The Last Helicopter

[red-beard]

'The Last Helicopter'

By AMIR TAHERI
March 29, 2006; Page A18

Hassan Abbasi has a dream -- a helicopter doing an arabesque in cloudy skies to avoid being shot at from the ground. On board are the last of the "fleeing Americans," forced out of the Dar al-Islam (The Abode of Islam) by "the Army of Muhammad." Presented by his friends as "The Dr. Kissinger of Islam," Mr. Abbasi is "professor of strategy" at the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guard Corps University and, according to Tehran sources, the principal foreign policy voice in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's new radical administration.

For the past several weeks Mr. Abbasi has been addressing crowds of Guard and Baseej Mustadafin (Mobilization of the Dispossessed) officers in Tehran with a simple theme: The U.S. does not have the stomach for a long conflict and will soon revert to its traditional policy of "running away," leaving Afghanistan and Iraq, indeed the whole of the Middle East, to be reshaped by Iran and its regional allies.

To hear Mr. Abbasi tell it the entire recent history of the U.S. could be narrated with the help of the image of "the last helicopter." It was that image in Saigon that concluded the Vietnam War under Gerald Ford. Jimmy Carter had five helicopters fleeing from the Iranian desert, leaving behind the charred corpses of eight American soldiers. Under Ronald Reagan the helicopters carried the bodies of 241 Marines murdered in their sleep in a Hezbollah suicide attack. Under the first President Bush, the helicopter flew from Safwan, in southern Iraq, with Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf aboard, leaving behind Saddam Hussein's generals, who could not believe why they had been allowed live to fight their domestic foes, and America, another day. Bill Clinton's helicopter was a Black Hawk, downed in Mogadishu and delivering 16 American soldiers into the hands of a murderous crowd.

According to this theory, President George W. Bush is an "aberration," a leader out of sync with his nation's character and no more than a brief nightmare for those who oppose the creation of an "American Middle East." Messrs. Abbasi and Ahmadinejad have concluded that there will be no helicopter as long as George W. Bush is in the White House. But they believe that whoever succeeds him, Democrat or Republican, will revive the helicopter image to extricate the U.S. from a complex situation that few Americans appear to understand.

Mr. Ahmadinejad's defiant rhetoric is based on a strategy known in Middle Eastern capitals as "waiting Bush out." "We are sure the U.S. will return to saner policies," says Manuchehr Motakki, Iran's new Foreign Minister.

Mr. Ahmadinejad believes that the world is heading for a clash of civilizations with the Middle East as the main battlefield. In that clash Iran will lead the Muslim world against the "Crusader-Zionist camp" led by America. Mr. Bush might have led the U.S. into "a brief moment of triumph." But the U.S. is a "sunset" (ofuli) power while Iran is a sunrise (tolu'ee) one and, once Mr. Bush is gone, a future president would admit defeat and order a retreat as all of Mr. Bush's predecessors have done since Jimmy Carter.

Mr. Ahmadinejad also notes that Iran has just "reached the Mediterranean" thanks to its strong presence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. He used that message to convince Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to adopt a defiant position vis-à-vis the U.N. investigation of the murder of Rafiq Hariri, a former prime minister of Lebanon. His argument was that once Mr. Bush is gone, the U.N., too, will revert to its traditional lethargy. "They can pass resolutions until they are blue in the face," Mr. Ahmadinejad told a gathering of Hezbollah, Hamas and other radical Arab leaders in Tehran last month.

According to sources in Tehran and Damascus, Mr. Assad had pondered the option of "doing a Gadhafi" by toning down his regime's anti-American posture. Since last February, however, he has revived Syria's militant rhetoric and dismissed those who advocated a rapprochement with Washington. Iran has rewarded him with a set of cut-price oil, soft loans and grants totaling $1.2 billion. In response Syria has increased its support for terrorists going to fight in Iraq and revived its network of agents in Lebanon, in a bid to frustrate that country's democratic ambitions.

