Thousands pack D.C. to protest Iraq war
- Thread starter CBC News
- Start date
People out on the street, in large, large groups, all over the country, is the only way to get
the attention of George Bush.
He and Cheney think they can do "whatever" they want, and disregard any "intelligent input" from
anyone.
the attention of George Bush.
He and Cheney think they can do "whatever" they want, and disregard any "intelligent input" from
anyone.
Protest are a physical way that cant be ignored like letters and emails. I didnt have enough gas so I didnt get to go, or believe you me Id have been there.
Found on msn
thousands protest Iraq war on 3rd anniversary
Across the globe, demonstrators demand U.S. withdraw its troops
Andrea Comas / Reuters
Thousands of anti-war demonstrators protest on Sunday, the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, in central Madrid, Spain.
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Slide show
• Day by day, images of a four-week invasion
From the first blasts that rocked Baghdad to the U.S. military's declaration that major combat was over, see images from every day of the conflict.
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FREE VIDEO
• Then and Now
Three years ago, U.S. and allied troops arrived in Iraq with “shock and awe.” Take a video look-back at that lightning campaign — and then the new face of life and conflict in Iraq.
MSNBC.com
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getCSS("3053751") INTERACTIVES & FACT FILES
• U.S. military deaths
• Guide to military jargon
• Full text of Iraq constitution
• Trouble spots in Iraq
• Conflict in Iraq: In images
Updated: 11:14 a.m. ET March 20, 2006
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CHALMETTE, La. - The third anniversary of the U.S.-led war in Iraq drew tens of thousands of protesters around the globe, from hurricane-ravaged Louisiana to Australia, with chants of “Stop the War” and calls for the withdrawal of troops. President Bush used the occasion to call for Americans to consider the sacrifices of men and women in uniform.
About 200 war veterans, hurricane survivors and demonstrators gathered Sunday at the Chalmette National Cemetery to protest how the military conflict overseas had hurt the country’s ability to help the Gulf Coast recover from last year’s hurricanes.
“We attacked a country who never did anything to us,” said Philadelphia resident Al Zappala, whose 30-year-old son was killed in Iraq in April 2004.
thousands protest Iraq war on 3rd anniversary
Across the globe, demonstrators demand U.S. withdraw its troops
Andrea Comas / ReutersThousands of anti-war demonstrators protest on Sunday, the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, in central Madrid, Spain.
getCSS("3088871")
From the first blasts that rocked Baghdad to the U.S. military's declaration that major combat was over, see images from every day of the conflict.
var cssList = new Array();getCSS("3053751")
var cssList = new Array();getCSS("3053751") Most Popular
• Most Viewed<IMG height=1 width=2 scr="/images/cleardot.gif">• Top Rated<IMG height=1 width=2 scr="/images/cleardot.gif">• Most E-mailed• Stagehand killed on set of Samuel Jackson film
• Police arrest escapee near NASCAR track
• War protesters demand U.S. troop withdrawal
• Police kill sword-wielding teen after mom slain
• Missing toddler’s body found in septic tank
• Most viewed on MSNBC.com
• Apollo 1’s tale retold: ‘Fire in the cockpit!’
• Sanctuary gives disabled pets a second chance
• Online public records facilitate ID theft
• Healing the Wounded
• When mountain lion attacks, spouse fights back
• Most viewed on MSNBC.com
• 'Forest' woman returns from Cambodian jungle
• Behind the 'Madrassa Hoax'
• Should Congress try to stop President Bush from deploying more U.S. troops in Iraq?
• The Stage of Grief No One Admits To: Relief
• Archery club accused of using live turkey targets
• Most viewed on MSNBC.com
pop_pushTabBox('boxB_3053751');
getCSS("3088867")
Three years ago, U.S. and allied troops arrived in Iraq with “shock and awe.” Take a video look-back at that lightning campaign — and then the new face of life and conflict in Iraq.
