Usarion

LOL, how true.

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A good man stands up for himself. A great man stands up for others.

leejo

Hehe. I decided we'd already been around and around with the things I posted about and deleted it. But you quoted too fast!

xTYBALTx

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A policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy. -F.A. Hayek

Steeler

Too many people do not know the history, unfortunately. And had more people in power understood the background of the region and its people we might not find ourselves in such an unenviable situation now. All of this was predicted. ALL of it. All. Of. It. The sectarian violence, the foreign infiltration, the Iranian influence, the breakdown of infrastructure, the Kurdish land grab, the ongoing escalating violence. But no, all people heard was that we had to go kill terrorists. As if terrorists were all faceless Imperial Stormtroopers lined up in neat little columns that we could shoot and then declare victory.

But leejo is right, we have been over and over this before and yet another thread is not going to change anything.

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Usarion

Agreed!! But again, I ask those who sit on the sidelines complain about what "should" have been done. What do you suggest be done now?

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A good man stands up for himself. A great man stands up for others.

TychoCelchuuu

I really don't have time to get into a big discussion, so I'm just going to end it here. If you can't see how those 2 statements are consistent then I can't do anything: I'm going to have to spend all my time correcting your misconceptions instead of communicating my opinions. I'm saying a lot of the fighting in Iraq is instigated by people from outside of Iraq, and that a lot of the people detained inside Iraq are innocent. These are not contradictory at all.

And I guess as long as I'm replying: when you asked me what I would have done vis a vis Israel, well, I would have done the same thing. I'm Jewish. I'm not saying the terrorists are RIGHT for attacking us. I'm telling you WHY they are attacking us. I'm not making excuses for them, I'm just trying to get you to understand that these people are doing things for reasons we can udnerstand and negate, instead of just throwing up our hands and saying "oh well, all we can do is go into Iraq and shoot at people until enough of the bad guys are dead that they stop shooting back."

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|TG-Irr|TychoCelchuuu

Steeler

2 choices:
1. Full occupation. Double our presence in Iraq. Make it a police state. Disband the militias. Lock it down and force the political parties to negotiate. It is probably too late to do this with any great effectiveness and may end up hurting us in the process. It would certainly embolden the resistance and Iran. However, if you are not prepared to do this then you are doomed to leaving significant American forces standing by helplessly while the country falls apart around it.

2. Get out. Let the Iraqis fight it out themselves. We are doing very little to protect the Iraqi citizenry now - we are merely holding ground while we wait for some etherial Iraqi government authority to materialize. How long are we prepared to wait? A hundred more American deaths? A thousand? Afghanistan is reverting to a theocracy and Iraq isn't far behind. What good are we doing exactly, and are we prepared to take actions such as option 1 to achieve that good? If not, bail.

Most of all, what I want us to do is learn from this. Learn that you cannot impose a system of government on a people by force of a gun. Learn that people in other countries have minds of their own - they have passions and hatreds and desires that may not jive with what the US wants them to do. Learn that politicians lie to get what they want and learn how to recognize when they are full of BS. Learn how to distinguish between fact and fiction. Learn to make smart choices. Because if we do not, as a country, learn these things, we are doomed to do this all over again somewhere else.

By the way, unless you are in the armed forces or in Iraq right now you are also "on the sidelines."

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Usarion

Nice post, and kudos to you for at least having a thought on what should be done now.

No kidding, the difference being while sitting on the sidelines, I don't moan, groan, and take pot shots at what "SHOULD" have been done. Should we learn from history? Of course. What is done, is done, whether you agree with the course of action or not. What interest me the most now, is what people who oppose this course suggest should be done "NOW". This is why I appreciate your comments, I find too many people wish to sit and complain, but when confronted with questions like.."What do you suggest we do?" They come up empty.

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A good man stands up for himself. A great man stands up for others.

leejo

If you don't think the military anticipated this situation and has a plan for it, you're wrong. What the complainers seem to demand is that a military effort be bloodless, quick, and have almost no civilian casualties.

