Jewell, I don't know if the "cause is just." I don't even know what the cause is. At one time the "cause" was to protect America and the world from a holocost of wmds from an Iraq that had tons of them and was close to a nuclear bomb. Then the "cause" was to stop Iraq from assisting and arming Al Queda types of terrorists. Then the "cause" was to free the Iraqi people from the clutches of an evil dictator that they were unable to remove themselves. That one had a rider that said they were desperate for the freedom and democracy that we would allow them to secure.
The problem is that none of those purported reason are consistent with today's actions or the facts that we now believe they had available at the time. So what is the "cause?" Maybe you can tell me and then maybe you can tell me how it is consistent with the long range, generational, decades long, occupation of Iraq and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars of America's wealth and more and more American lives. All this during a time when even the moderate Shiite clerics WANT US OUT.
As for whether a decades long, generational, American presence in Iraq is a likely occurence; did you read any of my earlier posts on that subject? What makes you believe (hope?) that we can continue to stay in Iraq while guerrillas mount attacks, we get trigger happy, innocent Iraqis and American soldiers die and the problem worsens? I'd really like to know.
The fact is that there are strong currents of ideology, religion, and nationalism that are pushing against our presence. The people on the other side are not stupid, they're not weak, they're willing to die, they know the people and the culture better than we ever will and they're not going away. The population is supporting their presence and it's not getting better. We've been REALLY WRONG in almost all of our assessments of how the Iraqis will react and accept our presence. The real question is why you continue to believe those that tell us it's getting gradually better and it will soon be ok? |
