You can’t expect democracy to just take hold in a place like Iraq
Getting back to the OP, I think it’s wrong to abandon Iraq–just as I think it was irresponsible to abandon Afganistan after the defeat of the Soviets. Obviously we can’t just march home and forget about this now–we’re in too deep. Did we make a mistake approaching the war–yes I think we did. Do I think it’s important to know why we made the mistakes we did–no. I think that’s irrelavent–except to theorists and historians 100 years from now.
What’s important is for all of us to put aside our pride and come up with a solution to this. This is not a game. How we answer this question will likely determine the fate of the world. Liberals: Quit harking back to this “I told you so” mentality. It is the practice of fourth grade miscreants who lose a kickball. Conservatives: Admit that things are not going as well as planned. Work towards a different solution.
I think we should concentrate on training Iraqi intellegence opperatives not fighting/security forces. Once we are able to have enough opperatives that are well trained in the region we should step back our visible military presence. We should pull back to our bases in Saudi Arabia and our Aircraft carriers in the gulf. We should rely on newly trained Iraqi intelelgence to give us coordinates for precise bombing attacks.
This might lead to more civilian deaths, but will ultimately distance the average Iraqi citizen from the terrorist. A citizen who knows he is living next to a terrorist will be less likely to have sympathy for that terrorist when he knows his own home, family, and life are at stake.
This might sound cold to many of you…but I think it’s one option to get us out. I hate that we’re there, but if we don’t get this right, I’m truly scared for our country.
Solution: Concentrate on training Iraqi intelligence opperatives. Pull military back to air bases in Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia.
Anybody else want to stop playing monday morning quarterback (Libs) – or start admitting that there IS actually something wrong here (Cons)–and hazard a guess about what to do next?
How else do we avoid making more mistakes ? The left, like me, thinks that to source of the problem is Bush and friends; as long as they are in power anything we do will end in disaster.
I already have; leave.
So you think killing more innocent Iraqis will reduce unrest and terrorism, even ignoring the fact that your proposal is terrorism ( “when he knows his own home, family, and life are at stake” ) ? It’s much more likely it would create a boom of terrorists and the resistance, as they try to avenge themselves and get rid of us.
Many people thought there were some stashed in a warehouse somewhere - probably decaying, and with no way to deliver it. Not worth a war, or even a bombing raid.
Nonsense. The right’s ongoing delusions about the war are standing directly in the way of crafting a reasonable exit strategy. For example, leading Republicans still make ridiculous claims like “we’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here” – a useless conflation of Al Qaeda and the Iraqi insurgency. (As well as lousy strategy.)
Not to mention the fact that the people responsible for this mess are still in power in Washington, acting as though they are perfectly capable of crafting a plan for moving foward. The Bush administration isn’t capable of crafting an exit strategy for a taxicab, let alone Iraq. Pointing out their inadequacy for the task at hand is not irrelevant sniping.
Yeah, we all know how well the secret bombing of Cambodia worked. :rolleyes:
The widespread civilian misery created by a bombing strategy such as you describe would turn the population further against and allow the insurgency to take deeper root. As well as being morally repugnant.
Or alternatively, we could send a SEAL team to seize the Dome of the Rock and install a Col. Johnson’s Pork Chitterlings outlet…
“quote” Yeah, we all know how well the secret bombing of Cambodia worked “End Quote”
I’m not talking about a secret bombing. I’m talking about a bombing that is well known throughout the world.
If you have weapons we’re going to blow you up—from afar.http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=6822478#
Or we could sit here content and fill our time with hilarious jokes.
Anyone got some ideas?http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=6822478#
So what do you propose? How do you see us getting out of this without being repugnant.what’s the next step?
Bagdad is about 200 miles from the Saudi border, where most of our forces came from. How do you propose we could have crossed this distance faster, or quiter with 1000’s of troops in enemy terratory? The only way I could see is if we went full speed for Bagdad (and surrounding areas), and just ignore casualities we would take in this manuvure. This however would have cause many more troop deaths and would have the troops w/o supply lines.
I have heard this many times, perhaps someone can tell me why. Is the ideals set forth in the DoI which state that all men are created equal incorrect, life, liberity and the persuit of happiness just magically apply to people w/i a certain borders, while outside death, opression and the persuit of sadness is the norm? And the the most disturbing question, are the Iraq’s just to dumb to be free? I would argue that the Iraqi’s are MORE capable of a democracy then we are at this moment in time. They are a very stong people with limitless potential.
I hear what you say, and agree w/ it to a degree. I think alternate solutions are needed. Nation building has always been the most difficult part of modern warfare, part of it I assume it’s hard to build something with a destructive force. I would really like to see more and better Iraqi training, perhaps a split of Iraq into 2 or 3 countries, or at least ‘nation states’.
And as long as you (and the ‘left’) are blinded by this view you can not see anything W does as positive. This is part of what I was refering to w/ the conservative vs liberal mindset.
OK so we went from Kanicbird he didn’t have ANY and to think so makes you insane, to yea Clinton and Kerry both said he had them, and that these weapons are ‘a threat to the region’ (almost a direct quote from BJ Clinton IIRC), so perhaps he had a few old ones kicking around. Well it’s a start. Again it seems like your views are so colored that anything W does is bad/wrong/lies that you only can see things from one point of view.
You show some signs of wishing to pursue reasoned and rational debate. In that light, please examine this last paragraph.
“Many people believed…” means precisely that. It does not serve as evidence to bolster your suspicions, that evidence being abundant in its absence. The same holds true for the much belabored quotes from Clinton and Kerry: their quotes serve only as evidence for their opinions. Their opinions are not evidence.
