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Politics : Foreign Policy Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (7870)	12/22/2006 1:27:14 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15987

Mary, the violent death rate in the USA exceeds that <Peaceful? Three (3) thousand Iraqis die each month from violence. That is equivalent to us having a 9-11 occur every three days 365 days for three years. I guess it all depends on how you define peaceful.> And has done for decades, year in, year out, they are mowed down in the USA. And that's with no war on [inside the USA] For the most part, the USA is peaceful. Of course the USA is a lot bigger, so the violence is less concentrated than in Iraq. Mqurice

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (7870)	12/23/2006 11:20:18 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15987

Peaceful? Three (3) thousand Iraqis die each month from violence. Ever live in Baltimore, LA, or New York? Their murder rates are far higher than rural parts of the US. Iraq is a country of 20 million people and 18 provinces. The violence is predominant in only 3 of those provinces. And I never said Iraq was peaceful. But it's also NOT entirely being consumed in violence in every province. We have to do something different than what we are doing. No one, including Bush, think that we can stay the course. The ISG is a bi-partisan approach (or road map) to try something different. The authors of the ISG proposal include Meese, Baker, O'Connor, Eagleburger, etc. These are thoughtful people. They have intelligence, knowledge, and proven success. I happen to concur.. But if you look at the ISG report closely, they also unanimously agree that leaving Iraq and leaving Iraq alone to its own devices is also not an option. You haven't yet seen violence Mary.. Leave Iraq now and permit the militias to be seen as credible alternatives to governmental security, and you'll see violence quite unlike anything we've seen, to date. We are spending (when all costs are included) something like $2 trillion dollars on this Iraq mess. There is nothing more than what Islamic Jihadists strategists would like more than to get us bogged down in Iraq. And there's nothing more that I'd like to see than Iraqi muslims becoming fed up with militant Jihadists who display few qualms about killing fellow muslims. If the "War on Terror" is anything, it's a civil war between moderate/progressive and militant muslims. And the sooner Muslims are forced to recognize that Jihadists consider them to be just as much the enemy as they do Westerners, the appeal of Islamo-Fascism will fade. Islamic Jihadism is a global issue. It is not a fight that we have go into by ourselves. Muslim moderates have also to be engaged. You're starting to get to the crux of the problem. But understand that moderates, by their very designation, are not militants. They want peace, prosperity, and a better life for their children. They are intellectuals and business-minded people, not tyrannical (and often religiously myopic) militants who want to force every muslim to socially and economically regress 1,000 years. And for the Jihadists to sustain themselves, they need a source of revenue. And that's why they want to control the oil in the Persian Gulf. In fact, it's inherently part of their grand strategy. jamestown.org So think about what would happen if Al-Qaida leaders were able to snatch control of those resources to fund their Jihad. Think about the economic consequences of that when you think about how much this war is costing us. Hawk