I will say this much. I have recently given a lot of thought to the "bomb them to the stone age" mentality, and I came to the conclusion that my thoughts were driven by a desire for revenge, not for peace.
My politics, my morals, do not allow me to believe we should allow a third party (the UN or Iraq or anyone) to tell us how to conduct ourselves. The government of Sadaam Hussein invaded Kuwait, an ally and trading partner, and we couldn't allow that to stand. Bush Sr. was wrong not to follow that war to it's logical conclusion. He almost paid for that mistake with his life. A decade later, Sadaam was no longer following the guidelines laid out after his surrender. No matter what other issues there were, that is enough for me. He and his nation performed acts of war against the US on multiple occasions, I would think at the least you could admit that. With or without the UN we had the right, some would say the responsibility to act. Now, I know the justification put forth on the issue were the wrong ones. I said so even then as people were coming down on them. I said "oil is a national security issue" "he tried to kill a president" "his troops fire on our airmen, an act of war". Dana, I honestly don't believe that you have a point at which you say, yep, war is needed here. I think that there have been a great many mistakes made along the line. We shouldn't have told people not to change their lives. We shouldn't have went to war, in Afghanistan or Iraq, without a formal declaration of war. We should have moved our nation to a war time economy and footing. However we got here, we must now decide what we need to do moving forward. I know it's nice and easy to say "we broke it we bought it", however I also believe its true. If we were to leave there we would plague not just Iraq, but the entire region, with years, if not decades of violence. Brezhnev (sp?) was on NPR yesterday. He spoke of conflict resolution in the Balkans. How it should be a model for what we are doing in Iraq. I don't think he took it far enough. I don't think we are taking it far enough. In order to do the right thing we need to tell Americans the truth. That we WILL be needed in Iraq for the foreseeable future, that Syria, Iran and other nations in the area are our enemies, that they are supplying the terrorists inside Iraq and that this is also an act of war. We didn't fix the Balkans by just going to Bosnia and calling it a day. No we started with one area, and pacified it, and built the government and infrastructure it needed, then we went to another and another, crossing national borders as needed. Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia. During these missions (one of which I served in) war fighting wasn't our primary concern, but it was important. Our main concern was civil affairs and intelligence. Make the good people happy, arrest or kill the bad people. If we are looking for a lasting peace in the middle east something major must be done. During World War 2 we didn't stop at the Rhine, and say "ok, they're back in they're borders". We went on until Berlin, and then stayed to rebuild most of Europe. The same can be said with Japan. We didn't leave until we knew they were back on the straight and narrow and able to handle their affairs. See, right now if we leave, no matter what, the people of Iraq, of all of the middle east really, will be resentful of us. We destroyed their country, their infrastructure, and would be leaving them with nothing but violence. However if we rebuild, indoctrinate or execute the worst offenders, and don't leave until there is a stable society, we will be looked upon as the saviors we truly are. The US can be greedy, but we are generally trying to do good, this is not always, or even mainly, true dealing with other nations. > -----Original Message----- > From: Dana Tierney [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 11:41 AM > To: CF-Community > Subject: Re: Looks like the military is working on a > fall-back plan in Iraq > > the word I would use is hubris. Everyone else is just dumb. I > think this applies to your point of view also, where you > would have invaded still but used the lessosn learned. But > see, lessons learned require a dash of humility ;) > > >Absolutely, I mean, I don't know how these people could have > missed it. > > > >Multiple third parties supplying political and military > assistance to > >an insurgency. > > > >Huge amounts of internal corruption, and strife between the > classes and > >different racial/cultural divides inside the country (Vietnamese vs. > >mung and montagnard tribesman). > > > > > > > > > >> > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Deploy Web Applications Quickly across the enterprise with ColdFusion MX7 & Flex 2. Free Trial http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/flex2/ Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:229992 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
