A month ago an Iraqi citizen approached some U.S. soldiers, offering to sell a shoulder-held SA-7 surface-to-air missile, the kind that can be use to shoot down commercial airliners. When the soldiers offered the man $250, he drove back with a truckload of missiles and collected a payment of $40,000. He told the GIs that he would have brought more but he couldnât fit them all into his truck. excerpt from, Who Is The Enemy? U.S. soldiers still donât really know who they are fighting http://www.msnbc.com/news/988072.asp?0cv=CA00&cp1=1 Enough is enough, bring them back.
I disagree that we should bring them back. It would be a major error to pull out now, as the power vacuum would completely destabilize the middle east, and that is not in our national interests or national security at this point. We can debate whether or not we should have gone to war, but now it is bit like a married couple deciding whether or not it was a good idea to get pregnant and have a kid. My preference is that we grovel before the U.N. and regain worldwide support. Make this once again a free united world versus terrorism campaign. I want to hear from the presidential candiates what solutions they have to our problem, not a bitch session about who was to blame.
Can you be more specific as to what you don't understand? I explained the why, as a retreat would cause a power vacuum in the middle east, and allow for the potential of another situation similar to Afghanistan after the USSR left and the Taliban took control. Can you picture an Islamic fundamentalist extremist of the ilk of Bin Laden rising to power in Iraq, with the funding of the 2nd largest oil reserve in the world behind him? Again, we can discuss why we shouldn't have gone into Iraq in the first place, but that is pointless. We need solutions to the immediate problems, not hashing out of the past.
just curious as to your reasoning. referencing Afghanistan is interesting - don't know how well their pre-US histories correlate, but there are many similarities. it may apply as a model for the future - puppet govt, anarchy, perpetual US military presence, etc. - but the oil factor may be enough incentive to avoid another post-US Afghanistan.