You further imply that anyone who refuses to accept your lack of evidence as proof must be so prejudiced against The Leader as to be incapable of rational examination. While this may or may not be true, you have no proofs to offer beyond your repeated assertions that it is so.
The earth is not flat, there are no albino alligators lurking in the sewers of New York, and Iraq did not possess “massive stockpiles” of WMD. These issues are settled. Get over it.
And this just in…
**
Iraqi Leaders Call for Pullout Timetable **
Note well that last sentence. To these eyes, that appears to suggest that “insurgent” resistance is legitimate so long as Iraqi civilians and Iraqi government institutions are not targeted. Conspicuous in absence is any mention of American soldiers, etc.
To translate in Snarki: “Hey, no fair shooting at us. Americans? Open season.”
Without slogging through all the subtext, hijacks and tangents, I’ll just answer the OP:
What would happen if we pull out of Iraq tomorrow? If by that you mean if we started withdrawl tomorrow I’ll say…it depends. How fast would we be withdrawing? What would we be doing in the mean time (i.e. would we go into a completely defensive posture, continue to patrol and coordinate with the Iraqi military)? If we began to withdraw troops tomorrow over, say, then next year with a target date of December of 2006 as the drop dead date for the last troops out of Iraq, and if we continued in our current posture until, say, next spring, then I’d say it COULD have a positive effect. At the least I don’t think it would make things any worse and might just get the Iraqi’s off the dime and light a fire under their butts. In fact, this is kind of my own personal prefered plan of action for the US to take in Iraq.
If you meant by leaving tomorrow that the US would be gone completely from Iraq tomorrow (i.e. we found some magic way to get all the troops, tanks, supplies, etc out of Iraq in a day), then my guess is that Iraq would explode in a massive civil war…and probably drag the rest of the region in after it. The same would happen if the US suddenly decided to go into a completely defensive posture and begin a massive effort to withdraw on a very short timetable (say 4-6 months for complete withdrawl of all troops and supplies). This would put too much pressure too soon on the Iraqi military and it would fold like an empty beer can. The various militia groups would come out of the woodwork and begin fighting each other and the various insurgent bands, the insurgent bands would no longer have even a tenuous common enemy and begin wacking each other and fighting the various militia groups, fighting would break down along ethnic, religious and even tribal lines…in short it would be VERY ugly. For those of you who think its bad now…it could get a whole hell of a lot worse. Iraq could become another Yugoslavia…or worse.
-XT
And we could have taken them out at will. But ‘we’ chose not to have the will in favor of having a war.
The Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger because Team Bush feared destroying Zarqawi’s terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam Ansar al-Islam is hardly a reason to invade.
Testimony of Director of Central Intelligence Porter J. Goss Before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
16 February 2005
Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-US jihadists.
These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism. They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups, and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries.
http://www.foia.cia.gov/2020/2020.pdf
• Anti-globalization and opposition to
US policies could cement a greater
body of terrorist sympathizers,
financiers, and collaborators.
societies.
• Iraq and other possible conflicts in
the future could provide recruitment,
training grounds, technical skills and
language proficiency for a new class
of terrorists who are “professionalized”
and for whom political
violence becomes an end in itself.
‘New militant threat’ from Iraq
The insurgency in Iraq is creating a new type of Islamic militant who could go on to destabilise other countries, a leaked CIA report says.
The classified document says Iraqi and foreign fighters are developing a broad range of skills, from car bombings and assassinations to co-ordinated attacks.
It says these skills may make them more dangerous than fighters from Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s.
And the threat may grow when the Iraq insurgency ends and fighters disperse.
The broad conclusions of the report have been confirmed by an unnamed CIA official and are said to have been widely circulated in the intelligence community.
Iraq May Be Prime Place for Training of Militants, C.I.A. Report Concludes
A new classified assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency says Iraq may prove to be an even more effective training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was in Al Qaeda's early days, because it is serving as a real-world laboratory for urban combat.
They said the assessment had argued that Iraq, since the American invasion of 2003, had in many ways assumed the role played by Afghanistan during the rise of Al Qaeda during the 1980's and 1990's, as a magnet and a proving ground for Islamic extremists from Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries.
Iraq a site to train terrorists, CIA says
The CIA believes the Iraq insurgency poses an international threat and may produce better-trained Islamic terrorists than the 1980s Afghanistan war that gave rise to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, officials said yesterday.
Once the insurgency ends, Islamic militants are likely to disperse as highly organized battle-hardened combatants capable of operating throughout the Arab-speaking world and in other regions including Europe.
The May report, which has been widely circulated in the intelligence community, also cites a potential threat to the United States.
Although the Afghan war against the Soviets was largely fought on a rural battlefield, the CIA report said, Iraq is providing extremists with more comprehensive skills including training in operations devised for populated urban areas.:dubious: This would appear to be an example, intentional or not, of what you meant about liberals and conservatives having different “thought processes.” Apparently, conservative thought processes ignore time. No one disputes Hussein had and used WMDs during his tenure as president of Iraq. The question is whether he still had any at the time of the invasion. And that question has been definitely answered in the negative.
See this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=331694
I think if we pull back to saudi Arabia and our warships in the gulf and commence bombing, we will have less civilian casualties than with tanks and men trained to kll on the ground. I think that if we leave (our presence is the major greivence of the insurgency) but still maintain a close survailence of the region— with a bomb or two landing every once in a while, we can maybe restore order.
Hey all we need is a guy with a tache to put in charge and we can claim that the whole thing never happened and was just a smear campaign by the liberal media!