It is not only in Tehran and Damascus that the game of "waiting Bush out" is played with determination. In recent visits to several regional capitals, this writer was struck by the popularity of this new game from Islamabad to Rabat. The general assumption is that Mr. Bush's plan to help democratize the heartland of Islam is fading under an avalanche of partisan attacks inside the U.S. The effect of this assumption can be witnessed everywhere.

In Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf has shelved his plan, forged under pressure from Washington, to foster a popular front to fight terrorism by lifting restrictions against the country's major political parties and allowing their exiled leaders to return. There is every indication that next year's elections will be choreographed to prevent the emergence of an effective opposition. In Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, arguably the most pro-American leader in the region, is cautiously shaping his post-Bush strategy by courting Tehran and playing the Pushtun ethnic card against his rivals.

In Turkey, the "moderate" Islamist government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan is slowly but surely putting the democratization process into reverse gear. With the post-Bush era in mind, Mr. Erdogan has started a purge of the judiciary and a transfer of religious endowments to sections of the private sector controlled by his party's supporters. There are fears that next year's general election would not take place on a level playing field.

Even in Iraq the sentiment that the U.S. will not remain as committed as it has been under Mr. Bush is producing strange results. While Shiite politicians are rushing to Tehran to seek a reinsurance policy, some Sunni leaders are having second thoughts about their decision to join the democratization process. "What happens after Bush?" demands Salih al-Mutlak, a rising star of Iraqi Sunni leaders. The Iraqi Kurds have clearly decided to slow down all measures that would bind them closer to the Iraqi state. Again, they claim that they have to "take precautions in case the Americans run away."

There are more signs that the initial excitement created by Mr. Bush's democratization project may be on the wane. Saudi Arabia has put its national dialogue program on hold and has decided to focus on economic rather than political reform. In Bahrain, too, the political reform machine has been put into rear-gear, while in Qatar all talk of a new democratic constitution to set up a constitutional monarchy has subsided. In Jordan the security services are making a spectacular comeback, putting an end to a brief moment of hopes for reform. As for Egypt, Hosni Mubarak has decided to indefinitely postpone local elections, a clear sign that the Bush-inspired scenario is in trouble. Tunisia and Morocco, too, have joined the game by stopping much-advertised reform projects while Islamist radicals are regrouping and testing the waters at all levels.

But how valid is the assumption that Mr. Bush is an aberration and that his successor will "run away"? It was to find answers that this writer spent several days in the U.S., especially Washington and New York, meeting ordinary Americans and senior leaders, including potential presidential candidates from both parties. While Mr. Bush's approval ratings, now in free fall, and the increasingly bitter American debate on Iraq may lend some credence to the "helicopter" theory, I found no evidence that anyone in the American leadership elite supported a cut-and-run strategy.

The reason was that almost all realized that the 9/11 attacks have changed the way most Americans see the world and their own place in it. Running away from Saigon, the Iranian desert, Beirut, Safwan and Mogadishu was not hard to sell to the average American, because he was sure that the story would end there; the enemies left behind would not pursue their campaign within the U.S. itself. The enemies that America is now facing in the jihadist archipelago, however, are dedicated to the destruction of the U.S. as the world knows it today.

Those who have based their strategy on waiting Mr. Bush out may find to their cost that they have, once again, misread not only American politics but the realities of a world far more complex than it was even a decade ago. Mr. Bush may be a uniquely decisive, some might say reckless, leader. But a visitor to the U.S. soon finds out that he represents the American mood much more than the polls suggest.

Mr. Taheri is author of "L'Irak: Le Dessous Des Cartes" (Editions Complexe, 2002).

[widebody911]

But a visitor to the U.S. soon finds out that he represents the American mood much more than the polls suggest.

Unfortunately, I think this is true: The US is more of bastion of myopic, racist, redneck, cluelessness than we realize.

