My approach really isn't "nothing". My approach is to pull back, and let our business interests take care of business.
Please amplify on this...
When tempers calm, the Iraqis will see us as a useful tool to balance against other foreign interests and the situation will improve.
Which Iraqis? The Sunnis, the Shiites, the Kurds? All have their own agenda and are only willing to compromise under the umbrella of outside arbitration and negotiation.
Are you proposing a lazzez-faire approach? Is that going to resolve the factional distrust and suspicions?
The problem with your approach is that it isn't working.
It isn't? I think the jury is definitely still out on that one... Especially since we're barely 12 months into the effort.
But it can definitely be said that your approach of leaving it up to "business" has miserably failed over the past decade or two, with regard to the entire region.
The situation has gone from some measure of stability to outright hostility, fed by Islamic Militancy and economic and political stagnation. What makes you think the approach would be any more successful in Iraq without the existence of some physical pressure to force the parties to compromise?
So far, Al-Sistani has refused to even meet with coalition authorities.
But his proxies do meet and participate. He apparently considers himself a religious leader, not a political one. And that's probably for the best. That's one of the major problems in the mid-east, the mixing of politics and religion. But he's obviously going to have his own agenda that he will want advanced.
That's right, try to shoot the messenger. Fat chance. This war was your idea, not mine.
Just like 9/11 is your fault, not mine.
Ignore the problem, hope "business interests" will sort it all out, and never question how or why individuals like Bin Laden suddenly get the urge to destroy the US...
But what do you do when other nations, and their business interests, decide to ratchet up the competion an extra step? After all, we all know that it was France and Russia's business interests that were the primary reason the UN sanctions were not working..
Was that your idea?
You're like the officer who orders his men to make an impossible attack, and then, when it fails, he blames the survivors who told him that it couldn't be done.
And you're like an officer who fights every one of his battles out in his mind dozens of times, each time contemplating nothing but defeat, so he hopes for a miracle from god (business interests?) to fight his battle for him..
But you forget that business (economics) is war too... In fact, war is often nothing more than economics by other means. We're not the only ones who have "business interests" in the region. And those competing business interests (such as the French and Russian ones) have vested interests in seeing our goals defeated, and their own advanced, even if via totalitarian regimes.
And they are often far fewer scruples, especially when they are pretty certain they can rely upon the Americans to bail them out when their proxies get out of hand (as Saddam did in Kuwait back in 1990).
So I await with bated breath, you explanation as to how "business" is going to solve this problem without another 9/11 event (or worse) occuring in this country.
Hawk |
