Your logical error is in persisting in trying to define everything in shades of black and white. As usual, the situation with "hostile populations" is one that grades over a wide range of possible levels of hostility.
Actually, this is how I've been perceiving your opinions..
The only thing that I might credibly be called "black or white" about is related to the repercussions that will result in Iraq should the US and coalition partners decide to permit themselves to be intimidated by a violent minority trying to target foreign forces and Iraqi security..
The problem in Iraq is that the vast majority of the population is either hostile or indifferent to the deaths of our troops,
Isn't this similar to how your average person feels about the police? They are inconvenient and annoying when they are getting in your face and handing out tickets.. But boy o' boy, we're B*tchin' and Griping when they don't respond fast enough to a violent crime or robbery..
And no Iraqi would truly desire to suffer the humiliation of having to rely upon foreign forces to enforce social order. But it obviously takes time to ramp up a new police and military force to assume those duties.
Even if a large MINORITY of the local population doesn't want us there, and that large minority is PEACEFUL I think we should consider whether or not we should be there.
Dude, we're already there... What we need to be deciding is under what terms we should remain, and how much effort we should give to trying to create a stable society..
My view is that we should be UNITED in our efforts to succeed with that goal in Iraq. It's far too early for whiners like yourself to be second-guessing our efforts and feeding the propaganda of power rivals within that country.. The more divisiveness "hand-wringers" like yourselves attempt to spread, the more intense will become the efforts of that indigenous opposition as they hope to recreate the same self-doubt and self-hating attitude that forced us out of S. Vietnam.. And we all know of the atrocities and aggression happened to that country after the US bailed on them.. The one thing the Soviets and N. Vietnamese didn't have was self-doubt about forcing their own will over the region.. And millions suffered and died as a result..
Even contemplating withdrawing from Iraq at this moment is to facilitate the conditions that may just ignite a civil, if not regional, war... Too many nations have an interest in seeing that Iraq doesn't become democratic, or even stable.. Too many nations don't want the Iraqis to live peacefully with one another..
And BS like you purvey around is just what they want to accomplish that goal..
My rules are for when we should occupy nations that are at peace with us, not nations that we were forced to defeat at war. The problem with Iraq is that it was a "preemptive" or "optional" war. With Germany and Japan in WW2, we did not have a choice.
In both cases, you're talking about history.. The pre-emptive war against Saddam is history as well.. What I'm talking about is the current reality and the policy decisions that we must take to insure that the best possible result, both for the Iraqi people and US strategic and economic security.
And at the moment, leaving Iraq to its own devices is just not a morally, or logically, defensible position to be espousing.
Waiting is a solution, it's just not the solution that you wanted to hear.
Ah..hmm... "waiting", with regard to the middle east, is exactly what permitted Islamo-Fascists the ability to create the challenge that they have...
We "waited" when it came to insisting on political, legal, and economic change in the region.
We waited for Saddam to fall after Desert Storm (as France and all of our partners assured us he would)..
We waited when it came to forcing Saddam to comply with his UNSC obligations.
We continued to wait for Saddam to fulfill his obligations in the face of UNSC 1441..
We waited when it came to credibly responding to the terrorist attacks conducted by Bin Laden in Africa against our embassies...
And we've waited while the demographic trends in the Mid-East have shifted to the point where as many as 50% of the regions population are under the age of 18..
Are you willing to wait until they are OVER 18, without a job, and brain-washed by religious fanatics to believe that all of their problems are the fault of the US and other Western societies?
We're going to be blamed regardless of the outcome of any change in the region... So we might as well take some actions and try to short-circuit what any demographic and political scientist could tell you is almost certain.
Namely.. that the time for doing nothing, or biding our time, in the Middle East has passed. This is a time for an ounce (or even a 1/2 cup) of prevention in order to avoid the many pounds of cure that will be required 5-10 years from now.
We simply no longer have the luxury of waiting...
Hawk |
