flowersofnight wrote:
What do you propose we do? We can't just pack up and leave overnight... that's the one thing we could do to 100% guarantee more instability in the region.
Problem is, we're going to have to leave sometime, and it's most likely going to be with our tails between our legs. We can NOT win this. We'll have to occupy Iraqi for about a decade before there's even a
chance we can leave them to themselves and not risk the immediate rising of a new dictator. That region has been ruled by chaos for hundreds and thousands of years. Big bad USA stepping in and telling the children to calm down and behave isn't going to change anything. Since we got involved in the ME, terrorism has increased along with animosity towards America throughout the entire world. We've perpetuated the problem by scattering the terrorists--they're not united under anyone, and each group works on its own. No Hussein being toppled or Bin Laden being killed is going to lessen the threat. In case you haven't noticed, the violence is increasing--in Iraqi, in US military casualties, in civilian casualties, in terrorist-victims around the world--every month. And the people we're trying to liberate only resent us for it. Would you look kindly on a nation that stepped in the middle of your fight and took over and won for you, unasked, simply because they believe you were too incompetent to do so yourself? What is freedom worth if you can't win it yourself? Democracy has to be achieved, not imposed--and that's another thing. Who says democracy is right? The Middle East is the Middle East, not North America. Just because we have the power to barge in on their affairs and control the future of their country doesn't mean we have a right to do so... or that what we're are doing is right. We're so caught up in our own superiority that we forget we're not the only culture living in this world.
Sooner or later, a dictator is STILL going to surface and overturn--or worse, bastardize--what feeble foundations of "western civility" we've lain down. The next dictator will most likely be a religious leader. I prefer Saddam. A non-religious tyrant can never hope to hold as much sway as the speaker of their god.
We will leave sooner or later... a year from now, five years from now. It makes no difference--only in how many more lives will be lost, how many more billons spent, how many more terrorists egged on. It won't end, and it won’t solve anything worthwhile. If you think an outside nation can step in and solve an entire region's unbroken history of strife and hatred towards one another... you need to think a little harder.
Which goes back to what I said before. If anything, we should be spending all this time and effort of the real problem--Israel and Palestine. Iraq is meaningless. There was no legitimate reason for us to go there...and countless reasons to pay attention to Israel. But we didn't. Bush cries wolf with nonexistent WMDs, and we're off. And we're not getting out without getting hurt. It's just a question, now of how much we want to be limping when we come home.
Wow, I talked a lot. Sorry. Off to bed now. Politics make me sleepy.