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

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (172995)	10/21/2005 12:23:22 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

"You make it so complicated. You give all these reasons why Iraq is in turmoil. The reason why Iraq is in turmoil is because there are a lot of jerks running around with all kinds of excuses for doing whatever they are doing. Mary, I don't make it so complicated, it is much more complicated than my post would suggest. One of the things that got us into Iraq was the simplistic thinking of the neocons like Wolfowitz who believed that we could apply simple solutions to complex problems that we didn't really even understand. There were, of course, those with a more nuanced view of the issue but for other reasons they wanted us to occupy Iraq and THEY were willing to pay the costs. Even they, however, underestimated the complexity of the problems, underestimated the passion and power of everyday people and overestimated our power to enforce our will a half a world away in a culture we don't understand. What does this tell us.....simple solutions to complex problems don't work. If we did the right thing, fix up their infrastructure, provide them with clean water, electricity, sanitation, and a security force - the jerks will still be doing what jerks do -but there will be a lot less of them. That may well be true but it's a "chicken or an egg" problem. As long as the jerks are running around you can't fix the infrastructure no matter how much money you throw at it. It's a lot easier to destroy than it is to build. You can't guard everything when the enemy can choose the time, place and manner of attack and it takes minutes to destroy what takes months to build. In addition, the number of jerks and their skill levels are simultaneously increasing much faster than our ability to deal with them. If you want simple solutions to the Iraqi situation which offer some chance of short term success then either turn huge portions of Iraq into a Fallujah-like wasteland with air power, artillery and missiles, or get out. Which do you prefer? Killing their cities and populations into submission is a half-measure that's short term, getting out offers the chance to contain the damage and wait out the turmoil. Who knows, maybe like the Soviet Union cold war, or the Vietnam hot war, or the way Iran was starting to move before we energized their conservatives with our Iraqi invasion, time and watchful patience will be a better cure than radical surgery? And of course getting out won't scare the rest of the world into the next cold war, if we haven't already, and it won't continue to warp our nations soul. But then if we leave we won't be able to brag much about how many of our young we're willing to send to early graves to prove that we're not losers. It's not about spending our way out of this. As with incurable diseases, given our current level of wisdom and resources there are some things that money and hard work can't fix, no matter how good our motives and no matter how much we wish for it. As Bush Sr. and a lot of experts knew going in, and as is so clear today, from America's point of view the mess in Iraq is one of those "can't fix that" problems. That's not to say it can't be fixed it's just that the Iraqis will have to fix it themselves. For America it's simply a matter of picking the best of bad choices and getting out-and we will. The question is whether we'll do it sooner or later and how many more soldiers die in the interim, and how much stronger the world's distrust and hatred for us grows while we delay and how much more foolish and militant we appear in the eyes of the other 6 BILLION people that share this planet with us. Now or later, and how; that's all that's left to decide. Ed