My prayers o your co-worker's family, however it is too soon to truly
determine all of the gains (or losses) from the current action.
Our MTV attention span cannot drive the time frame of a military
action in a counry that has been under the domination of a dictator
longer than some of us (myself included) have been alive.
> The point is there's no value to Iraq. If we couldn've done it with
> lots of allies that bore 50% or more of the troop costs with no loss
> of credibility, then maybe.
Question -
Did we carry a minority (or even 50%) of the weight in the initial Persian Gulf?
Answer -
During the Persian Gulf War (Desert Storm / Desert Shield) our allies
combined (not including hardware and specialized services) provided
roughly 217,500 troops. The US provided twice that number at 540,000
troops.
(source: http://www.desert-storm.com/War/nations.html)
> 2.) Whatever we did accomplish we could've done for way less by
> leveraging our friends and allies.
France, Germany and Russia all had a vested interest in keeping Saddam
in power, they were never going to openly support an attack on him.
America waited for 14 months before taking direct military aciton...
how much longer should we have waited?
> That means not only did we invade without help, we also burned good
> will for future events where we may need help. We certainly burned
> trust - nobody is going to take our word for anything in the future.
Funny, I distinctly recall the Brits, the Australians and something
like 50 other countries that supported and assisted with the invasion,
if not with manpower then with resources.
Lastly, where is it said that we have failed in our mission? Have we
not done exactly what it is that we set out to do? Our goal was to
initiate a regime change in Iraq, and now Saddam is being tried *in
Iraq* by the people that he worked to opress for decades. In
addition, Lybia has capitulated on it's positions and other nations
are following suit. Life *is* safer for Americans, both abroad and at
home, because of the actions that our military and diplomatic forces
have taken. On the battle front we have had a minimal amount of
military and civillian casualties. We aren't loosing this battle, it
just takes a long time to fight it.
Hatton
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