ecu92 Wrote:There is a global war on Islamic extremism going on. Islamic radicals have been in a state of jihad with the U.S. for years, but we ignored them, hoping they'd just go away.
Democrats have no plan for dealing with these Islamic thugs, other than to hold focus groups on "why they hate us so much?" and beg a corrupt U.N. to pass a resolution requiring Al Quaida to play nice.
Thats just patently false. And you can't really be excused for not reading more about what the Democrats are proposing. Thats just sloppy on your part to just recite a talking point and not study up on their plans.
Can you all even have a debate without straw man arguements? Debate the Democrats on what their plans are -- redeploying troops to Afghanistan and the gulf bases, and implementing the Baker-Hamilton recommendations for a regional political solution.
That is what the END of this war will inevitably look like. There is no military solution possible. We're not going to be able to fight our way to stability in Iraq -- we haven't yet, only increased instability.
Quote:The war obviously could be going better, but we have to stay long enough to stabilize Iraq. A stable Iraq, that is relatively pro-western, makes prospects for long-term peace in the region better not worse. Heck, it took many years for Germany to stabilize and become a modern, civilized nation after WWII. Why do we expect all of this to happen overnight?
A stable Iraq provides us with diplomatic and economic leverage in the region, making a future war with Iran less likely. So if you're really anti-war, you need to suck it up and support this effort, because the alternative is a larger middle eastern war in the future costing not thousands of American lives, but tens of thousands.
Nobody is doubting the benefits of a stable Iraq. Again, this is a straw-man.
The question is, is the course we've been on since the day we began occupying the country working towards that end? To me, the facts point to no. And we're now entering year #5 of that occupation. It seems as if its time to start asking the question -- if this working to bring about a stable Iraq?
Or will Iraq's problems ultimately be resolved by Iraqi leaders and regional powers supporting them by proxy are able to work out their political differences for what the future looks like?
Foreign terrorists are still a relatively small part of the problem, and a manageable problem once you get all the domestically-driven violence resolved. The sunnis aren't going to stop fighting as long as the shiites have unbridled power in the country supported ostensibly by 140,000 US troops and the Iranian government. They know they are on the short end of the stick in this situation and they know the only way they can leverage the situation is to continue scorching earth. The shiite militias on the other hand, realize that they can surge to the top of the pile in the illiberal, violent system that exists in Iraq right now. With the help of Iran, they are playing long term, attempting to consolidate their power.
All sides have a stake in stability, even Iran and Syria, and definitely the Saudis. But each working alone has to look out for its own interests first and foremost, and in the aggregate, that creates instability.
Thats why the Iraq Study Group made the recommendations they did. The Balkans was a pretty bad situation as well. It took the Dayton Accords to put a framework into place that created stability. No amount of military power alone helped. You can't fight your way out of civil conflict.
Thats why the allusions to other wars are so off the mark. You can force an enemy army to submit. You cannot militarily force two ethnicities to get along with one another. The post-WW1 arrangements led to the creation of an Iraq that managed to keep Iraq's inherent conflicts stable for a long time, through patronage and in Saddam's case, brutal oppression. Our war opened that pandora's box up again. The only way to get the pieces back in the box is to bring all of the regional and domestic parties to the table and hash out an agreement that everyone can live with. If you are truly interested in stability, then you'd have to agree thats what its going to have look like at the end of the day.
The same people who have put us in this situation and have been wrong about every single aspect of this war, every step of the way, and presided over it getting worse and worse, are now telling us that more of the same will all of a sudden start working the more we do it -- all evidence to the contrary. These people have no credibility left. They have shown a chronic and distressing level of ignorance about what would emerge in Iraq -- it is time to start listening to the people who were right all along, and can the armchair captains of state in favor of a new path along the lines of what James Baker is advocating.
Its going to have to look like that at the end of the day anyway, as I said.