I have had a lot of conversations about the war in Iraq lately and then heard a soldier's letter to O'riely this evening. The theme I keep getting is that we need to stay - that we are winning. The problem I have is that we are fighting a war against the Iraqi people as a whole - not the insurgents. They want us to leave and stop killing them. Instead of defending them against tyranny we have become the tyranny.
The other them I run into is that if we leave the genocide is just going to start again. This is where the UN needs to step in and help clean up the mess we have made. All that we are going to achieve in Iraq at this point is to keep the Haliburton feeding trough open for business. If we stay Iraq is going to continue to spiral into civil war and disintegrate. If we leave there is a chance that the UN can step in and facilitate that disintegration in such a way that the killing may stop. I am not nieve enough to say this is a certainty but it is better than the alternative - thousands more dead American kids, hundreds of thousands more dead Iraqis and proof to the world that we are a rogue nation.
With the pre-emptive military policies of our current administration we would bomb Iran, bomb Syria and really sink ourselves into an untenable position in the Middle East. The bush regimes policies will only continue to lead to more and more death and instability in the region. We need to say that enough is enough. We need to demand that our "president" pay for his crimes.
I am not saying I am a fan of the Iranian regime. They are ruthless, inhumane, a totalitarian regime that is flat out evil. That does not mean we can just go in and destroy them the way we have Iraq. If we are going to push for regime change in Iran it has to be done considerably differently than we went about it in Iraq. We need to learn from our mistakes and try not to destroy everything in order to remove the current government - one we are responsible for. We may not have put them in power directly but they are there due to our interference installing the previous totalitarian regime. A lot like we installed Saddam in Iraq.
As for attacking Syria - they have new leadership that has yet to get a chance to form a new government. He was educated in the west, by many accounts didn't intend on being the ruler - he got it by default when his brother was killed. I am not going to say he is going to be a savioer to Syria but I think we need to see what is going to happen before we decide to bomb them into submission. The Middle East policies of the bush regime are broken and directly embroiling us into decades of death in that region. . .
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6 comments:
Two problems with your problems, DuWayne. One, we ARE fighting the insurgents, not the Iraqi people as a whole. The anti-Bush people are misleading you AND the Iraqis to think otherwise, which leads to unjustified anti-Americanism further instigating the insurgents!!! Don't propogate this falsehood!
Second, I believe the UN is already helping out in Iraq. Not military help but diplomatic/humanitarian help, which is great. I'm not sure how you think the UN would do a better job than we are doing in stabilizing the country. No, we cannot leave and hope the UN can fill in for what we are doing.
If we are not fighting the Iraqi people as a whole then why have we killed more civilians than insurgents. And for the record I believe what the UN could do in our vacumm is facilitate a peaceable destabilization not stabilize it. An Iraq that has dismembered would be problematic - it would likely mean part being annexed by Iran, some by Kurdistan and the rest to fend for itself. That is likely to be the case anyways - the UN could be used to moderate this better than the nation that has killed more Iraqis than the dictator we "saved" them from. Killing 10 or more Iraqis for every insurgent captured or killed more than justifies their anti Americanism. While we are there it is not going to get better. I am not saying it will get a whole lot better if we leave but I do know if we leave - over the course of two years in a phased re-deployment - like the Iraqis have asked - we will no longer be killing 10 or more Iraqis for every insurgent killed or captured. We will no longer be inciteing anti-Americanism directly. With luck the UN can manage the breakdown of Iraq while minimizing the casualties.
We will just have to agree to disagree on the point that the UN would be more effective than the US in taking the lead to finish the work in Iraq.
Let me ask you this Beth. How many civilian casualties will it take in Iraq for you to believe enough is enough? I am talking civilians killed by our troops. How many of our troops need to die or be maimed? How many more terrorrists do we need to create there? What percentage of the Iraqi people need to wish we would leave? (currently 82%) What percentage ned to believe it is justified, the killing of American troops? (currently 45%)
DuWayne, could you please tell me the source of the 45% and 82%? Thanks.
Maybe you could comment on my blog about this:
http://5ft3.blogspot.com/2005/12/since-i-have-already-broken-my-silence.html
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