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Originally Posted by mburbank
"As I said earlier, we are in fact th only glue keping this thing together."
You have no way of knowing this. I bet the Soviet Union thought they were the glue holding Afghanistan together. Who knows, maybe they were, the Taliban didn't take over until they left. If we have to be glue, couldn't we go be glue in Darfur, where we claim there's a genocide going on but there's nothing we can do?
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Of course we should be more involved in Darfur, but this is the proverbial strawman argument. "Our education system sucks, shouldn't we not be spending on guns!!?"
Also, I think you can look at what has gone on, how things have played out, and make logical assumptions. I know that if we leave, most players will leave the table. Why, for example, should the Kurds talk to anybody if we were to leave? Without our military presence, what will prevent the Shiites from simply oppressing the Sunnis??? once we leave, and security falls apart, who will the Shiites turn to in our place?
You'll still have private, hired guns in Iraq. You'll probably have Iran and Syria more present in Iraq, too.
Leave now, and it sends the message that we are weak and unwilling to fight this fight. Before 9/11, we were in fact at war. The only problem was that only one side knew it, and we did not. As abc mentioned, if we capitulate, it will be viewed as a victory for terrorists and radical muslims. Kill some reporters, decapitate some aid workers, and America will retreat from the world.....leaving the people of Iraq to them ,of course.
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Plus, you accuse me of being paternalistic about the middle east. You just stated the they are one hundred percent incapable of finding a way through this and only with our help will they. The same arguments were made in Vietnam, and amazingly when we pulled out, the world did not topple domino-esque into communism.
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No, but Vietnam remained an undemocratic, poor, third world nation. I don't want to get into a comparative politics discussion, because I think there are a lot of problems in constantly comparing this to Vietnam.
I don't necessarily know what role Iraq plays in the greater war on terror. I do know that we toppled that country, and have made a promise to bring democracy and open markets to their nation. We've initiated that process, and to leave now would be tantamount to betrayal (which we were accused of after the FIRST Gulf War).
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While I wouldn't want you to accuse me of being pro Saddam, I have to say that toppling a dictator is only meaningful if it brings about improvement. When Hitler was defeated, conditions slowly but surely improved throughout Eastern Europe. And Hiter was an agressive, uncontained world conquerer as opposd to Sadaam who was an evil shit who was unfortunate enough to be the weakest evil shit around when we felt like we needed a war.
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Saddam Hussein without question supported terrorism in Palestine. Saddam Hussein had imperialistic ambitions throughout the Middle East, and while I agree with you that he posed no immediate threat to our soil, he was an enemy.
Things have unquestionably improved. There's a long way to go, and we have a serious problem right now, but to say that things are worse now is ridiculous, sorry. Democracy isn't easy, it's contentious, disruptive, and in this case, often violent. It took us three tries to get the Constitution right, and took several years before we could even get all of the participating states to agree. Then there was the whole civil war thing that it culminated in. That's what, 100 years?
You know that I view this as an obligation on our part. You ask for a plan because you want to know when we'll leave. I say we leave when the job is done, rather than leaving because we just can't be bothered with these people. The task at hand is helping a struggling people attempt soimething that is quite rare in the Middle East.
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Here's my prediction of what's coming, what W's current stratgey is, even though he won't say it. We intend to build, in fact are already building, that's public record, giant highly fortified fortresses within Iraq. We will withdraw our soldiers to them and put our air power at the disposal of the Shiites, while denying their even IS a civil war, and bomb the shit out of whatever they point us at. And while I do think dropping cluster bombs and white phosphorus on entire buildings full of people if we think there's at least someone we need to kill inside is more civilzed than kidnapping and beheading journalists, I'm not sure we should be overly proud of the actual degree of difference.
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Can I get a link on the fortress story? I could only find a snide little piece on it at the socialist workers website.
I doubt that this will be our strategy. We may be wavering on our man power in Iraq, which is a mistake, but the likelihood that we'll just revert to an air campaign doesn't add up here. We still need to search out insurgents, and we're not going to simply bomb a building because the Shiites say so.
We have friggin' troops standing all day outside Sunni mosques currently, if anything, we are hyper-concerned over the sensitivities between the various factions.
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Sure I'm looking for the tipping point. Is that worse than solidly refusing to consider there could ever be one? If we get to the point where half Iraqs population is dead do we go home then or stick around until the place is empty?
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Yikes, try not to gush at the possibility, Max!
I've already said what I think we should do, and the elected Iraqi government is trying to keep this all together. It's tough, when the people you're dealing with would rather blow up mosques and taret random civilians.
If we pull out, then we haven't even touched upon the tipping point. It'll come years from now, when it's Iraqi terrorists who are bombing allied nations, or GOd forbid our own soil. And then everyone opposing military action will get really outraged, they'll accuse us of invading Iraq and leaving the people there defenseless. The Left will demand that we ask the question-- "How are
we responsible for this???"
Let's have this fight now, because it isn't going anywhere, IMO.