… So mean, he once killed a man just ‘fer snorin’ too loud.
It’ll be the U.N., of course, which, in terms of graft, is only marginally better than handing over briefcases full of cash to Sunni warlords in an opium den. But yes, if we leave, Iraq will devolve into possibly the worst genocide since, oh, Cambodia (and I’m being conservative. I can well imagine more than 2,000,000 people dying.) The American people will neither hear nor care very much about it for years, having washed our hands of the whole thing. We will rationalize that we have nothing to do with it, since it’s just ancient rivalries playing themselves out. Only a few people will remember or care that we actually catalyzed the entire thing by putting a spear through the chest of the (admittedly unlamented) government and then pulled out, leaving the country without any visible means of support. This will put everything on a purely Darwinian basis. The most brutal, violent bastards in Iraq will eventually claw their way to the top of a sky-high heap of Iraqi corpses. They will more than likely be violently Islamist extremists (or a militarily aggressive junta,) and either option is bad for us.
However, we will have paid for the whole damn thing (again,) because we will have been contributing money and troops to a blue-helmet operation which will be utterly insignificant and ineffective. We’ll eventually have to use our military again, of course, and crush the next government, at the behest of the U.N…with all the civilian deaths, body bags, and flag-covered coffins all over again.
I hate that we’re stuck in Iraq, but stuck we are, and pulling out now will do nothing but guarantee that untold millions will die later, including even more Americans.
I wonder why that’s problematical. If it has been firmly established that he did such a thing, then it’s absolutely unequivocal that he supported terrorism.
Issue of scale. We pull out, and I guarantee you that within a year, ten times the number of people that are now dead in the conflict will have died. I point you once again toward an informative historical precedent in the form of, oh hell, just about any totalitarian government that muscled their way to the top of the heap in the morality-and-consequence-free collapsed society. But let’s just go with Khmer Rouge for now (we, incidentally precipitated that particular genocide by doing almost the thing we’re doing now.) Cambodia lost their head of state in 1970. Then, we suspended aid to Cambodia in 1973, which helped Khmer Rouge enormously, then when we militarily pulled out of the region, it left a titanic vacuum which the Khmer were only too happy to fill to capacity with dead people.
All the warnings are there. We not only have military groups and social sects, but we have the most dangerous of all there as well - the True Believers. And if they grab power in our absence, the deserts of Iraq might not be big enough to hold all the corpses, and Iraq will graduate from being a thorn in our sides to being an incredibly dangerous international presence with all the funding they need in the form of petroleum to do whatever they wish.
Pulling out is a bad idea.
Oy!
How about adding
(e) It becomes clear that the forces of the legitimate government are either hopelessly infiltrated by insurgents and/or are acting as de facto militias, taking sides in the sectarian conflict, and out of control of the government. (Or in control of elected or appointed officials more interested in the sectarian conflict than unity.)
This does not necessarily involve Iran. A lot of this seems to be happening, and it is not clear how it could be stopped, besides having US forces take command of Iraqi ones - and that is just a stopgap.
Sorry, I thought that was covered by d), and that I was just using Iran as an example. I guess I didn’t make myself clear enough. You’d think someone as long winded as me could at least manage to get my point across!
Actually, we didn’t create the problem. Those who supported the war in the first place did. Wasn’t your name on that list?
The rest of us are of varying opinions regarding what to do to fix it, but we sure as hell didn’t break it. We tried our damnedest to stop the rest of you from doing it, in fact. If it makes you feel any better, we are paying for it with you.
But we as a nation did create the problem. The fact that you and I voted against it doesn’t change that. We’re now talking about what we as a nation should do. As Democrats, we have the option of throwing up our hands and saying “It wasn’t our idea! Fix it yourself.” Personally, I don’t consider that a moral option, as personally appealing as I find the idea.
I agree that we have to fix it, but no, I am not part of the problem. I fought harder against this war than I’ve fought anything in my life, and I’ve been a soldier before. I want the chickenhawks who were all gung-ho about this to never forget this, so that we can hopefully not repeat the mistake the next time we get a President with blood lust. Fifty years from now, if their grandkids are parroting some foolish president and chanting “Hell yeah, let’s kick some butt”, I want them to sit down and explain what happened the last time we thought that was a good idea. I want them to talk about our troops killing and raping innocent civilians, our government locking up people for years without evidence, our condoning of torture, the tens or hundreds of thousands who died, and what was actually gained by all of it.
I fully support the right of a country to defend itself. That’s not what we did.
I agree with this post 100%, except that, to my shame, I did not take serious action to prevent this war beyond opposing it personally and to anyone with whom I spoke. I donated heavily (for me, we’re not talking multi-thousands here) to prevent W’s re-election in 2004 (I was in better financial shape then than in 2000), but of course by then it was far too late.
I strongly agree with both these statements.
:rolleyes:
Since terrorists were planning to do it regardless of the election outcome, what Chenney/Lieberman are actually saying is nothing.
