Waychel said:
I'm not a very big fan of Bush as a president and I still don't agree with the actual timing behind our invasion of Iraq, but I stood behind our initial involvement then and continue to stand by our involvement there now. My biggest issue in regards to Iraq is simply one of timing; we became involved too soon following our invasion of Afghanistan, which put all if any concerns relating to the rebuilding of that country on hold. Our responsibility should have been to Afghanistan first and foremost before expanding military affairs anywhere else in the world. This is just another reason why I stand behind our continued involvement in Iraq now, because we can't just invade countries, overthrow their regimes, say KTHX4TEHOILBAI and leave the people there to fend for themselves when another cleric or ethnic/religious group seizes power. That fails to solve the problem that we initially became involved with these countries on the grounds of.
Our responsibility is to provide these countries with stability after we've turned them upside down. I only see us as being the villain and at fault when we fail to shoulder our obligations in providing for/rebuilding them. As long as we can rebuild these countries and give their people a chance at economic as much as political freedom, I could really care less about talks relating to how wrong we were to have gone there originally. That may be flawed logic, but how more flawed is that to the original policy of randomly bombing the hell out of the place (Clinton)?
I don't know why I open myself up to becoming flame bait like this. LOL...
1) An argument for maintaining military forces in Iraq in 2005 is not an argument for invading Iraq in 2003 or any other year.
2) To say withdrawing is the only way the US government could bear any fault for problems in Iraq is staggeringly ignorant. Death, injury, ruined infrastructure, prisoner abuse, and a rollback of women's rights are all predictable results of the policy that the US chose to pursue.
3) The Clinton policy of sanctions, a no-fly zone, and bombing suspected weapons sites when Saddam stopped giving access to UN inspectors was vastly superior. It kept Iraq from trying to develop WMD's or invading its neighbors. It allowed the Kurds de facto autonomy. It cost 1,500 fewer American lives, and maybe over 100,000 fewer Iraqi lives.
4) You can't be happy if you're worred about "a cleric or ethnic/religious group" taking power. The Shiite party organized by Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani is now negotiating with the Kurdish party. One party identifies itself by religion, the other by ethnicity.
5) It is very important to analyze whether this was the right thing to do, who was accurate in their predictions, and who was inaccurate. If you don't, then
people who massively fucked up will get promotions and
you will make the same mistakes all over again.
6) You make yourself a target for flamebait by being ignorant of facts and sloppy in your reasoning. Most of us would prefer you didn't.
