OK, what is the worst case scenario if the US were to leave within 6 weeks lock, stock, barrel. PERIOD. Leave and not provide a penny of money for anything, not provide any kind of contingency force in the north or in Kuwait, not provide any kind of provision for UN peace keepers or Muslim forces (neither of which has ever expressed the desire or the ability to go in and clean up Bush's mess anyway).
What is the worst case scenario?
Civil war (already there)
Insurgency (already there)
Iraqis hate the US (already there plus the Shiites want us gone anyway so it's just the Sunnis who are shooting at us anyway)
Brutal strong man emerges (which is already a scenario for the Bushies who just want to pick the man)
So we see the worst case scenario, figure out where we can mitigate the damage and then proceed.
There is no good out when the country is in a shambles and hundreds and thousands are dead and there is no central government. The key is to prevent as much damage from here on out as possible.
So we get the heck out and bribe (from afar) everyone in Iraq: send cash, not people to war. It's still far cheaper -- anything else is far cheaper -- than this whack-a-mole, incompetent operation over there. Saddam was able to quell insurgency and civil war in Iraq using just what he had on hand so it can certainly be done by Iraqis again.
Plus this has the added advantage of destroying all ExxonMobil/Bushies dreams of permanent oil bases in the country.
As for those who say it's bad for the US to admit defeat, then HAVE A DRAFT, send in 150K-200K forces and get it done in the next year. It takes, what, 6 weeks to get the draft up and running, 4 months (?) to get people trained up so, in 6 months there could be a double (or more) of the forces in Iraq. Is this significantly different than stretching out this meat grinder of a war for a decade?
Get it done, fix it and don't ever do it again. |
