Told you so

[Sethomas]

Regardless of whom you're addressing, all the good news from here on out wouldn't sway me from thinking that this attack was a mistake. It would, however, give me hope that maybe long-term damage isn't going to be as bad as we have good reason to expect it to be. I didn't make this thread as pointless bitching, but rather to explore the strong possibility that this is to become a long-standing state of affairs. The strained military, the foreign occupation, the absurd amount of debt we're accruing. I'm going to be honest and say that I don't know for myself that a pull-out in the near future is the best option with the cards we've been dealt, but it does strike me for now as the less terrible of our options.

One of the aforementioned defenders of the idea I described threw out the number "twenty years", referring to our presence in the middle east. Four years has put us into a debt that's going to multiply and perhaps destroy the next generation's economy.

The one thing that does make me wonder, though, is how optimistic the administration was at the outset. They obviously believed that the war would come so easily as to garner the respect of the American people and keep the GOP in power. It worked in 2004, but not in 2006. I'm not comfortable with either alternative this implies: the administration really is as incompetent as we think (which I've wondered about), or its intentions are more perverse and this is really going to fall back into their hands in some way unforeseeable to me.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

I don't think anyone is asking you to like the invasion, but that's neither here nor there at this point. A lot of us opposed the invasion, but the question now is whether or not you believe the campaign in Iraq is tied to a broader, more valuable mission. You clearly don't think so, and I disagree. If you did believe that staying in Iraq were important, then the strained military, occupation and debt probably wouldn't bother you as much, no?

If you don't give a damn about whether or not we're making a utilitarian moral measure of progress in the middle east, maybe you should consider how much more dangerous our lives our now. Madrid's train stations were bombed two weeks after I stopped using them and I had to wonder whether my friends were dead, so maybe I just have a tainted perspective on the Iraq war.

If you believe that Madrid was a product of our actions in Iraq, well then I guess I'd see your point. But I don't believe our actions give any form of reasonable fuel to their irrational, backward fire. I believe Madrid had a lot more to do with the "tragedy of al-Andalus," and not a whole lot to do with our actions.

And if Extremists/Islamists whatever were to attack because we are in the Middle East, much like they claimed to do on 9/11, is that good enough reason to stop a mission? "Hey guys, the Taliban is threatening to blow shit up if we don't leave...pack it up!"

The one thing that does make me wonder, though, is how optimistic the administration was at the outset. They obviously believed that the war would come so easily as to garner the respect of the American people and keep the GOP in power. It worked in 2004, but not in 2006. I'm not comfortable with either alternative this implies: the administration really is as incompetent as we think (which I've wondered about), or its intentions are more perverse and this is really going to fall back into their hands in some way unforeseeable to me

I think this administration completely half assed the invasion, and made mistake after mistake in the following months. Politically, Iraq remained a viable issue for them, as long as the American people believed that Iraq was A. actually winnable, and B. Tied to the overall War On Terrorism. The public isn't buying either these days.

But you're witnessing a sea change on the issue, even from the GOP. Senator Brownback, one of the lesser known GOP candidates for president, is going to submit a bill proposing a partition of Iraq. This strikes me as huge, because it clearly undermines President Bush's policy for one, and it especially pulls the rug out from any notion that we are trying to build a stable democracy in the Middle East. Then it becomes "hey, we blew the shit out of your country, and then officially wiped it out of existence with the strike of a pen." Now THAT stinks of the worst kind of imperialism to me.