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Our fight for Independance is the Same as the Iraq War Now?
What the President wants us all to infer is that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are just like the American Revolutionary War. It paints a nice picture, but it isn't the least bit true.In Martinsburg, W.Va. President Bush equated the war in Iraq on Wednesday with the U.S. war for independence. Like those revolutionaries who "dropped their pitchforks and picked up their muskets to fight for liberty," Bush said that American soldiers also were fighting "a new and unprecedented war" to protect U.S. freedom.
What............?
The president mentioned Adam Stephen, a Revolutionary War general who founded Martinsburg, a city of 15,000 in the panhandle of West Virginia. "We give thanks for all the brave citizen-soldiers of our Continental Army who dropped pitchforks and took up muskets to fight for our freedom and liberty and independence" Addressing National Guard members with the 167th Airlift Wing who were gathered in a cavernous airplane hangar here, he said, “Like those early patriots, you’re fighting a new and unprecedented war — pledging your lives and honor to defend our freedom and way of life.”
In a reprise of speeches he delivered throughout the 2006 congressional campaign, the president said that the threat that emerged Sept. 11, 2001, remains and that "a major enemy in Iraq is the same enemy that dared attack the United States on that fateful day."
The president was adamant in his Fourth of July message that he would stand up to calls to end the war before he believes it has been won. When Congress returns
next week, Democrats plan to renew their legislative push to bring home troops.
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Bush's comments came as al Qaeda's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, told militants in Iraq and Afghanistan that the Western forces will be defeated soon. "Rejoice, for victory is near, with Allah's permission, and the herds of crusaders have begun to split up and their sole concern has become searching for a way out," he said on an Internet video that surfaced yesterday. |
"Withdrawing our troops prematurely based on politics, not on the advice and recommendation of our military commanders, would not be in our national interest. It would hand the enemy a victory and put America's security at risk - and that's
something we're not going to do," he said.
Bush reiterated his warning that "terrorists and extremists" would try to strike inside the United States if the military walks away from the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"If we were to quit Iraq before the job is done, the terrorists we are fighting would not declare victory and lay down their arms. They would follow us here, home," Bush told a crowd of about 1,000 people gathered at a West Virginia Air National Guard maintenance hangar.
WHAT?
What the President wants us all to infer is that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
are just like the American Revolutionary War. It paints a nice picture, but
it isn't the least bit true. President Bush wants us all to believe that
foreign terrorists are doing the fighting in Iraq, but estimates show that
number of foreign fighters in Iraq is about 2,000. However, the estimate
for the size of the insurgency including fighters and those who provide support
is 70,000. The vast majority of the insurgency is Iraqi, and when this is
taken into account, it puts a whole new perspective on the idea of who are
the revolutionaries and who are the occupiers. From the beginning, this administration
has confused Iraq's desire to be liberated with its desire not to be occupied.
Let's use the American Revolutionary War as an example. Instead of the Americans rising up to fight the British, what would have happened if the French decided to liberate the American colonies from the British, but instead of leaving after the British were gone, chose to stick around and build permanent military structures in the colonies? Although the Americans would be grateful to the British for removing their previous oppressors, in no time at all they would have become just as angry with French if they tried to establish the form of government that they thought America should have, and continued to occupy the country while showing no signs of ever leaving. How long do you think it would have been before the colonial Americans formed an "insurgency" to get rid of the French?
The clear difference between colonial America and Iraq is the lack of an age old sectarian conflict. This conflict is why U.S. troops are still needed in Iraq. Certainly many Iraqis probably view the Americans as a necessary evil, because the U.S. troops are the only adequate security force in the nation. This is where President Bush has it all wrong. American troops aren't needed in Iraq to fight for freedom. Iraqis got their freedom the day Saddam Hussein was removed from power. U.S. troops are needed in Iraq to keep a lid on a civil war, but as we learned from American history sometimes a civil war is necessary in order for a nation to truly unify. The nation that is able to develop and grow without a civil war is a rare one indeed.
The Iraqis fighting against the United States don't see the Americans as fighting for freedom. They see a foreign power that has invaded and occupied their nation, a power that seems to want to exploit Iraq's main resource for their own gain. From their point of view they are not insurgents or terrorists, but freedom fighters who are fighting for control of their homeland. I am not saying that the U.S. troops in Iraq are evil or the bad guys, but that the concepts of good and evil are very subjective, and they completely depend upon which side of the fence you are on. From the Iraqi point of view, isn't possible that the U.S. troops aren't George Washingtons, but King Georges?