MSNBC.com
var tcdacmd="dt";
getCSS("3053751") NBC NEWS EXCLUSIVE
getCSS("3053751") INTERACTIVES & FACT FILES
• U.S. military deaths
• Guide to military jargon
• Full text of Iraq constitution
• Trouble spots in Iraq
• Conflict in Iraq: In images
function UpdateTimeStamp(pdt) { var n = document.getElementById("udtD"); if(pdt != '' && n && window.DateTime) { var dt = new DateTime(); pdt = dt.T2D(pdt); if(dt.GetTZ(pdt)) {n.innerHTML = dt.D2S(pdt,((''.toLowerCase()=='false')?false:true));} } } UpdateTimeStamp('632784680552400000');
CHALMETTE, La. - The third anniversary of the U.S.-led war in Iraq drew tens of thousands of protesters around the globe, from hurricane-ravaged Louisiana to Australia, with chants of “Stop the War” and calls for the withdrawal of troops. President Bush used the occasion to call for Americans to consider the sacrifices of men and women in uniform.
About 200 war veterans, hurricane survivors and demonstrators gathered Sunday at the Chalmette National Cemetery to protest how the military conflict overseas had hurt the country’s ability to help the Gulf Coast recover from last year’s hurricanes.
“We attacked a country who never did anything to us,” said Philadelphia resident Al Zappala, whose 30-year-old son was killed in Iraq in April 2004.
No they didn't.
America didn't leave because of protests. America left because they lost.
Nixon won both elections. He hammered the anti-war candidate McGovern in 1972, and won by the largest margin by popular vote in US history.
Middle America doesn't like protests. They don't work. Protestors don't get this.
Bravo for them, now only if our people could muster the same dedication and march to Ottawa to get us out of Afghanistan.
IMHO, the Americans have no choice in the matter. Whether they, or you, like it or not, the Yanks have let the genie out of the bottle. Most of the violence in Iraq is sectarian, not even directed against the Americans. Ethically, they have absolutely no choice but to INCREASE their presence in Iraq, and take whatever steps are necessary to quell this surge of insane intercene violence.
It IS possible......Saddam did it.
As for Afghanistan, we have every right, and a huge responsiblity in being there. We can not let the Taliban return......it is that simple. Once again, to win the approval of the people there, the nation must be stabilized........which will require more troops, and an end to the use of massive (and indiscriminate) air strikes..........except maybe in Pakistan.
The left has to come up with some alternatives that recognize the problems in a policy of RUN AWAY NOW!
It IS possible......Saddam did it.
As for Afghanistan, we have every right, and a huge responsiblity in being there. We can not let the Taliban return......it is that simple. Once again, to win the approval of the people there, the nation must be stabilized........which will require more troops, and an end to the use of massive (and indiscriminate) air strikes..........except maybe in Pakistan.
The left has to come up with some alternatives that recognize the problems in a policy of RUN AWAY NOW!
The Canadians have built irrigation systems in areas that would be impossible to do so, what with the Taliban being there to thwart any and every effort to bring some prosperity to these people, who want us there. Why wouldn't they want us there? Who is going to come in and provide the security, engineers and training? The UN with their fancy blue berrets? Not likely.
Bravo!!
Absolutely. The Canadian Armed Forces are changing the landscape, helping produce an infrastructuer and preventing the Taliban from forcing the country back into chaos.
If it were merely a matter of getting the trains to run on time, I would agree we needed to rethink our position. But it isn't, under the Taliban the counrty was a mess, the people lived in abject fear and the subjugation of anyone outside their scewed vision, were not tolerated.
Our presence is paramount and doing ten fold of the presence of any other Military Force in Country.
The Taliban relies on one simple thing- unemployment. And chiefly in Pakistini areas bordering Afghanistan. Unemployed villagers paid a pittance by Taliban organizers and outfitted with the basics are thrust across the border to challenge NATO troops. It's a job. Maybe what Canada should do is develop make work programs inside Pakistan. Hire workers before the insurgents do.
