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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (177477)	12/8/2005 4:56:29 PM
From: Keith Feral	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hawk, the one difference between Iraq and Vietnam is that there is a global organization of Muslims willing and able to blow up anyone that disagrees with their jihadi beliefs. I could not believe that Bangladesh had a bicycle suicide bombing today. This war is not limited to Baghdad - it extends it's ugly head to every group of radical Muslims that want to enforce a totalitarian world order to promote their intolerant traditions. I might have to revoke my kinder statements saying that we should not torture these outlaws. Maybe they should be put into prisons with a one way ticket to the death chamber. Really, why shouldn't they be sentenced to immediate death under the law of Sharia any time they participate in an organization that supports suicide bombing. In the unfortunate case that the bombing occurs in a Western capital, we should return the criminals to their home land where they will be executed by the religious states they are fighting to protect. For example, send the damn kids from Leeds England back to the villages of Pakistan where they were trained so they can be executed by the most brutal means available. No more torture or Western headlines, I think the law of Sharia should guarantee death sentences for the people that are supporting these insane jihads. It is impossible to deal with people that have nothing to lose since they cannot grasp the understanding of deterrence. Maybe Sharia should assign collateral damage to family numbers to compensate for the number of people killed by each jihadi. I don't think anyone from the Left really understands the culture of hatred embedded in Islam fundamentalism.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (177477)	12/22/2005 4:52:16 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Hawkmoon; Re: "The one difference between this war and Vietnam, is that we're applying the doctrine of "Vietnamization" of the war early on, rather than trying to do it all for the Iraqis. We're holding them accountable to maintain security and order." I agree, and I think that this is a good thing. I also believe that we are likely to be successful in this (that is, in getting the Iraqis to maintain order). Where I disagree is on whether or not all this is a good thing for the US, and in particular whether or not it will have been worth the cost. The basic problem is that the Iraq that we are creating will either be broken by civil war with the result that it continues to be a training ground for terrorists, or alternatively, it will be a country that is united against us and no longer afraid of the US military. After the first Gulf war, Saddam declared victory simply because of the survival of his regime. Similarly, after we leave, the Iraqis will declare victory for having made us leave. This is just human nature. No matter how we get out of Iraq, the Islamists are going to take credit for it and declare it a victory. Religious oriented political parties just won the elections in Iraq. The only question of where Iraq ends up is how many US citizens are killed in the process. The result is inevitable. It will be a country peopled by the same well armed people who were there during Saddam. Their opinions on Israel are well known and are not going to change. The fact that our soldiers regularly kill Iraqis is not improving the eventual relationship between the US and Iraq. It doesn't matter that many of the Iraqis we kill are armed and dangerous. They are still blood relatives of people in Iraq who care more about them than they care about any US soldier. After we leave, the political will for us to return will be zero, just as current US polls show that the American people now believe that entering the war was a mistake. Everyone will know this just as they know now that the political will for the US to punish Iran or N. Korea for nuclear weapons production is zero. The new Iraq government will feel itself quite unafraid of the US returning much as the Vietnam government after 1975 was not in the least afraid of the US. The difference is that the post US Iraq will be a hell of a lot more dangerous than the post US Vietnam ever was. As to your claims that the US military is all happy about being in Iraq, I think you're full of crap. -- Carl