I am concerned that if we just walk out we will see a repeat of the horrors of Cambodia and Vietnam after we took our toys and went home.
We made this mess. It is our responsibility to do our best to clean it up. I do not advocate wasting lives, but I also have not been convinced that it cannot be improved with a little more intelligent operations at the top.
NOTE - I was against the original operation under Bush Sr., and against the invasion. This is not the rantings of a hawk.
Breaking news: We’re seeing a repeat of those horrors right now. It’s already over for any chance of something reasonably definable as a Bush “success.” We can’t “clean it up”, not at this point.
Excuse for having some strong feelings about this and no personal attack intended but “We broke it we should fix it” is oversimplified, unrealistic, ridiculous bullshit. This is not a bike we accidentally backed over, or a chair with a broken leg. This is a nation of people. We have lost over 3000 American lives trying to “fix it” and failed miserably. Thousands upon thousands more wounded and/or permanently maimed. There’s no fixing those people. There’s no fixing their families. We’ve been directly responsible for killing and maiming thousands of Iraqi citizens. Not insurgents or terrorists , but citizens. Regular people , including women and children. We’re indirectly responsible for tens of thousands more. There’s no fix for that either.
If you attack somebody and maim and disfigure them you can never *fix *them.
We are a foreign occupying power in somebody else’s country. They do not want us there. Why should Iraqi citizens and the surrounding Arab nations ever accept our military presence there? Would we if the situation was reversed?
It is not up to us to decide how to divvy up their * country. It’s not up to us to approve or disapprove of the government of their * country, unless we intend to remain a a foreign occupying power indefinitely so we have a military base there to keep the Arabs in line. If thats the plan, {and it just might be} then that really changes our vision of American values {bullshit} and all the freedom, liberty, democracy, loving speeches we hear.
The fact that we’ve failed miserably at training Iraqi forces so far seems to indicate we can’t be successful in the foreseeable future. {It only takes 6 months for a Marine after all}
We’ve failed, Bush and cohorts lied and are still lying. Let’s admit it and take some real action upon those facts.
Sure it is. At least, it is now.
I think I see where you are coming from on this, but realistically I think that we need to give up on the idea of a unified Iraq. It was a nice thought, but it isn’t going to happen. No matter what we do (leave now, stay the course, go in with 500,000 more troops) the end result will probably be the same: a partitioned Iraq. The US responsibilty at this point is to help that along with as much as possible to keep the situation from becoming much worse. You’ll end up with decades of border skimishes and disputes to deal with, but hopefully avoid a civil war.
If success in Iraq means a unified Iraq, I doubt it will happen. The US should consider abandoning that as a goal.
I’m saying we should abandon having any say in whatever direction the Iraq goes in. If they decide a divided republic works best for them fine. If another dictator rises to power we just have to live with it. I don’t see any way of our strong military presence doing anything but keeping the fires stoked and burning. If we admit we’re wrong and it’s up to them and possibly their immediate neighbors to settle things , that fire may burn brighter for some period of time but eventually someone will emerge victorious. We totally fucked up and now we can’t face that fact honestly. Another hard fact. There will be repercussions from this God awful war for us for quite some time.
We might have been able to accomplish something in the first two years if the goals we were sold were actually the goals we put our money and efforts into. Now I don’t see how the citizens of Iraq or the other Arab nations will ever trust our good intentions until we demonstrate them by getting the fuck out of their country.
I think it’s already decided that they can’t live together.
There are weekly, heck, sometimes daily reports of the number of dead Iraqis that are found overnight. The media covers the US military deaths quite well, but they don’t bother doing more in depth reporting on the Iraqi deaths. I suspect that the story there backs up the case for partitioning.
I pretty much agree with you, except that I do believe that the US can help facilitate the partitioning, and that such facilitation is preferable to a widespread civil war. One thing the US must accept though is that Iran has won the civil affairs fight in the Shia regions. That’s a bitter pill to swallow.
Maybe, and there’s a lot of lives riding on that maybe, we can help facilitate the partitioning. That requires that the Iraqi’s, not us, choose that route for themselves and can agree to some peaceful equitable terms. Given the way things are right now I don’t see that as a reasonable expectation in the near future. So how many US lives, how many billions, how much Arab resentment , are we willing to deal with?
I remember the cry during Vietnam that if we leave now all those lives lost have been in vain. As someone already pointed out. Thousands of lives later we had to face the inevitable and just leave. If we want to show the world , enemies and allies alike, that we stand for any kind of moral courage then we should put all the pressure we are capable of on this lying SOBs of an admin, to force them to bring our solders home. We should loudly denounce them and their actions. That requires the Dems and the decent Pubbies to show some moral backbone. Unfortunately, I also think that’s too much to realistically expect.
It is certainly within your power. If you were able to defeat Japan 60+ years ago, a country with a roughly equivalent military, a little pissant country in the middle east should be no problem today. But, the nation that was willing to do what it took back then doesn’t exist anymore today.
