My take on Iraq and our dems

[The Straight Story]

If you have seen my posts (and video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-10_iPus9g ) you know how I feel about this war.

However I feel about it though, there is something worth discussing.

1. We pull out, say we could bring everyone home magically at 9am tomorrow:
Iraq's civil war worsens and death toll climbs faster than a glass of alcohol to bush's mouth. We start seeing the total wiping out of some factions, and Iran jumps in because they can (bush would then get his war...).
We broke it, we bought it.
Do we have ANY moral responsibility to stay there and fix things after we destroyed their government and inner-stability?

If we pull out and the nightly news is filled with images of women and children dying by the dozens who then is to blame? Those in Iraq doing the killing or us for leaving knowing there were power mad killers running loose and wanting to impose their religion on everyone else to the point they would blow them up to do it?

2. We cut off funding, and things get worse over the long pull out. Who will be blamed then? Won't be bush.

So it comes down to, perhaps this, whose lives are we most interested in protecting right now. Our soldiers' or those of the Iraqi people's whose world we threw into chaos?

3. Workable Solution from a REAL LEADER might sound like this:

Go before the international community and suck it up. Admit things are a mess and we need to make them right, and cannot do so alone. Plead for the people of Iraq and ask others for aid for them, and relief for our troops (it is neither the Iraqi peoples' fault or our troops' fault for this mess after all). Own up to this whole mess and admit that there is great suffering - not so much due to our people there, but because of the factions that want to tear that country to shreds for their own selfish needs.

The govt has no problem asking for aid from us citizens and congress for money, they should reach out as a real leader would to the world community and ask the same. Those without power in Iraq are getting killed left and right, and if we want to stop it we will need help.

----------------

We left them high and dry in Iraq. We bombed the hell out of them because we said they had weapons of mass destruction. We removed their government, took their oil fields, and left them with little. We even said it would help the people there to be free from the tyranny of Saddam.

We pull out now, and we leave all those innocents we were supposedly concerned about sitting ducks for the fundies and factions. Not to mention Iran coming in.

You want to leave Iraq. I want to as well. I want our troops home and safe. You want that as well. I want my tax dollars spent here at home (bridges, etc) and not in a foreign land, so do you.

What is the solution?

[pretty_lies]

1. We Get Out Right Now.

That's the only solution.

Otherwise, whatever happens when we get out, will just happen later. You've failed to show how delaying the outcome will do anything besides kill more soldiers.

Get one thing: Even under President Hillary, no foreign country wants its troops targeted by Iraqi fighters in an incredibly unpopular war seen as a symbol of American aggression.

Of course, everything I've just said is absolute fantasy.

The US is committed to staying in Iraq as a matter of imperialism.

The war will last another 10 to 15 years and it will end with the military defeat of the US, as in Viet Nam.

It'll kill at least 10,000 Americans and a couple million more Iraqis. I doubt much of the country will remain. It will resemble a worse Somalia.

The conservatives will yell about being stabbed in the back.

And ordinary people will be glad it's over so we can direct our policy to doing *something* about all those 130 degree summers we've been having lately...

[The Straight Story]

4. I guess right now the question is - what do we owe the Iraqi people?

Nothing? Help to re-stabilize the country? Damages for what we have done?

The problem with pulling out now is we leave them to suffer by our actions, and that hardly seems fair to them.

Is there a middle ground in it all?

Despite the fact we should not have went into this war - we did. And there we are, what now?

For our troops and people I want us out tomorrow. I know it takes time of course. But I can't help but feel that if we leave now, we are screwing them even more.

The people of Iraq did not ask for this war, or the hell and instability it would bring. We made this war happen, don't we owe them something out of it all?

It is not even a question to me about our security, et al, it is about a moral obligation to make right what we made wrong.

How we do that - I am not 100% sure.

[pretty_lies]

6. This Isn't That Hard.

You need to see this as a neutral, independent observer. Separate the facts from your emotional arguments that "we owe them". That conjures up a relationship that does not exist. The Iraqis don't see the US as owing them anything. They see them as aggressors, occupiers and murderers.

Bear with me, I'll introduce a hypothetical scenario that will clarify the situation.

Imagine that Russia, another great power with a history of aggression, had done in 2003 what the USA had done.

Imagine that Putin ordered the invasion of Iraq for dubious reasons fairly obviously connected to Russian energy hegemony. This is actually quite analogous to the real-life invasion of Afghanistan.

Four years on the invasion has killed about a million Iraqis, it's caused another 2 million Iraqis to flee the country and despite Russian superiority is eating away at the military. Russia is also giving heavy hints that they will confront Iran and even China (just as the neocons have done in real life in the USA)

For the rest of the world, what do you think the priorities should be here?

