(1) If Bush has proved anything in going into Iraq, it's that the local population has "veto power" over the pumping of oil.
Isn't that the same population that is counting upon the revenues from selling that oil to rebuild their country? Do you think the Iraqi people (as a whole) want to live in continuing poverty?
Or is it that a SELECT group of former "elites" are VERY upset that their prior position of priviledge has been taken from them and stands to place their former subjects in charge of them??
For them to seize control, they have to deny the US and Iraqi people, any benefit from those oil and electrical resources.
It's the golden rule... he who has the gold, rules.
(2) The Saudi Royal family is huge.... it would be a miracle if there were not any supporters among those thousands of members.
And that's the problem with nepotism... A family is a family.. And if you can't control your own family from provoking a war, then the entire family must pay the price.. If no one is to be held accountable within that royal family, then the entire family bears the blame, and the political liability.
But let's also face something else. A large percentage of Saudi Arabia cheered the attacks upon the US. And since the financing is coming from that nation, using US dollars procured from selling oil to us and other nations, you'd have us DO NOTHING but retreat behind our oceanic moats? Don't you think the Saudis would LOVE to have control over Iraqi oil fields, using a militant insurgency as the mechanism for achieving tacit control over those resources?
And you're willing to sit back and let that happen?
(3) Iraq has never had fundamentalist rulers, so how the hell do you think that they're gonna figure out that those rulers that they've never had are just as corrupt and inept as their secular leaders?
Depends on how far back you go. At one time the entire Islamic world was under fundamentalist rule. And the recent "flavor" of Islamic fanaticism only truly manifested itself in the 1920s out of, guess where, Saudi Arabia.. when the Saudis and Wahhabists formed their Faustian pact.
Furthermore, the ongoing cold war, and those impressive oil profits which, PREVIOUSLY, could sustain economic and social progress throughout the region, kept the fundamentalists in relative check.
But some of the first signs of rising fundamentalism was seen in Syria, where Assad killed some 30,000 of them in Hama, leveling entire portions of one of Syria's 4th largest city.
Finally, the fundamentalists, AND THEIR BACKERS, sought to MURDER 50,000 civilians on 9/11. They didn't think twice about carrying out such an act... And given the opportunity, and encouraged that they and their supporters will not suffer for that, they won't hesitate to kill millions, given the chance...
But apparently losing less than a thousand soldiers in overthrowing Saddam somehow seems too high a price to pay for you...
How quickly people of your ilk forget, OR WILLFULLY IGNORE, when someone attacks us...
(4)... (Most of this question was rhetoric, so I'll answer this more concrete part) Or would it be the inept secular authorities in Iraq that can't pump oil, keep electricity running, stop looting, prevent constant attacks, etc.? Unless you actually name names, your posts can get confusing.
No doubt the post-war reconstruction plan has been rather lacking. I have also criticized it, believing that we should have immediately vetted, organized, and paid Iraqi internal security forces. But this is not an unsolvable problem. But even then... while there are setbacks, it doesn't mean that we aren't having successes and making progress. But the media doesn't find success attractive enough to sell airtime on their networks.
As for electricity and oil, please tell me who you think would control those resources and be responsible for rehabilitating them, were the US to withdraw? And who has an interest in denying various factions from seizing control over them? You keep bitching about the US "wanting to control Iraqi oil".. However, you FAIL to note that every previous power elite within Iraq WISHES TO DO THE VERY SAME THING, for their OWN GREEDY PURPOSES. Control the oil and they control the economy of the country.
There is a power vacuum in Iraq.. And for the US to cut and run now, as you would have us do, would NOT fill that power vacuum with a credible government.
(5) The fact is that we won the battle for the hearts and minds in Iran without invading and occupying their country. But you reject this lesson of history.
And what has been the price? And do you see the Iranian people sitting still while a fundamentalist Wahhabist government attempts to seize control in Iraq? A regime that will likely be even more repressive towards Shiites? A regime that will occupy the holy Shiite cities of Karbala (equivalent to Shiites controlling Mecca and Medina)?
We'll see the Iranian clerics regain increased political leverage in Iran as they frighten their population with the threat that such a scenario would lead to. We'd eventually see, IMO, a resumption of the Iran-Iraq war, Shiite against Wahhabist/Sunni.. with both sides waging brutal battles against one another and disrupting the supply of oil throughout the region.
(6) We can make Arab leaders and governments support the war on terror (by threatening to kill them), but the fact is that they are as impotent in stopping terrorists from freely operating out of their own territory as we are at stopping terrorists from operating out of Iraq, or the Israelis are at stopping terrorists from operating out of the Occupied Territories.
Again.. you completely, and WILLFULLY, ignore the fact that Islamic fanaticism takes root when their is not socio-economic hope amongst a youthful people. Which is why it's IMPERATIVE that we continue to create the foundation for a stable and viable economy and political system that is accountable to the majority, not the minority.
(7) That means that just to stay even, we have to kill about 20,000 people per year. But we're not even coming close to that.
No... we need to EMPLOY hundreds of thousands so these young people feel they have AN OPTION.
The only people I want to kill are those religious and secular leaders who are involved in inciting these acts of terrorism. That is crucial to forcing these militant leaders to think twice about just how far they attempt to manipulate impressionable minds to carry out their theocratic agenda.
(8) This whole argument that our allies are going to come give us a hand in an important war (required to save civilization) applies to the Vietnam war, where our allies, despite the evident falling of the first domino, left us to keep the dominoes vertical on our own.
Vietnam was a sideshow.. of limited economic interest to the rest of the world.. And it was really a proxy battle between the US, USSR, and China for influence in the region.
The Persian Gulf, until such time the industrialized world no longer relies upon fossil fuels, is CRITICAL to the global economy.
And the global economy is critical to alleviating the poverty of billions of people.
(9) Our military is stretched too thin to substantially augment the troops in Iraq. We are slowly being forced to fish or cut bait.
No disagreement there. We're going to have to expand our military combat forces. We also need to push more administrative military slots into combat slots, replacing those people with civilian administrators and contractors.
The US military has always been a logistically oriented force with limited quantities of "boots on the grounds" when it comes to combat strength. That will need to change in order to carry out various limited wars and nation building. It will also require augmentation of Military Police and Civil Affairs..
(10) You will be disappointed. More likely the UN and various other neutral aid providers will pull out as they are increasingly targeted.
Then the UN will reveal itself for what most of us already recognize.. A useless organization with little ability to influence anything...
In such a case, I can see the potential for the US to push the UN out of NYC, and "diverting" funding to our operations in Iraq.
There you go... answered all 10...
Hawk |
