Any argument to withdraw from Iraq based solely on the idea that we shouldn’t have been there to begin with doesn’t make sense. You have to make policy decisions based on the current status. You have to weigh the long term costs of pulling out versus the short/medium term cost of staying. Christ, we only have 2 more months until we tranfer sovereignty. I would hope that there is at least one person on this board who, while objecting to starting the war, is nevertheless willing to finish what what we started. I can certainly understand the former position, but I can’t respect anyone who thinks we should pull out now.
Either we have very different understandings of ‘sovereignty’, or you’re mistaken:
30 June Iraq handover questioned :
"*- security after 30 June will remain in the hands of a four-star American general who will command all military forces, foreign and Iraqi.
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the format of the interim government is far from agreed. There is likely to be a prime minister under a revolving three-person presidency. The prime minister will have to have the approval of the United States.
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the interim government will administer but it will not rule. It will have very little power. Many of its ministers will probably be the same as those now running the Iraqi Governing Council.
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financial decisions will largely remain with the US since $8bn of reconstruction aid will be flowing in. The new US embassy will be the power in the land. *"
That “transfer” is a farce, a lie. Power will remain in American hands. American troops will still be there and the USA will continue to rule. The truth is that the USA has no intention of leaving and plans to keep military bases in Iraq for decades to come.
And I cannot respect anyone who can justify the slaughter of Iraqis being done these days. I am disgusted and outraged.
While throwing the long term costs of staying right out the window to where you can’t see them and can tell yourself it will all be better.
hehe.
I don’t think most of us are calling for an immediate retreat; rather, we’re in this mess, like it or not. We have to work on damage control, and that damage control is the exact opposite of what we are doing now.
Various suggestions involve bringing in the UN or making a peaceful transfer to the strongest faction (people debate who that is). The “transfer of sovereignty” is an absolute joke and facade, and if we pull out Iraq just goes into civil war for Allah knows how long until some faction or another establishes a theocracy and starts slaughtering the people who oppose it.
Three days, thirty dead American troops. And some say that’s just the number they are letting us see. That there may be more.
Yea, and how many dead Iraqis?
Perhaps I should have put transfer of sovereignty in quotes. I’m aware of the reality of the transfer but if we were to pull out then we could at least have an excuse. Sounds to me like people want to withdraw from fricking Fallujah. BTW, are you not concerned about the slaughter of American forces?
No, but if good will come of it, it will be in the long term. If ill will come of it, it will almost definitely be in the medium term.
Forget it, noone will pick this hot potato; the time for UN intervention was passed months ago. No electorate in this world would allow their goverment to get them into such a mess.
It´s like a guy standing by a pool of piranhas, he yields “Hey look at this!” all the people around tell him not to jump into the pool, “I know what I´m doing woohoo!”
Splash
Two seconds later the guy is screaming “Hey!, piranhas bite, get me out! Aaaeeeee!!!”. Would you jump in the pool to save him?
You mean, until all those little orphans we just made grow up and remember who killed mommy and daddy?
Or is that medium-term?
This is true. The most logical thing to do, at this point, would be to transfer power into a dictatorship in all but name or theocracy and cut our losses.
Bless you Ahmed Chalabi.
It is fortunate that you are so perfectly positioned to rescue us from our unfortunate difficulties with the Iraqi terrorists. 
While I’m deeply distressed by the number of pre-war decisions about post-war Iraq that, in foresight, were highly questionable and about the current violence in Iraq, I don’t think that the fat lady’s quite finished singing.
We can’t leave yet.
We have responsibilities and debts to Iraqis- some of which are being paid with blood.
We’re center stage and have to put our blood and money where our mouth was. What comes with all adult decisions is the responsibility for all of the consequences, intended and otherwise, of your actions. In this case the actions involved one of the most serious and grave ventures a nation can undertake- war. War is serious and grave because the responsibilies and consequnces are so great.
I wholeheartedly think that America has the potential to be a powerful positive influence in the yet to be written history of Iraq. I lack faith in key members of the team we have assembled to implement our efforts, though.
What we do need is some major changes posthaste.
I think the fat lady’s got at least a little more in her yet.
I’m not whining; I’m acknowledging what should have been obvious to anyone. This is why there were many intelligent people who thought it was a terrible idea; and as I say, they may prove to be right. Yes, the Bushniks went a little heavy on the rhetoric at times, but they were not out there saying there would no casualties, no setbacks, no mistakes. In fact they said just the opposite on many occasions. In point of fact, being this far along and still being under 1000 KIA is much less than they were prepared for and far, far less than some predicted.