Read http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...-20/index.html

The complainers also seem to expect the President and his advisors to have embarked on a series of speeches leading up to the invasion in which they laid out all possible negative actions the enemy could take. As if! Why not hand them a blueprint for how to cause trouble? Of course an insurgency was expected. I expected it, and I'm just a dude with a keyboard who's read a little.

How would doubling the number of troops solve any of these problems or help build an Iraqi government? I mean really, think it through. What would a police state do for us and what problems might it create?

Similarly, what would withdrawing really do? Well for one, it would show the world how limp we truly are. Want to defeat us? Just blow up a few kids and disappear. Rinse and repeat for 24 months or so...piece of cake. Those Yanks are basically pretty spineless when you get right down to it.

We will face exactly this sort of war until we win one. Who in their right mind will ever present us with anything but an insurgency and a media campaign until then? We *must* suck it up and see this through.

Steeler

Someone on this board with military background once suggested that we put a sniper in range of every corner and plug anyone with a gun or out after curfew. That's the heavy handed option. And I agree, in the long run it will do little good, and it would be criminal to resort to that tactic. But if you are not prepared to do this, and you are not prepared to leave, then you are left with this limp, frustrating standby mode, where we bleed and are forced to watch as the Iraqis massacre each other.

You yourself have said that they were blowing up people before we got there. So you'd think that the existing fighters would continue to blow people up no matter what we do or what they think of us. The question is, does our presence there make us worse off in the long run in terms of potential for futher terror and war? If we ourselves are expanding the armed resistance by our being there and shooting people, how does this help the cause of peace and democracy?

Do you really think we can forcibly shape that country into what we want without provoking a backlash? That seems unlikely at this stage.

For what it's worth, I don't think we are going to withdraw any time soon. We are going to hang on tight to those billion-dollar 50-acre bases we've got there and wait it out as long as we can. The question is, if there is an organized military uprising against the government, will we be willing to choose sides?

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Trooper

The one thing i havent seen mentiond in this thread, if it was correct me. Is that 75% or more these terrorists are NOT Iraqis, but outsiders. People who are trying to destroy what the one thing the Iraqis want.

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that sounds like a good idea trooper.
-Vulcan

leejo

I think that worrying that using military force might piss someone off is a pretty laughable concern. Of course our military presence is highly annoying to some. That's the point!

Our military presence is also highly comforting to many in Iraq. You acknowledge that, don't you?

To allow the majority of the citizens of Iraq to have their fates determined by a violent minority and our lack of spine is too shameful for me to contemplate.

Again, I highly encourage everyone to at least skim through the link I posted above. It provides the pro's insight into insurgencies, counter-insurgencies, and the advantages and disadvantages of each. It also lays out the primary concern for defeating an insurgency: persist. In other words, stick it out.

Steeler

Trooper, this was brought up on the last page.

I can't get to the whole article, but here is the summary provided by someone with a subscription:

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Steeler

Thankfully, every single person who gets shot by us is a terrorist. and anyone who gets angry that their relative just died is now also a terrorist. Has it occurred to you that at some point Iraqis who had no beef with the west prior to their "liberation" might turn around and react violently to our being there? Part of that whole process of self-determination.

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leejo

Sure they might do that. Are you suggesting that because a few thousand out of 25 million have a beef with us those few should get their way?

Seriously guy, why do you think people keep signing up to be police? Because they hate us, or because they want to rebuild their country? Why do you dismiss all the Iraqis who are working with the coalition, who are trying to live peacefully and who are, after all, much more likely these days to be victims of this insurgency than participants in it. And why do you puff up this insurgency? What about all those people who voted for the current government? Is all of that meaningless in your eyes?

Again, this is what I mean when I say I don't believe the support the troops but hate the war crowd. Don't you think the military know who they're up against? At every possible turn, your side of the argument casts the military as being either too stupid to see the truth or too evil to tell it.