drekmed said:
Yes, it will, but what choice do we have? We have to stay until the Iraqi military can fend for itself. The more troops we have on the ground, the faster we can leave.
The Iraqi military will never "fend for itself" because it's as divided as the rest of the country. What's missing isn't military force, it's a cohesive goal. Iraq is a divided nation, and neither side is willing to work with the other. That means that Iraq is essentially already in a state of civil war. In fact, if the violence escalates much further they may force us out. We don't have the ground troops to deal with an all-out civil war, and we don't have any more people to send into such a civil war.
drekmed said:
Once again, I agree with this statement. However, right now only a small percentage of Iraqis hate us and are attacking us.
Perhaps you missed the massive demonstrations recently in Iraq, against the United States military presence there. Getting us out is the one thing most Iraqis agree on. In fact, our military presence in the middle east is the basic cause of a great deal of Arab anger and resentment against us. That, and our constant support for Israel are the two reasons they hate the U.S. government. Most Arabs actually LIKE Americans. But they hate our government policies and actions, and most of all, they do not want our military on their soil. And that's true of all Arab nations.
drekmed said:
If we were to leave today, a much larger percentage would hate us even more than those who currently do, because we abandoned them.
That simply is not true. They will hate us because we invaded them in the first place, thus causing the conditions that have made civil war inevitable. They don't want us to stay there and "protect them from themselves". Would you? We're not helping them in any way. They NEED to have their civil war and to finally resolve their differences so they can finally begin to rebuild. The longer we're there, the more Iraqis die while nothing gets resolved. That's why they want us out, and that sentiment is becoming a ground-swell.
drekmed said:
This would make them much more receptive to an anti-American terrorist group their country to fight us.
They need to resolve their own internal power issues, and to begin rebuilding. They aren't going to be interested in attacking us, or in people who promote attacking us. Later, they may become a problem, but that was ALWAYS possible, and always will be possible. We can't MAKE people love us. No amount of force will ever do that, especially when they have such good reasons not to. We have to get out. It's BECAUSE we caused this is mess that we will not be able, or even allowed, to fix it.
drekmed said:
Civil war will almost certainly be the outcome of us leaving, whether now or later, it is already starting to happen. That is why we need to stay long enough to strengthen the Iraqi military to the point where they can keep the growing sectarian violence from being too devastating.
If a full-scale civil war breaks out, we won't have the power to stop it. We'll have to leave for our own safety. This is what's beginning to happen right now.
drekmed said:
This is also why I believe we need more of our own troops there now; so that we can deter a massive civil war until the Iraqi army can win it themselves.
We don't have those troops to send. And we don't have the will to generate them, either. The American people have realized that the whole Iraq war was wrong, and that it's been a failure. They won't support throwing more lives and money at it, and they'll refuse to elect any politicians that propose doing that. It's done, and once again we've lost.
drekmed said:
No, we can't afford to stay indefinitely, and yes, we failed the moment we went in without a plan for a post-invasion. We may be too late to completely fix Iraq, however we have to try, and the only way that we can come even close to getting it right is by having many more troops there, for both security and training. We have been in Iraq for over 3 years, and it does take a while to train enough military forces to the point where they can hold their own.
More training is irrelevant. They've had plenty of time to train. That's never been the problem. The Iraqi army is as divided as it's citizenry. The nation is divided, and the division has not been resolved politically. The civil war is inevitable, and the Iraqi army is PART OF IT. They will never be strong enough to stop it.
drekmed said:
As much as I would like to have our people home right now, we simply can't leave yet. We dug ourselves a really big hole, and it must be filled before we walk away.
There is no filling it back in. This is what we need to understand. Just as in our own lives, we don't get to "undo" our mistakes like that, and the same goes for the mistakes of our nation. I think it's time for America to impeach Bush, to put Rumsfeld up on charges for war crimes, and to face the rest of the world and publicly admit to the terrible thing that we've done, and then ask the world for it's help in helping the Iraqis resolve their issues with as little more loss of life as possible. This is what a good man would do, if he were really a man, and had done such a horrible misdeed. But of course America won't do this, and so will have lost both it's self-respect, and the respect of the world.
Too bad, too, because most Arabs genuinely like Americans as people. If our government could act in such an overtly humble and wise manner toward them, it would go a long way in lessening the desire for violence against us in those countries. And we also should stop being Israel's toadies. I never understood why we let Israel lead us around by the nose, the way they do.
But I'm dreaming. We'll never do these things; our political egos won't allow it.