[red-beard]

[lendaddy]

That's a good article, we have become a nation of pussies ala the left. We need to smack the taste outta someones mouth to instill some fear of god in our enemies. Right now they laugh at our lack of backbone.

This I think was Bush's main mistake; Not realizing what a gigantic pile of pussies we are. He thought we would support an effort till finished, the foolishness.....

[Joeaksa]

Originally posted by lendaddy
That's a good article, we have become a nation of pussies ala the left. We need to smack the taste outta someones mouth to instill some fear of god in our enemies. Right now they laugh at our lack of backbone.

This I think was Bush's main mistake; Not realizing what a gigantic pile of pussies we are. He thought we would support an effort till finished, the foolishness.....

Agreed and now those without a backbone are chanting in the streets and CNN and the other talking heads are pushing the video out worldwide for everyone to see.

Pretty soon we will have to build a wall around the whole country, stop all immigration and hunker down, all because the pussies have out numbered those with a backbone in this country. It took 200 years to do but it appears that its happened.

[widebody911]

So, everyone who doesn't want random wars is just a pussy?

The test for whether or not we go to war should be this: are we ready, willing and able to annihlate every man, woman and child in the target country with no regrets of collateral damage? If the answer is "yes," then so be it - unleash the hounds of hell. If the answer is "no," then maybe some more thought needs to be put into why we're considering going to war in the first place.

It's not war in general that the anti Iraqnam people are against (and the anti-Vietnam people before us), it's going to war on murky pretexts. It's the shadowy "trust us, we're the government" skullduggery.

US foreign policy has become a tool for expanding Israeli and corporate interests without any real regard for the long-term implications, but anyone who opposes this is branded a "liberal pussy" for not blindly playing along. The Red State "Kill them, take their oil" is the only response that won't get you ridiculed by the Bushists:

But a visitor to the U.S. soon finds out that he represents the American mood much more than the polls suggest.

Said visitors are greeted by a 'kill the A-rabs' attitude, from people who wouldn't even even be able to find any Arab country on a map....

...but everyone else is a "pussy" for not joining in the chant.

[Jeff Higgins]

Bubba had one hell of a last week in office, focusing on pardoning all of his criminal cronies. What's the old saying - "you can do anything you want on your last day"? Depending on his successor, Dubya may decide to up the ante on on a President's "last day". Maybe he will nuke these bastards back into the stone age from whence they emerged. Maybe that will set them back long enough if we have the missfortune of getting stuck with some liberal simpering pussy fool.

[lendaddy]

No, not wanting to go to war makes you anti-war and that's fine. I disagree, but fine.

Saying you will back your country in war then turning against it based on a little pain and discomfort makes you a pussy. Once we've made up our minds to do something like this we by god better finish it. You apologize for mistakes and heal wounds when the wetwork is done. That's called patriotism.

I recall Bush having huge support for this war initially, which means we have a lot of pussies.

[widebody911]

Originally posted by Jeff Higgins
Maybe that will set them back long enough if we have the missfortune of getting stuck with some liberal simpering pussy fool.

Ok, let's turn it around. Since GWB is (supposedly) not a pussy, and he's such a "maverick" that doesn't care what people think, the why doesn't he just pull out all the troops right now - drop everything, everyone gets on a transport and gets the f*ck out of Dodge NOW; and just nuke the shiite (pun intended) out of the area, right now? He doesn't have to worry about getting re-elected, right? If they're all El Kayda 'terrorists' like the RedStaters say, then just turning the ME into glass would be a good thing, right? Remember, fight them there so we don't have to fight them here?

C'mon Georgie, put up or shut up, or are you a pussy? (Hey, that would explain the last name "Bush"!)

[widebody911]

Originally posted by lendaddy
Saying you will back your country in war then turning against it based on a little pain and discomfort makes you a pussy. Once we've made up our minds to do something like this we by god better finish it. You apologize for mistakes and heal wounds when the wetwork is done. That's called patriotism.

