doing the best they can with sub par equipment and a horrific enemy that has no qualms about killing themselves and others.

What a bunch of ass-kissing drivel. Ben needs to go play on his game show and shut the fuck up.

AMEN!

[AliceInWonderland]

How could I finish this piece of trash when the very first sentence is a false statement

1.) Conducting the war against al-Qaeda and the terrorists

I thought we were at "war" w/ Iraq, and Iraq and al-Qaeda have nothing to do w/ eachother as we all well know by now. Secondly, Bush is a terrorist (insurgent) and so are all the foreign troops in Iraq, a point more clear to me now than when I first heard it years ago when all this shit went down ( I had a really great professor in school who saw things w/ a clear eye ). Thirdly, there doesn't seem to be any "conducting" of war at all, its a total mis-managed fraudulent mess! our govt. sent our young men and women to battle w/ faulty equipment and w/ no protection on their vehicles among other mistakes.

With this many errors in the very first sentence, I didn't think the rest of this document was worth my time or effort.

[deckchick]

Originally Posted by bobbysue

[center]The Big Apple Snubs Air America
By Byron York
The Hill | May 5, 2005

I don't think a 6 month old story focusing on New York is really relevant. Obviously some people listen or it wouldn't still be on the air