Why don’t we announce a pull-out in the next 6-8 months (no drop dead date…gotta leave them guessing a little)?
Then we make it clear to the Iraqi government that we are going fight a war against the bad guys our way between now and then…are you with us or against us?
Then we do it. If we need 20,000 more troops like McCain say’s I’m cool with that.
Obviously we can’t get them all and obviously there will be crying and gnashing of teeth but that’s happenning now and will continue for as long as we are there.
Then we can rest up and be prepared to go into the next hell hole that will inevitably arise.
Please explain what you mean by “our way”. I was under the impression we were fighting this conflict our way; that is, amongst other things, by attempting, however inadequately, to minimize non-combatant casualties.
I think he’s talking about busting a Moab upside Qaeda-house in Tikrit, regardless of how badly that might piss off Sunni factions in the government. Such a course might let us quickly kill off a bunch of the bad guys, if we have sufficient actionable intelligence. The trouble is we don’t, and most of what we do have likely comes through the government. That’d dry up fast and we’d be left with bombs, but no place to bomb.
I was referring to the aftermath . . . both short-term and long-term. If we pull out, the government will fall. In the short term that will shed a lot of blood, as in Vietnam. In the long term (we’re talking at least a decade) it might be the best thing that ever happened to Iraq, as the Communist victory was, on that time-scale, the best thing that ever happened to Vietnam.
Don’t you think that if we are indiscriminate in killing the people shooting at “us” and setting off bombs, we run the risk of creating more people who want to shoot at us and set off bombs?
There isn’t a finite number of “terrorists” and when you kill the last one, you are done. New ones are made every day and heavy handed tactics breed heavy handed reactions. Your plan would seem to stir up the hornets’ nest and then leave the Iraqi people to the mess we created.
Oh, well, if that’s the case, why are we even hanging about, then? If the Iraqi government doesn’t want our help, let’s bring the boys and girls home. No problem.
Oh, and I would approcate it if you would not use ambiguous language if you feel our military is behaving in an insuffciently brutal manner in Iraq. Please give us some idea what level of non-combatant casualties you would accept as part of supposedly doing things “our way”. Right now, it’s not entirely clear, but are you advocating the indiscriminate destruction of general areas where “the enemy” is deemed to be present, or what?
