We are stuck in Iraq.
Iraq is different from Somalia, Haiti, Somalia, or even the Balkans. In those places one could make the case that our involvement was charitable, an attempt to clean up messes that were not immediately of our making, and that we had no obligation to stay if we deemed the cost too high. Bush, in our name, launched this war and created this mess in Iraq. Without forfeiting whatever claim to the moral high ground our country has left, we cannot leave Iraq and its people in its current condition. Besides, abandoning Iraq now would create a new haven and breeding ground for terrorists. Although the case for *invading* Iraq as a means to advance the war on terrorism was a fraud, the threat that terrorism could blossom in the chaos that now exist there is very real.
One can hope that the UN will jump in and help to share some of the cost (and some of the flack), but I do not see Bush-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz "bring it on" crowd with the kind of courage to do what it would take to bring in the UN. It will take eating some crow on their part, and they are much too prideful. I am not happy about my money getting sucked into this rat hole, either. However, now it's too late. We made this mess, it is our responsibility to fix it.
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