GWB didn't have a whole lot of support going into it. Once people found out he was FOS on all of his initial reasons for going to war, he lost support, and rightly so.

I recall Bush having huge support for this war initially, which means we have a lot of pussies.

Among the red-state groupies, maybe, but that was about it.

[Jeff Higgins]

I think your memory is a little clouded, Thom. Dubya's support went well beyond the "red state groupies".

Funny, virtually every blue stater today claims they opposed the war going in. The poll numbers back then clearly show that is a lie. That is truly the height of pussydom - supporting it until things start to go bad, and then claiming you never did. So many are showing their true colors now. Blue pussies.

[lendaddy]

Originally posted by widebody911
GWB didn't have a whole lot of support going into it. Once people found out he was FOS on all of his initial reasons for going to war, he lost support, and rightly so.
Among the red-state groupies, maybe, but that was about it.

73% said it was worth it, where do you get your numbers?



All in all, do you think it was worth going to war in Iraq, or not?

..............................Worth it......Not worth it.......No opinion
2005 APR 29-May 1 .....41................57...............2
2005 APR 1-2................45................53............. ...2
2005 Feb 7-10...............48.................50............ ..2
2005 Jan 3-5 ...................46..............52............. ..2
2004 May 2-4.................50................47............ ...3
2003 APR 14-16 ‡............73..............23................4
‡ WORDING: All in all, do you think the current situation in Iraq is worth going to war over, or not?
Based on 514 national adults in Form B.

[Joeaksa]

Originally posted by widebody911
Ok, let's turn it around. Since GWB is (supposedly) not a pussy, and he's such a "maverick" that doesn't care what people think, the why doesn't he just pull out all the troops right now - drop everything, everyone gets on a transport and gets the f*ck out of Dodge NOW; and just nuke the shiite (pun intended) out of the area, right now? He doesn't have to worry about getting re-elected, right? If they're all El Kayda 'terrorists' like the RedStaters say, then just turning the ME into glass would be a good thing, right? Remember, fight them there so we don't have to fight them here?

C'mon Georgie, put up or shut up, or are you a pussy? (Hey, that would explain the last name "Bush"!)

Because as much as many people would love to turn the entire middle east into a glass parking lot, its not the right thing to do.

Some of us remember that we have to meet with God in the end and want that meeting to be a positive one. About 101% positive that GW Bush is in this group...

[widebody911]

Originally posted by Joeaksa
Because as much as many people would love to turn the entire middle east into a glass parking lot, its not the right thing to do.

So, is a half-assed invasion the right thing to do?

You hawks should know this by now - war is not something you can do halfway. It's not like needlepoint or marriage or restoring a Model T, where if you get bored or frustrated halfway through, you can just move on to the next project. Vietnam should have made that abundantly clear, although it's not any different than the days Ghengis Kahn or when the cavemen of Wurfump took on the village of Grokqwk. Go big, or go home. If there is any question of motives, abilities, consquences, etc, you don't go in until they're resolved. If a legitimate reason for going to war with Iraq had existed, it would have been dereliction of duty for GWB to do anything but wipe them from the face of the earth. GWB sold the war on the basis of misinformation at best, outright deception at worth, and as such was hampered at the get-go.

Now that things haven't turned out the way you wanted ("they'll shower us with rose petals" you're blaming the "liberal pussies" Your emperor has no clothes, and you're claiming the liberals were the tailor.

This is the part where you dredge out the list of quotes from politicians who supported the war before hand... and they were lied to as well, so that they would in turn help build support (and vote for) the war. I think an apt term is "house of cards"

At this point, ya go nuttin' but $1T or so down the hole, a couple thousand dead US soldiers, anywhere from 30k to 100k dead Iraqis, a civil war, and for what? The US isn't any safer than it was before; in fact, you've all but printed the terrorist recruiting posters. We don't have the manpower to quell the situation in Iraq.