Oh, god this crap again. Look, there were a lot of reasons for the war. WMD was, to use Friedman’s terms, the “stated reason” because it was deemed the most politically saleable. That turned out to be a bust, and Bush is catching hell for it. But nobody with a clue thought that was the only reason, or the “real reason,” or even the most important reason.
We are in Iraq to establish a successful more-or-less free, more-or-less democratic state in the heart of the Arab world, in hopes that it will spur change in the Arab culture, and the people of that region will start being more concerned about improving their lives and their nations instead of killing infidels, and thereby cease being a strategic threat to the US. More can be found in the second half of the OP in this thread, or in painstaking detail here.
To some extent, it has not been followed 100%, and I agree that it should have been more closely followed. But there several complicating realities here:
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The Powell Doctrine can get damned ugly when it comes to civilian deaths. Turning Fallujah into a crater would be an option under the Powell Doctrine; it is not an option I’d support.
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Contrary to myth, US military power is not infinite. We have troop committments in Korea and Afghanistan, there is a strategic need to keep a reserve force in case “something else” happens, and moreover you need to cycle the troops in and out; you can’t just leave the same guys there for 3 years. Given all that, there aren’t a whole lot of troops going unused. See this.
Read the speeches of ObL and his ilk. One of the recurring themes is that the Americans are paper tigers, and that if you can create some casualties – and especially if you can make sure to get coverage of it on TV – they will chicken out and run. Frankly, it’s a rep we’ve earned. It’s also one that invites more attacks. 9/11 was enough for me, thanks.
Not blindly without taking stock, no. But you do not change the whole game plan because the other team scores a goal, and you do not sell all your stock because the markets are down two days in a row. Which are really trite metaphors because war is a far more serious venture. This has been a bad week. It does not mean the whole venture is lost; the fact is that the TV people scream about 4 security guards or a dozen soldiers killed in one town because the tens of thousands of soldiers in hundreds of other towns are NOT being killed, and to steal a line, “reporters don’t talk about houses that aren’t on fire.”
To run away at the first setback would be far, far, more dangerous than never having gone in the first place. There were good arguments for why this campaign should never happened; but now that it has happpened, there is no good argument for losing.
Wow … just wow. Makes Kissinger look like a bleeding heart.
The calm acceptance of misleading the public on why such a momentous step is being taken puzzles me. It seems to me that the reasons for such misdirection could be that the leaders think the public at large is too stupid to understand the real reasons or there wouldn’t be much support the effort based on the real reasons.
And conservatives claim that liberals are dominated by “ivory tower” thinking.
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I said logical, not right.
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It wouldn’t exactly be the first time America overthrew one dictator and installed another, now would it?
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It is the likely result as soon as we turn our backs, in any case.
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A peaceful transition to a stable regime is in the best interests of the Iraqi people.
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This course has the least amount of international and pan-Muslim hatred against America in the long run, making it the safest course (in terms of American self-interest).
[QUOTE=David Simmons]
The calm acceptance of misleading the public on why such a momentous step is being taken puzzles me.
[QUOTE]
Please show me where I said anything about misleading. Saying the war was sold primarily – but not exclusively, as some revisionists claim – on intelligence reports about WMD that turned out to be false/exagerrated does not prove deception. You may choose to believe that, but I don’t.
Seems to me the ivory tower approach is to sit on our asses and speculate about whether a few more international conferences and some more intellectual theorizing might make the world a better place.
And I’m not a conservative.
Yes, the world is much simpler when you refuse to consider that it is full of other people who also have an agenda.
The unilateral determination by us that some other people would be much better off if we arranged their lives may not be the most outlandish idea that I’ve ever encountered but by God it’s a contender.
Furt, I want you to read the portion of your post excerpted above. It is the whole paragraph so there can be no valid claim that it is taken out of context. Do you fully appreciate what you have said and its implications? What you say is that our President persuaded a great representational democracy to go to war by concealing the reasons for the war and publicly declaring the invasion and occupation, the expenditure of the nation’s blood and treasure, the nation’s credibility and prestige, was based on reasons developed as a marketing ploy. Why is that not a betrayal of the nation’s trust?
So what was the real reason that the United States had to make war on Iraq? Was it to get bases in Iraq to replace bases that were going to be lost in Saudi Arabia? Was it to secure to the United States through international oil companies the Iraqi’s supply of Light Crude? Was it to inhibit international terrorism? Was it to assist Israel in its continuing civil war in the occupied territories? Was it to convert Iraq to western liberal democracy? Was it to disarm Iraq? Was it to give credence to the UN sanctions?
Tell me why we are in Iraq and I might be able to tell you what course we ought to be following.