Bush saved the world?

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word son.

[AvatarKava]

I'll preface this by saying I'm a Republican (in the true sense of the word, not in terms of what the Republican Party has said or done in the recent past). So, read into it what you will:

1. Was going to Iraq in the best interest of the United States in the long run?

In hindsight, I think most anyone here can agree what it was not. Make any arguments you want about the gov't misleading the public, etc, but most Dems themselves have said they believed Saddam had capability to build WMDs back at the end of Desert Storm. I'm not going to sit here and make assumptions about whether the gov't deliberately misled us or whether it was just bad intel - mainly because less than 0.01% of the population has even close to the amount of information necessary to know something like that.

2. Was going to Iraq in the best interest of the Iraqi people in the long run?

Unequivocally, yes.

Bluntly put, Iraq is going to suck for another ten years. Any country that is taken over and occupied by an outside force usually takes at least 10-20 years to recover to the point of being self-sufficient. So hunker down, guys, we won't be out of there appreciably until 2020.

With that said, look at the areas where all of the interviews are occurring. Get away from Baghdad a little ways and people are generally highly appreciative of Saddam being deposed. Let's not kid ourselves - we took over a country - people are going to be pissed; however, the areas where the most US opposition occurs are naturally the pro-Saddam Baath-heavy settlements.

(added after initial post) - Some Iraqis spoke out against what they disagreed with in Saddam's regime, too - unfortunately, they're sitting in mass graves right now. If you notice nothing about Iraqis, it's that they're very passionate, opioninated people. Just because we're hearing a fair amount of dissent now (mainly from the areas where bombs are going off every two days - who can blame them?) doesn't mean that there wasn't similar sentiment three years ago.

3. To those that oppose the war in Iraq: The simple fact is that we are there. What do you propose that we do about that? Abort and basically piss away thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars? If no, then what?

While some of you logically deduce that leaving eliminates the main problem for Iraqis and will quell the civil war going on over there, I don't agree.

The Middle East is such a powder keg because of the many different religions with diametrically opposed belief systems. Most of those systems are what Westerners generally refer to as 'fundamentalist' or 'extremist' - while it's completely incorrect to label these as the same thing, we seem to do so over here without thinking about it. If we leave now, we take a country with no stable, controlling government......and let the religions fight over who has power. I can't see how anyone might argue differently, especially those with even cursory knowledge of the parties involved.
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Wrapping this all up, are we better off if we just pull out? Yes. Is Iraq? Not a chance.

Whether you think the US should play morality police or not, I don't sit easy at the thought of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dying in a civil war that would have happened in any kind of power vacuum. It's not inherently the US's fault that this happened - the tinder has been there all along, and we're just the embers that got the fire started.

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the embers or the pyromaniac arsinist?

[AvatarKava]

the embers or the pyromaniac arsinist?

Haha, point taken.

Regardless, what I was getting at is that any power vacuum in the middle east would have caused the same strife you're seeing now in central Iraq. There are just too many factions - look at the situation in multiple countries in Africa and throw some religious fervor on top of the flames.

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yah, what do these two places have in common? COLONIALISM!!! The west has fucked these areas of the world over, and we need to start by admitting it. I think that people too often want to say "ok ok we did it, we fucked up, so what its in the past get over it" .. someone said soemthing similar to this about invading iraq. NO!, you cant majorly fuck up and then just try and move on and ignore your horrible blunder. Admitting your guilt and trying to fix the problems youve caused says a ton. Admitting it in a dismissive way, and then ignoring it all together also says a lot. Which one do you think we should be saying?

[dev]

I think that people too often want to say "ok ok we did it, we fucked up, so what its in the past get over it" .. someone said soemthing similar to this about invading iraq. NO!, you cant majorly fuck up and then just try and move on and ignore your horrible blunder. Admitting your guilt and trying to fix the problems youve caused says a ton.

I think I said we need to admit we fucked up AND fix it.

The problem here is that it's impossible to come up with a fairly acurate idea of what will happen if we just pull out. Someone, in an earlier post, advocated just sticking around and taking on all comers until everyone who hates us is dead. Both options are extreem and unacceptable to anyone who has thought much about the situation and has any kind of love for humanity. We need to figure out the way that will have the smallest human cost. I really hate saying it like that, but that's how it is.

I think we need to get the UN back involved in the situation so that there can be a more 'middle east' solution. Our leaders wont let that happen, because they had reasons for going to war, and the UN doesn't have the same motives.

Second best, in my mind, is just pulling out. US hands need to NOT be involved in the new Iraqi gov't, in order for it's people to respect it. Without a very strong leader like Saddam, good luck. At least if we just pull out it will be on the people of Iraq to decide their fate. This option is best for the people in the US as well (no more tax money going to war, spending on intel rather than bombs, soldiers back home, etc.).

[Lukie]

....We need to figure out the way that will have the smallest human cost. I really hate saying it like that, but that's how it is.

On the issue of withdrawl from Iraq, there's obviously two things we can do right now. Stay or pull out.

Stricly from a human life perspective, which do you think is better? Complete instability, civil (+outside?) war, anarchy, chaos in the oil-rich Middle East, or having a reasonably stable area with a very dominant (albeit hated) military? Let's be real now. We can think of a lot of reasons for staying, but not many for leaving. Let's be even more real with ourselves now. We're going to be there for a long time. 50 years from now, we're still going to be there. Japan, Germany, South Korea we're still at all of those places...