Planning to do what?
Good point. I really hate this argument, and the rhetorical traps that the bad guys are successfully setting in it. Cheney and Lieberman can be as right as they want about the wisdom of telegraphing the United States’ intentions to all and sundry. It doesn’t change the fact that it was a horrendous blunder to put us into this situation.
It doesn’t change the fact that the people responsible for putting us into the situation must be removed from positions of power as soon as possible, and replaced with people who will bear the terrible task of cleaning up the mess.
I really don’t expect that a Senator Lamont will be successful in leading Congress to a position that insists on a public withdraw-by date, but I do hope that his electon will be a step on the path to atonement. That is what my nation owes to the world, as obnoxious a truth as that is. A crucial step in that atonement is going to have to be an admission that what the USA did, under the leadership of GWB and whoever is pulling his strings, was wrong.
Amen!
That’s not a fact. It’s an opinion.
Not a fact, either.
Not a truth, but an opinion.
And yours too, but based on nothing; and on the fact that you really can not read, a plot is a plan.
Having stabbed Iraq in in the gut, Cheney proposes we keep twisting the knife indefinitely.
As occupiers, it is beyond our power to ‘fix’ Iraq. We are too polarizing an influence. All our continued presence can do now is get more people killed, breed more terrorists, and destabilize the entire middle east. Perhaps that destabilization is what Cheney and his comrades seek. Wouldn’t it be lovely to finally find an excuse to bulldoze the whole area and rebuild it to resemble northern Indiana, but with oil?
How much would that cost in blood and treasure?
Too much. It’s better that we pull out now, and avoid the whole sordid fantasy.
Sure, bin Laden might crow a little. So what? We could use the resources we rescue from the quagmire to kick his sorry ass through the gates of hell, and the people of Iraq could, for better or worse, find their own way into the future.
Overclocked your grammar chip, dintja?
Sorry, Squink, but I don’t agree. Are Iraqis annoyed at having us there? Yes. No question about it. But the fact is, we are fulfilling a function, and a necessary one at that, at least if there is any hope whatsoever that Iraq can avoid a civil war that will kill enough citizens to make what we and Hussein did to them look like a mild spanking.
By all means, go with Voyager’s idea. Let the Iraqis citizens decide if they want us around or not. The fact is, no one on this message board is there on the ground as an Iraqi citizen, and our speculations are based on best guesses, and those guesses are WAGs at best.
But tell me this; do you truly believe that our military presence in Iraq is *not * preventing a full-blown, no-holds-barred civil war in which incredibly large numbers of civilians would be killed? Or is it that you believe that that war is utterly inevitable, so it might as well be now as later, in which case I will ask you, do you truly believe that the elected government of Iraq, however slowly they are moving at this point (and it is an utter beginning for them, so I don’t think it’s surprising, given the factionalization and general conditions they have to overcome, that they are moving slowly) will never reach a point of being able to control their own internal strife?
I mean, I agree that the US presence is probably provoking a small portion of the current violence. There are some people who are so seriously pissed off at the US for the invasion that the presence of the troops alone is sufficient to push them into it. But I think most of the violence is either out-and-out crime (non-politically motivated, simply taking advantage of the chaos), a serious current attempt to seize power, or above all, an attempt to make things bad enough that we will recall our troops, as a prerequisite for an attempt to seize power. If I am correct, our troops leaving will not improve the situation for the Iraqis; it will make it worse.
I listed my “conditions” for leaving Iraq about 16 or so posts back. Do you disagree with those conditions, or do you feel one of them has been met?
Please, don’t get mad at me! I think we’re both on the same side here and have been from the start. I’m just trying to understand your position better. I hope that you will accept that I am also trying to get you to understand mine. It’s ok if we disagree. I’d just like to understand at which point it is that our opinions diverge, as obviously they do. Are we interpreting the current situation differently, or is it that our priorities differ, or what?
Bullshit. After evisceration we proceed to fillet, batter and deep fry Iraq in it’s own oil until it’s a golden brown and then serve it with freedom fries and tartar sauce.
You make it sound like it’s purposeless, but leave it to a liberal not to recognize a fish fry.
We’re not occupiers.
His comrades the… illuminati? The Legion of Doom?
I think they’re looking for more a Texas kind of feel. Put those swarthy a-rabs in sombreros and you won’t even need to squint.
Indiana? Have you been to Indiana? How you gonna make Iraq look like Indiana? You liberals have no practicality or vision. Texas. When we bulldoze the middle east we’ll make into another Texas.
Three Swabbies, A Bosun’s mate, a peck of pickled peppers, and a couple of those plastic shark heads on a stick. The kind where you squeeze the handle and the mouth opens and closes.
But if we act now we win free windchimes.
That’s what she said.
We need to be there so we can smile as we screw them over, so they’ll know we were planning it that way and it wasn’t just an accident.
You guys take yourselves really seriously.
Sorry, make that some 28 posts back for my conditions.