Our priorities should be to minimize the danger to the rest of the world from two factors: Russian aggression and the fallout caused by the war.

The most important priority must be to deter future wars of aggression that might do even more damage. The FIRST priority must be that Russia should be defeated, both to hold the aggressors to account and to deter future aggression. Otherwise, it's predictable that Russia will invade the next country on their list (like the PNAC's plan in real life).

Therefore, other nations in the world must do everything they can to ensure a painful and rapid Russian defeat. They should certainly isolate Russia diplomatically and perhaps fund the anti-Russian resistance directly and give them effective arms, just as the US did in reality when Russia invaded Afghanistan.

The second priority must be to contain the humanitarian catastrophe. With millions of refugees streaming to Jordan and Syria, these nations are bearing the brunt of the humanitarian crisis. The rest of the world should send funds and aid to Jordan and Syria, not isolate them or accuse them of terrorism (as the Israel-lobby controlled US has been doing). Letting Iraqi refugees into the US is not going to happen for a number of important political and social reasons (800 so far this year compared to 1 million in Syria). The idea that the aggressor nation is obliged to pay restitution to its victims is a nice one, but this has never happened in history unless the aggressor has actually been invaded and defeated, and that isn't going to happen here.

The third priority must be to contain the political catastrophe. We must recognize the reality that the "Russian" invasion has turned Iraq into smoking rubble and roving gangs, and the only restoration of the Iraqi state will arise from civil war (just as happened in Afghanistan). Nation building by hostile outsiders seen as anti-Islamic will be futile or worse. The only realistic response is to strengthen Iraq's neighbors. We must support Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iran. They will carve out spheres of influence in the region and restore a measure of order within the smoking ruins of Iraq. If they don't, then stateless terror groups will. Of course, the aggressor nation has powerful lobby groups which want war with Iran and support Israel's aggression on Palestinians, which damages Iraq's neighbor states. This is another reason why the first priority must be the defeat of the aggressors.

I hope this distancing exercise clarifies the situation. The priorities of any neutral person in the world must be, in this order:

1. Ensure that the US is defeated and humiliated, and the political, military and media leaders who caused the war should be held to account. Further, damage the US political influence in the rest of the world to prevent future wars. The US should become isolationist for many generations following a sufficiently painful defeat in Iraq.

2. Ensure that the humanitarian catastrophe is treated, by supporting Syria, Jordan, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

3. Ensure that the potential political catastrophe is averted, by supporting Syria, Jordan, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Does this seem anti-American to you?

Let me ask you, if Russia did everything the US has done, would my response be "anti-Russian" ?

[2rth2pwr]

2. Not following, we got to the UN and "suck it up"

and ask for what? money? troops? Which country is willing to send people to die there to help us?

OT- Is that a picture of you?

[OHdem10]

3. I am as patriotic as anyone in this country, but there must be limits

5years and 2 trillion dollars or is really more like 3trillion
if we had the "real numbers". How much more do we owe them?

If in fact, there is going to be bloodshed when we leave, then
it does not matter---if we leave tomorrow or years from now.

It is obvious, Iraq created Saddam Hussein. He held the country
together with a brutal iron fist. I am not defending him nor
do I approve his tactics. Kinda like Tito and the Balkans.

[ComerPerro]

5. the beauty of the whole Iraq mess for BushCo is that they never cared

they knew they were stirring up shit, they knew it would divide the country and especially the Democratic party, and from everything I am hearing from BushCo now it sounds like they are content to just let more and more people die until Jan 2009, when it is no longer their problem.

[wiggs]

7. By impeachment we tell the world whose fault this is and that we're sorry but

we now have adults on the problem and hope to start making good decisions. Anything that happens after that is on the neocons....that's the way it should and could be framed.

I guess I agree with your #3 but I think we need to get a REAL LEADER in there now, through impeachment. Even the attempt at impeachment tells the world something about America and who we are...and more importantly who we aren't.

[ShortnFiery]

8. Two words fully explain why we are in Iraq and will stay in Iraq: WAR PROFITEERING.

:nuke: :puke: :thumbsdown:

[wiggs]

9. I don't know what the best solution for Iraq is....don't know what the best

balance of troops, police, Iraqi military is...where they should be...how long they should be there. My sense is that our time there should come to an end shortly.

HOWEVER...

...what I do know is that the best team available to figure this out is not in the WH. America needs to get its best most capable team in the WH to work on this crippling, tragic problem.