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

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (182048)	2/17/2006 12:45:47 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Don't be naive. The minute we tell them to ask us to leave, they'll ask, but not a minute sooner. I'm hardly being naive. I fully understand that the Iraqi government (IG) wants our money, as well as to use us as a shield to hide behind so that they don't have to be required to make hard decisions. But so long as we're involved there, we have power to influence decisions by threatening to withdraw our financial and military support and forcing the Iraqi government to make that "hard decision" to ask us to leave. The manner in which we will "force" progress to be made is to provide monetary and military "carrots and sticks" against all parties who attempt to disrupt the democratic process. And one of those sticks is to cut off the monetary support and leave the IG stuck with responsibility for all infrastructure expenditures (and thus accountable to the electorate). And I think we're getting better at controlling who receive financial support and who doesn't. We obviously weren't very good at it in the beginning.. I don't care how it happens, I just want to make sure that we can leave Iraq with a clear conscience and the ability to say "We REALLY tried to give them a shot at democracy". I think it's worth it.. Certain preferable to just pulling out as Murtha has advocated and letting loose the "dogs of civil war". Hawk

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (182048)	2/17/2006 1:09:37 PM
From: michael97123	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

I brought you and Mike O'Neill together i think--both of you are good guys--so is Hawk. Hawk may be just too close to the situation. He has peeps there who he knows and likes and must fear for them. Iraq like Vietnam flows more from our nations best impulses than from its worse. As much as i hated LBJ, i sort of always knew that. Wilsoniasm is the problem and isolationism (the new democratic-buchanan policy) is the worse possible response. Realism in FP is what is needed--a balance between realism and idealism actually.