Be very careful - what you wish for
http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/180263/
How to lose a war
Bradley R. Gitz
Posted on Sunday, January 28, 2007
Perhaps the most immoral decision ever made by any agent of our federal government was Congress’ decision to pull the rug out from under the government of South Vietnam.
The decision to abandon Saigon was actually taken in three steps. The first came in June 1973 when Congress passed the Case-Church Amendment prohibiting further U. S. military involvement in Southeast Asia. As Henry Kissinger has bitterly noted, that act decisively undercut the ability of the Nixon administration to enforce the provisions of the Paris Peace Accords that had been signed just a few months earlier. The second step was Congress’ decision to cut its aid appropriations for South Vietnam by nearly half for fiscal 1974-75. That cut thoroughly demoralized the South Vietnamese government and military and, as archival records from North Vietnam later revealed, led Hanoi to begin preparing its final offensive. The ugly story finally came to a close just a few months later, when the newly installed “Watergate” Congress refused desperate requests from the Ford administration for emergency American aid with which to resist Hanoi’s Sovietsupplied invasion. A modest application of available air power would have turned the tide, but Congress instead abandoned a long-time ally to its totalitarian fate and thereby made a mockery of the deaths of more than 50, 000 American soldiers. So much has been written in error regarding Vietnam that we forget that the war had been essentially won by the beginning of 1973. A combination of the failure of Hanoi’s 1972 Easter offensive, the emerging détente between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the trouncing of the anti-war candidacy of George McGovern in November 1972 had dashed North Vietnam’s hopes for taking South Vietnam.
The final inducement to seek peace came with Richard Nixon’s Christmas bombing of the north, a step which the late historian Douglas Pike always maintained would have won the war as far back as 1965 had it been employed.
The security situation in the countryside of South Vietnam had improved dramatically by the early 1970 s, with the Viet Cong having been effectively swept from the villages and rice paddies due to the losses suffered during the Tet offensive and the subsequent effectiveness of Creighton Abrams’ “clear and hold” tactics.
The Paris Peace Accords of January 1973 gave the United States and South Vietnam virtually everything we had sought in five years of frustrating negotiations. Promised a generous level of American aid and swift American retaliation in response to communist violations of the peace accords, South Vietnam appeared to have been saved.
Becoming embroiled in Southeast Asia might have been a mistake in the first place; becoming involved to the extent we did almost certainly was. But Vietnam was never the unwinnable war that antiwar orthodoxy claimed. Despite all of the errors dating back to the Truman administration and the sacrifices that exceeded the value of the interests originally at issue, we had essentially achieved our objectives, at least until Congress began to throw that victory away step by step. What captured Saigon in the spring of 1975 was not a guerrilla offensive by a nonexistent Viet Cong, but a full-fledged conventional invasion from the north directed and armed by the Soviet Union. The reason South Vietnam was unable to resist that offensive was because our Congress had weakened its military capabilities, left it politically isolated and refused to allow us to help when help was most needed. It is with this horrible lesson of pusillanimity and dishonor that one must view current Democratic Party proposals to cut off funding for the war in Iraq. Remarkably, senators like Patrick Leahy are now actually advocating going further than Democrats did back then, proposing a cutoff of funds not just to an allied government following a peace settlement but to American troops still fighting the enemy in the field. Even more remarkable have been the comments from Leahy and some of his colleagues holding up the cutoff of funding to South Vietnam as a model for how the war in Iraq should be ended. One wonders if he and the others in the surrender-now clique have heard of the boat people, the killing fields of Cambodia or any of the other horrors that befell Southeast Asia after we left the region.
The lesson in all of this is that it is remarkably easy to end wars, be they in Vietnam or Iraq. All you have to do is decide to lose. Just like the Democrats.
Free-lance columnist Bradley R. Gitz teaches politics at Lyon College at Batesville.
http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/180263/
How to lose a war
Bradley R. Gitz
Posted on Sunday, January 28, 2007
Perhaps the most immoral decision ever made by any agent of our federal government was Congress’ decision to pull the rug out from under the government of South Vietnam.