“What it took” with Japan was the bomb. Are saying we should nuke Iraq?
We’re not at war with Iraq. We’re stuck in the middle of a civil war in Iraq. Moreover we have no defensive reason for being there. Any analogy with Japan in WWII is ludicrous.
The answer to the OP is we get the hell out and let the civil war sort itself out without us. We had no right to go there and we have no right to stay there. We can’t stop the civil war, all we can do is add Americans to the body count.
No, Uzi, it is not within our power to fix Iraq.
What DtC said. your analogy is ludicrous and meaningless.
Just pull out.
The excuse for staying was “you broke it you bought it”
But now it’s them breaking it. The Shiites won’t share power and the Sunis won’t join the government or even vote. How is either of those our fault?
I’m saying that if you want to pacify Iraq you have the power to do so. What you lack is the will to do so, or maybe the ruthlessness to do so. I think it would be tough for any modern democratic nation to do so given how we feel about human rights.
“War” is just semantics. Are your soldiers shooting at people and being shot at on a regular basis? Call it whatever you want.
Your President says there is a defensive reason for you to be there, and you elected him, so the analogy is valid, if not perfect.
You can stop the civil war, but it will result in what, most likely, would be a huge body count. Afterwards it would take many years of Saddam like tactics to keep the peace during which time the infrastructure could be built up, democratic institutions put in place, and maybe dividing the country might be part of that.
Don’t confuse power with will. They are two different things.
Also, I am not advocating that you take the steps necessary to pacify Iraq. I’m just saying that you could do it if you wanted to, but it would involve being as ruthless as Saddam was. The alternative should be to pull out asap and cut your losses and let the Iraqis sort it out themselves.
No, it’s because we can’t slaughter them into submission and leave, because no matter how many we torture and kill, the survivors will immediately rise up against whatever regime we leave behind as soon as we give them the opportunity by leaving. It certainly isn’t out of a concern for human rights; America is a nation of torturers, thieves, killers and destroyers, not humanitarians. I’m quite certain most Americans wouldn’t care if Iraq was reduced to a depopulated wasteland. It’s just that that wouldn’t look like a “success”.
So are fixng Iraq and tyrannizing it into submission, or killing them all. We can do the latter two, but not the first; and even grinding them into submission would require a permanent presence.
It would be much harder for us, and require even more ruthlessness than Saddam showed, because we are foreign infidels. And that still wouldn’t “fix” Iraq so we could walk away without it falling apart; such ruthless methods require permanent application.
Why would you leave if you were willing to do this? You want it to work? Then stay, rebuild the infrastructure, and re-educate the populace. Kind of like Japan in WW2. You just didn’t defeat them and then leave. You stayed and helped them rebuild. Luckily, you had hammered anyone who was going to make trouble into submission BEFORE the rebuilding process started. The same thing happened in Germany.
Germany and Japan wanted to be helped to rebuild.
Unfortunately a large number of Iraqis want to kill each other, and even more, want to kill Americans.
If the UK and USA pulled out abruptly, then the outcome would be nasty, but a lot less nasty than staying there and letting the situation get worse.
The Sunnis and Shi’ites would turn on the criminal elements, also on Jihadist foreigners. They would then turn on each other. Delaying things is giving all parties an opportunity (and reason) for getting more adept at destruction.
What **FRDE ** said. Also :
1 : They were psychologically primed for change, because they knew that their own actions were largely to blame for their losses. Whether they thought they were morally to blame in setting out to conquer people, or just felt they had done a bad job of it, they knew that they had screwed up and need to change. The Iraqis, on the other hand, are the victims of an unprovoked attack; they see no reason to blame themselves for their present problems, since nothing they did or didn’t do would have stopped us from attacking. Nor will “re-educating” the population convince them to ever feel anything but hate for us; they know what we have done to them, and that none of it is their fault.
2 : Both were real nations, with actual national culture and national loyalties, not an artificial construct with few loyalists and no cultural unity. They have no emotional investment in making Iraq hold together; the Japanese did in Japan, and the Germans in Germany.
After being battered beyond belief through long years of full scale war. Would they have been as cooperative otherwise if they hadn’t been as soundly defeated?
All that so another ‘strong man’ can gain power. Seems kind of a waste.
I’m not sure, but I think that with the exception of the Russian zone in Germany, the locals expected far worse than they got.
You and I have lived in ‘democracies’, we have a different mind set.
To the average Iraqi, life under Saddam must look like heaven, compared with the current mess.
Incidentally, the USA (and UK) have demonstrated something meaningful.
That they are good at breaking eggs, but not good at putting them back together.
Ironically, that is something worth demonstrating, the world’s policeman is adept with the stick, but not so good at repairing the damage.
The lesson has not been missed by a lot of people, like the Lebanon, Iraq is an example of what can happen if people get out of line.
Frankly, I don’t think Iraq was necessary, but the past is a different country.
Well, I think we have two choices, which one we choose is a function of how ruthless we decide to be:
