Reasonable concerns. You're right. It's not an easy situation.
flishtaco wrote:
I dont get it, there is no doubt in my mind we beat the crap out of the Iraqi army. But, we appear to be floundering. I dont know if its most of the Iraqies who dont want us there or not, I just turn on the news or read the news off the web each day and find more and more of our people dying everyday.
Yup. I still think that's it's the relative numbers that are throwing people off. I don't want to belittle a single death, but if this had been a campaign fought even 20 years ago, we would have lost 50k+ US military during the "war", and the 650ish we've lost holding the territory would be nothing more then a footnote.
Doesn't make them any less painful, but does make them seem more dramatic in comparison. I think that's also why many people are thinking they were "lied to". The "war" went so well that many people don't understand why we're losing people now. Technology can make it so we can eliminate enemy troops with amazing accuracy and at ranges where our guys are more or less completely "safe". But we haven't invented the technology that allows us to patrol a street without essentially putting our soldiers in a spot where anyone with a rifle can pick them off.
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Sadly, this means to me that we need to do something to fix this, no not cut and run lest we be stuck with a state that makes Iran look like an ally. It means to me that we need more soldiers over there like 2-3 times as many...
Maybe. It's a delicate situation. More troops can panic folks in Iraq. I tend to agree that we should probably have more, but I'm not looking over troop strength numbers personally, so that would just be a guess. Again. Whether you've got 10 people walking down a street or 100, as long as you can't just arbitrarily shoot anyone you see, a guy who's willing to die can shoot a couple of you *first* in either case. The only thing having 100 people there does is increase the amount of "friendly" bullets that fly towards the one sniper that may potentially kill innocent civilians in the same building.
There's no really good answer to that.
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...and that our turn over day can still be June 30 but it needs to be like June 30 2006. Pre-invasion I saw military general after military general reccomend numbers between 300 and 500k boots on the ground, only to have Rumsfeld tell them to pike off.
I completely disagree with putting off the turnover. I believe we are seeing this spike in insurgent activity *because* the turnover date is near. Sure. Pushing it back will probably reduce them, but we'll only have worse when we get back to this point next year, or the year after that.
It's abundantly obvious that the guys shooting at our soldiers don't want the turnover to happen. That's a pretty clear message that doing the turnover is the "right" thing to do. Pushing the timetable back only gives them a victory and gives them more time to solidify themselves in Iraq.
We absolutely will not see improvement in Iraq until after a new government is formed. I'm not guaranteeing that things will get better after that date (it could just devolve into civil war), but I do know that if we don't do it now, it will only get harder in the future. Given that a handover is required at some point, the sooner the better.
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I dont like that we did this pre-emptive war and I think we were misled into going and continue to be misled in our reasons for being there. This was not a war on terror, this was taking a bad man down for oil money.
I never agreed with the reasons either. However, simplifying it down to just one thing is misleading as well. There were a list of reasons. You can do a google search for the "Act of War" the US congress signed when it authorized Bush to use military force against Iraq. It's all spelled out there.
I tend to not think all the reasons added up to a good enough reason to go to war. However, our president did. And our Congress (including the Democratic nominee for President just in case you're wondering) did. I'm willing to give them the opportunity to succeed or fail on their terms. That is, after all, their job. Not mine.
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It has become a war on terror however, because we have given many more people reason to hate us. This means we will have to stay the course until an Iraqi government can hold its own or we will have created one hell of a platform for future terrorists to breed from I fear however that this maybe to late.
This part is still questionable. I have reservations about what we're doing to our rep as well. However, to say that all we're doing is make people hate us, is oversimplifying the problem.
There are many cultures around the world that hate us, and will hate us for nothing more then the fact that we exist and operate the way we do. Our economic expanion, our "western ways", infiltrate into their societies whether our government orders it or not. It's a cultural war, and it's been going on for quite some time. Those cultures that wish to remain "unchanged" and "unaffected" by the rest of the world resent the west (and the US in particular) for polluting their countries with our MTV, and our McDonalds food, and our Levi's Jeans. They point to their children who sing Brittney Spears songs and wear makeup and blame us for destroying their way of life.
That's certainly not all of it, but that's why the hardcore extremists hate us. They can then use our "meddling" in the middle east and support of Israel to bring the more moderate people to their side. That's what's going on in Iraq in a nutshell. The extremists don't want a "democratic" government, no matter who runs it, or how well it works, purely because it's not a traditional Arab way of doing things. End of story. They will use any tactics available to prevent it. The longer we wait on establishing an Iraqi government, the more "moderate" Iraqi's they can pull to their cause by spreading rummors and half truths among the populace. Their biggest weapon is the idea that the US will keep Iraq as a police state. If we back off the self rule timeline now, we'll have fed right into that and hordes of moderate Iraqi's will flock to the extremists' side.
As to a "war on terror"? We can't know yet. If what we are doing works, it may be the most significant step towards improving things in the middle east ever. If it fails, things will get worse. Yup. It's a gamble.
However, the doctrine change has already born some fruit. Syria and Liberia have both already made concessions towards at least giving lip service to controlling terrorists within their borders. This is something they would not have done prior to us taking out Iraq.
Agree or disagree, Iraq did (and does) serve as a good "example" to the rest of the middle east. The leaders have previously had the task of balancing their foreign relations on one hand, and keeping the extremists in their own countries happy on the other. With tepid international reaction (and no action) against them for letting terrorists operate, but with very real consequences for attempting to do anything about terrorists, the choice has been very simple for them: Let the terrorists do what they want and they wont mess with me or my people. Now, Bush has changed that. Those leaders must weigh potential "real" threats to their sovreinity if they don't do something about the terrorist groups in their countries. While this may not have a huge effect, it's something. It at least gives them a reason to need to do something, where they had none before.
