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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (131422)	5/4/2004 4:46:46 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

It's not 20/20 hindsight- because we were saying then what we are saying now, and we said it first before the war happened. It's more like- we were right in our predictions, and Bush and company's predictions were wrong. It would only be 20/20 if we were changing our tune AFTER the fact. Saying it before the fact makes it not 20/20. You could say that assessing the correctness of our position does make it necessary for time to intervene, but that would be necessary for any position.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (131422)	5/5/2004 2:32:53 AM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hawk, re: "the possible plan by which WE COULD get Iraq "socially rehabilitated...restructured...and created," is, according to your post, sending more troops. Biden and McCain agree so you're in good company, but what would more troops do that would, at this time, effectively lower the level of Iraqi resistance? Could they "find" more of the insurgents? I don't think so, since we have such poor intelligence and the Iraqis aren't turning the insurgents in except in rare instances. Could they overrun the resistance in places like Najaf and Falluja? We can already do that if we mass our forces and attack with air power. If we do, however, the bloodbath will make us less, not more, likely to win the cooperation of the majority of Iraqis. Could they guard borders, guard oil wells and pipelines, guard supply routes, guard utilities and present a more visible presence on the streets? Sure they could, but our main problem is not that we can't fight the war against the insurgents; our main problem is that the insurgents can continue to fight the war against us because they have the support of a significant portion of the society and most of the rest of the people are too apathetic to risk their lives fighting for our view of what Iraq should be. That's why the military says that more troops would not, at this time, fix the problems. In the end you'd still be dealing with the elephant in the room. The elephant that Rumsfeld and Myers don't want to talk about. That elephant is the fact that the Iraqi people are going to keep killing our troops at an increasingly bloody pace, along with those that help them, until we leave and let them find their own path, as bloody as it will undoubtedly be. So I would be in favor of sending more troops if it could help solve the problem, but I don't see that as a viable solution. I think that in the end it would only prolong the agony of admitting that we cannot for long impose our will on the people of another nation and culture. When it became obvious that we were not going to continue to be seen as the saviors of the Iraqi people but rather as oppressors and occupiers, the die was cast. We bet the farm on a sucker bet and lost. It's time to cash in our remaining chips and find a game where we're not the fish. For those reasons I'll have to reluctantly disagree with you, McCain and Biden on this issue.