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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe NYC who wrote (202643)	9/17/2004 10:12:54 AM
From: Elroy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577924

THe US has stayed in Germany, Japan and Korea for more than 30 years, and it was a resounding success. Yeah, but the situations there were quite different. In Germany and Japan, the US went in as victors after the two countries had been at war for almost a decade, their populations were devastated, and their government (at least Japan) formally surrendered. I watched the DVD Fog of War the other day, and it said something like 30%-50% of the population of every major city in Japan was killed by bombing - I imagine that setting was totally different than Iraq today. The Iraq situation looks much more like Vietnam, in that I imagine the insurgents in Iraq feel they are fighting a civil war. The fact that the "insurgent/terrorist/local population" issue has gotten to where it is today rests squarely on the Bush administration's handling of post-war Iraq - it stunk. Bush's problem again is he claims to be a strong leader (can use the world's most powerful military to go anywhere) but he doesn't seem a very smart leader (now that you're there George, what do you do???). Since the US went in, we have an obligation to give democracy a chance. I would say the US has the obligation to offer the Iraqi people a chance at democracy, and if the Iraqi people are too foolish to take it, they can suffer the consequences. If the local population wanted to fight the insurgents, they probably have some capability to do so. In Iraq's case, the Iraqis are failing to take their chance at democracy. I don't think the US/coalition forces should suffer any more casualties if the Iraqis haven't got the ability to govern themselves in a modern fashion. That's why I say give them 6 months or so of police force training, and go. I don't understand why their aren't already hundreds of thousands of reasonably well-trained Iraqis in the new Iraqi security force. Major hostilities have been over for over a year now. How many months, weeks, years of training do they require? I have a guess as to why there aren't already hundreds of thousands of trained Iraqis - because the whole idea of preparation for training probably didn't get started until 3-6 months after the war ended. Post-war preparation seems to have been nil (ahem - George, the buck stops with you there). Regardless, George's view that "we will remain in Iraq as long as necessary and not a day longer" is the wrong approach. It makes the coalition's departure dependant on the Iraqis success in establishing a democracy. If the Iraqis fail to become democratic, the coalition forces are left their dying for decades. I would say "stay long enough to build a reasonable security force (which really shouldn't take more than 6 months) and leave". At that point it is up to Iraqis to build something of their country, and if they want to decend into anarchy, they will have had a great opportunity and squandered it away (i.e., it's their failure to modernize, not the coailition's). Arab countries often blame outside forces for their shortcomings. The Iraqis have been given a perhaps once in a lifetime chance to revert from dictatorship to representative government. If they can't take advantage of that offer within a reasonable period of time, forcing it on them is a recipe for more death and destruction with little reward. Elroy