Hi Michael. I agree with your post in almost every point you make. The one difference is that I think you make an assumption that will keep us in trouble and eventually reward us with poison.
You say; Even if one assumes that we went into Iraq for all the wrong reasons, we can't abandon the situation we've put ourselves in. We must not conclude our actions there until there is a government in place which will lead the Iraqis out of the desperate situation they've been in for the past 25 or so years. We have a similar obligation in Afghanistan. We owe it to ourselves, the people over there, and to everyone else in the world to see this thing through as effectively as possible.
How are we doing so far in "leading the Iraqis?" How did the Russians do in Afghanistan? How did we do in Vietnam? How did the French do in Algeria and in Vietnam? What is it that we "are able to do" that you say we "must do?"
Even IF our motives are pure, I don't think that matters; the people of another tribe, culture, religion or nation will not be "led" by those of another hive. If we think we can move them generations ahead to our view of enlightenment without their having to undergo the steps that we went through, then that's a little too missionary-like for me to accept. It's apparently a little too missionary-like for their alpha males to accept also. We might be "right," we might be powerful and we might be able to impose a heavy cost on them for not seeing it our way, but their resistance will not ebb.
We did something they could have eventually accomplished themselves when we suddenly removed the government of Saddam Hussein. By doing so we left them, however, without any viable governing force to step into the leadership vacuum other than their clerics or America's pawns. The Iraqis won't accept the pawns and we won't allow them to fragment and follow the Shiite clerics, the Kurdish goverment and the Sunni Clerics. Eventually we will learn that they will decide a course for themselves but first they will teach us a bloody lesson that will continue until we step out of the way.
What we are left with when we step away will be what it will be. We have almost no control. Invading and occupying Iraq was a gamble where we put a lot to ride on a sucker bet. Like all suckers, we will have to slink off, lick our wounds and hopefully learn a valuable lesson. We should have listened to Bush senior and we should have listened to many of the Mideast experts, and we should have listened to Colin Powell. Instead we listened to the geopolitics of oil, with a little "God" thrown in for spice. Ed |