[Jeff Higgins]

Your memory is still a bit fuzzy, Thom. Many of those quotes that get dredged up pre-date the first of Dubya's terms. Who was "lying" to them back then? As much as the blue pussies would like to revise history on this, the "who said what when" and "who supported whom when" is just too well documented. I guess that is where you fall back on the tried and true tactic of telling the same lie often enough...

[Rodeo]

The writer is correct that our failure in Iraq has, and will continue to, haunt us around the world. That is but one of many tragedies of an invasion that was grossly mismanaged from before it began.

Perhaps that will loom as the greatest tragedy, that the limits of American power have been laid bare for all to see. America enjoyed a certain mystique as the only superpower in the world, and that has been lost as a mighty nation bobbles and bumbles in a war that our leaders neither understood nor prepared us for.

The blame is not to be laid on those who are that are brave enough to face the fact that we lost, but on those that placed America in this lose/lose situation.

Good leaders have an ability to tap into the strength of the people, to cause a collective reach into the depths of resolve and toughness.

By that standard, George Bush failed as a leader. Try to find pre-war speeches by the president or Cabinet explaining how difficult this conflict might be, why it was so important, and why the struggle was a noble one. Look for the administration asking the American people to sacrifice for the greater good, to reach down and show the American spirit. Look for anything indicating that our leaders understood what they were getting us into, and prepared us accordingly.

You won't find any of that. You'll find some fear mongering that turned out to be false, tax cuts that we would not relinquish, volunteer soldiers to fight in proxy for us, absurdly low cost projections, borrowing from the Chinese so we could push the costs to our children, and a grand and absurd "Mission Accomplished" celebration in the bottom of the second inning.

Did the public turn? You bet it did. And the failure was not of the American people, but of the American leaders. Watching an administration lurch from crisis to crisis with no sense of what the hell it was doing was icing on the cake. But the lack of any foundation or resolve, which would only have come from leadership, is what doomed us from the beginning.

The Bush Administration prepared us for a quick, painless, virtually cost-free "victory." It cannot blame the people for expecting exactly what was promised.

[1967 R50/2]

This arcticle is pretty bogus. No other middle eastern country considers itself a "regional ally" of Iran. Iranians aren't Arabs...their Persians. They aren't Sunni...they are Shiite. They aren't Baathists monarchists or democrats...their fundamentalists. The are a double minority and a political pariah.

Sorry, but this article is just a piece of Iranian fantasy. Or maybe Irano-phobe nightmare...same deal really.

We may very well leave Iraq sooner rather than later, but they are kidding themselves if they think they will be able to set the course for the middle east. If they could've done it, they would have done it long before we got involved with Iraq or Afghanistan. The fact is that none of the other gulf states will follow their lead.

BTW: The bit about Iran backing Assad, widely regarded as an inept dictator who lost his country's foothold in Lebanon after his Dad nursed it for 30 years....is also bogus. Syria is the natural enemy of Iran. All the totalitarian Arab states are. They have fundamentalist nuts in their own midst who would like nothing better than to off them...a la Sadat. So you are going to play nice with the chief fundamentalist? Doubtful.

[speeder]

So what do you red-staters call the neocon sissy-hawks who were all coincidentally of draft age during Viet Nam but to a man, (generous term here), weaseled out of going to war? Yet favor pre-emptive wars using young American soldiers for cannon fodder to forward their political and foreign policy objectives to the point of falsifying or ignoring intel and abandoning non-military solutions?

Manly men, I'm sure.

[lendaddy]

Originally posted by speeder
So what do you red-staters call the neocon sissy-hawks who were all coincidentally of draft age during Viet Nam but to a man, (generous term here), weaseled out of going to war? Yet favor pre-emptive wars using young American soldiers for cannon fodder to forward their political and foreign policy objectives to the point of falsifying or ignoring intel and abandoning non-military solutions?

A figment of your leftist pussy imagination?