i can't believe there are actually people running for president in america that want to do this (abandon iraq). unbelievable. btw, none of these candidates will win the election. i can at least see reasons for debating going to war, but once the decision is made, is there anyone who thought the country would change overnight? i could have told you before the first bomb was dropped that there would be some ongoing skirmishes; possibly for years to come. i will say, though, although i'm no military general, our guys over there should be FULLY SUPPORTED. by that i mean, they should have everything they need. i don't see why we have 2 guys driving around in a jeep, or 2 guys guarding a checkpoint. anywhere they are vulnerable, there should be overwhelming force available to them. anyone who willingly attacks an american soldier should know they are not going to get away with it.
Gordon, I agree totally. Pulling out now in the face of casualties, as much as we all hate to see them, would just increase our enemies resolve and determination to inflict casualties onus next time. In a sense we are still paying for the Somalia debacle and the Beirut debacle in the 80's. Our enemies are convinced that we will cut and run if we take too many casualties. What I fail to understand is the apparent lack of concern for security in Iraq. I heard that we opened up a road that ran right next to that hotel that got hit because closing it was tying up traffic. BFD. Let them wait. I think we should have created secure hardened billets for our personnel, military and civilian. The Saddam friendly areas should be under a virtual lockdown, with intense house to house searches. That radical Shiite cleric Sadr should have been arrested and sent to gittmo long ago. If they had done that, the clerics who supported us may not have been murdered. We need to accept that we will have troops in Iraq for a long time. Hell, we still have troops in Kosovo, although I have no idea why. At least in Iraq there is a strong strategic rationale for them being there. Talk of rapid transition to democracy should be stopped. If the Iraqi's held elections, it is likely that radical Shiites would emerge victorious and promptly declare some kind of nutcase Islamist state. We fought a war and pissed away all those billions for that result?
well GG, simply put a soldier or two or 10 cant be put on every street corner. Iraq is a big territory. Chechnya is a much smaller territory but the guerilla warfare has been going on there for years and years. It's called "small intensity conflict", guerilla warfare. It has a tendency to linger for a long long time. As far as retreats go... Vietnam - US ran, Beirut - US ran, Somalia - US ran. Did well in the Desert Storm and the Kosovo operation - that's true. Will US run in Iraq? We'll see. O yea, there's also Afghanistan, don't forget, active resistance over there.
I'm beginning to think that it is about time to set a timetable for withdrawal. So does CATO... October 24, 2003 Iraq: Exit Rather Than Spend by Charles V. Peña Charles V. Peña, director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute, is a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy. Seventeen lawmakers -- Republicans and Democrats -- who recently returned from a trip to Iraq say they must support the president's special request for $87 billion to underwrite U.S. military operations and reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Why should American taxpayers make a large down payment on what is likely to be a long-term and expensive mortgage on Iraq? Because, they say, the money is needed to restore order, stability, and safety for troops that might be in for an extended occupation. According to Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.): "If we are going to have security for our troops, we must fund reconstruction." My, how things change -- like the sands of Iraq's deserts. The original reason for changing the regime in Baghdad was the threat posed by Iraq's store of weapons of mass destruction, which U.S.-led inspectors have yet to find. Then it was Iraq's links to al Qaeda, although none has been confirmed and even President Bush admits that there is no evidence to tie Saddam Hussein to 9/11. Only at the 11th hour did the president argue that it was necessary to depose Hussein to liberate the Iraqi people and establish democracy in the Middle East -- an argument that has become more prominent after the war. Finally, in the post-war period, Iraq is cited as the central front in the war on terrorism. However, this is largely the result of going to war in the first place and creating a target in al Qaeda's backyard. For entire article: http://www.cato.org/dailys/10-24-03.html
Lets assume we withdraw; what scenario do you think would unfold???? there was Saddam before, which was according to many "A terrible situation".... Will it get worse than pre-removal of Saddam?? thank you in advance for answering.....
Very good question. Obviously I have no way of knowing, but I seriously doubt it would be anything to our liking. Most likely would seem tobe an Iranian supported Shiite regime, or a reappearance of the Baathist Saddam thugs. Such a regime would be able to plan on the near certainty that we would not get invovled again, just as the communists were able to in Vietnam. The results there were horrifying and continue to this day, including widespread genocide. Of course the media was not interested because communist genocide for some reason is not newsworthy, whether it is perpetrated by Stalin, Castro or the Viets.
Ok, leave the troops there, but remove the assholes who sent them. Sounds like a good compromise to me.
Anyone remember President Bush criticizing the role of nation building in the last election? With the US doing that nation building thing in Kosovo and wasting taxpayer money and all that, wasn't he who said he would not engage in such affairs if he were elected president. (Oh wait, to some he has held to that promise he since he was never elected president. I'm apolitical so don't harrass me with the legitimacy of his electedness.) Maybe there ought to be some sort of declaration drawn up; those who want democracy live in one part of the country and those who want to continue living like terrorist idiots live in the other and divide Iraq in two. Once divided, send in the CIA to organize a civil war, have the US send in all that fancy equipment and wipe Team Terrorist off the map and unite the country. Sounds a lot better than nation building that will cost waaay toooo much.
Moving out would create a power vacuum. Syria and Iran would attempt to move in and exert control, attempting to duplicate their respective political structures in Iraq. Turkey would do the same in the Kurdish area in the North of Iraq. Iraq would at best lose its current borders. You would get a power grab and probably a civil war type atmosphere for the next 10-20 years while things sort themselves out. The country would probably fractionalize into local armed clans that rule by force. The standard of living during that time would probably plummet to an Afghanistan type level. Terrorists would see Iraq as a free staging ground because of a weak central government (if any) so there would be a migration of terrorists to Iraq because it would be a safe haven. And to top it off, the US would become the laughing stock of the world for allowing Iraq to slip into chaos and ruining their standard of living as well as squandering perhaps the best chance of establishing a democratic state in the heart of the Islamic Arab world, and abandoning all its goals with regards to the region. So yes it could get worse - much worse.
power does not appear or disappear; it is transferred. i had a teacher in high school explain this and i agree with it. before class starts and the teacher is out of the room, the classroom is a little out of control (everyone talking, etc.), as each student has some power. when the teacher enters the room, each student looses some of their power and it is transferred to the teacher.