The decision to abandon Saigon was actually taken in three steps. The first came in June 1973 when Congress passed the Case-Church Amendment prohibiting further U. S. military involvement in Southeast Asia. As Henry Kissinger has bitterly noted, that act decisively undercut the ability of the Nixon administration to enforce the provisions of the Paris Peace Accords that had been signed just a few months earlier. The second step was Congress’ decision to cut its aid appropriations for South Vietnam by nearly half for fiscal 1974-75. That cut thoroughly demoralized the South Vietnamese government and military and, as archival records from North Vietnam later revealed, led Hanoi to begin preparing its final offensive. The ugly story finally came to a close just a few months later, when the newly installed “Watergate” Congress refused desperate requests from the Ford administration for emergency American aid with which to resist Hanoi’s Sovietsupplied invasion. A modest application of available air power would have turned the tide, but Congress instead abandoned a long-time ally to its totalitarian fate and thereby made a mockery of the deaths of more than 50, 000 American soldiers. So much has been written in error regarding Vietnam that we forget that the war had been essentially won by the beginning of 1973. A combination of the failure of Hanoi’s 1972 Easter offensive, the emerging détente between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the trouncing of the anti-war candidacy of George McGovern in November 1972 had dashed North Vietnam’s hopes for taking South Vietnam.
The final inducement to seek peace came with Richard Nixon’s Christmas bombing of the north, a step which the late historian Douglas Pike always maintained would have won the war as far back as 1965 had it been employed.
The security situation in the countryside of South Vietnam had improved dramatically by the early 1970 s, with the Viet Cong having been effectively swept from the villages and rice paddies due to the losses suffered during the Tet offensive and the subsequent effectiveness of Creighton Abrams’ “clear and hold” tactics.
The Paris Peace Accords of January 1973 gave the United States and South Vietnam virtually everything we had sought in five years of frustrating negotiations. Promised a generous level of American aid and swift American retaliation in response to communist violations of the peace accords, South Vietnam appeared to have been saved.
Becoming embroiled in Southeast Asia might have been a mistake in the first place; becoming involved to the extent we did almost certainly was. But Vietnam was never the unwinnable war that antiwar orthodoxy claimed. Despite all of the errors dating back to the Truman administration and the sacrifices that exceeded the value of the interests originally at issue, we had essentially achieved our objectives, at least until Congress began to throw that victory away step by step. What captured Saigon in the spring of 1975 was not a guerrilla offensive by a nonexistent Viet Cong, but a full-fledged conventional invasion from the north directed and armed by the Soviet Union. The reason South Vietnam was unable to resist that offensive was because our Congress had weakened its military capabilities, left it politically isolated and refused to allow us to help when help was most needed. It is with this horrible lesson of pusillanimity and dishonor that one must view current Democratic Party proposals to cut off funding for the war in Iraq. Remarkably, senators like Patrick Leahy are now actually advocating going further than Democrats did back then, proposing a cutoff of funds not just to an allied government following a peace settlement but to American troops still fighting the enemy in the field. Even more remarkable have been the comments from Leahy and some of his colleagues holding up the cutoff of funding to South Vietnam as a model for how the war in Iraq should be ended. One wonders if he and the others in the surrender-now clique have heard of the boat people, the killing fields of Cambodia or any of the other horrors that befell Southeast Asia after we left the region.
The lesson in all of this is that it is remarkably easy to end wars, be they in Vietnam or Iraq. All you have to do is decide to lose. Just like the Democrats.
Free-lance columnist Bradley R. Gitz teaches politics at Lyon College at Batesville.
If that's the case then the horrible lesson is not learning the last horrible lesson. If you know the Democrats must be blamed for losing why put yourself in that position to begin with? Is that the goal, start a war, lose and blame the Democrats? What other result could there be, stay the course another 4 or 5 years and see if the resistance gets into its last throes by then? Does the right expect there to be never ending public support for failed policies? That is called insanity. Surely the right doesn't expect that the people will be satisfied to see the same failed policies implemented over and over without speaking up.