What is your solution to the War in Iraq?

[Redworm]

1) Anytime an IED goes off in front of a house, have the engineers level the house with heavy equipment.

because there's no chance that an insurgent would set an IED in front of a complete stranger's house?

 

[mooreshawnm]

We actually did this in Sammarra in '03. The result: way way way reduced numbers of IEDs. Later in Mosul when we had stopped this policy, we'd get IEDs it the SAME place every week!

 

[Heist]

I love the phrase "aid and comfort to the enemy." It's essentially a codeword that alerts me to the fact that the person saying it would probably like to throw me in jail for "treason and sedition" for criticizing the administration.

Within two years we will no longer be carrying out a "mission" in Iraq, and possibly will have withdrawn to nothing beyond maintaining our bases and security routes. The currenta administration is already prepping for this by abruptly abandoning rhetoric such as "stay the course" and adopting new weasel word terms like "We need to be flexible" and "We've NEVER been 'stay the course.'"

Let me tell you how it will go down:

In Iraq: Chaos. But it will be a chaos nearly indistinguishable from what there is now. Eventually Iraq will break into Sunni, Shiite and Kurd nations. The Kurds will pretty much go on and live their life as much as one can in the Middle East. The Shiites and Sunnis will go merrily ahead blowing each other up until time immemorial.

In the rest of the Middle East: Business as usual. That is to say, violence, blood, death, misery. Again, time immemorial. Nobody's figured out how to stop it in the past several thousand years, it ain't stopping anytime soon.

In the US: There will be some cries of 'No! We must go back!' from those who REALLY haven't learned a damn thing from the entire exercise, who went out of their WAY not to learn anything from it. Everybody else will go back to peacetime mode relatively quickly (since nobody's ever really gone into wartime mode). Some of the things passed in the wake of it all will wind up being repealed by someone halfway reasonable, but not all of them.

 

[mooreshawnm]

Heist, as much as I think that the war is winnable, unfortunatly I must agree with your predictions. I find myself torn between demanding victory on one hand and despising the administrations lack of willpower on the other....If we are not going to play to win, let's not play at all.

 

[22-rimfire]

If the US leaves Iraq before the country can maintain its own security and is stable. The country will fall into a bloody revolution. You can forget about pursuading Iran to do anything with their nuclear development program, and you can forget North Korea. The result is that the US will no longer be the power it is and the people will roll over and accept it. Because they have to. We will be reduced to slinging nuclear weapons. It will change our place in the world. Is that what you want? The stakes are high. I believe much higher than whether or not we loose a few men in Iraq.

Terrorists will make Iraq their trainng ground and Iraq's resources will be used to further their cause worldwide. 9-11 will look like a shot across the bowel compared to what is likely to come. And the US will have to accept it, because we NEED the oil so you can drive to work, raise our crops, and run our economy.

My solution is that the US must change it tactics and win the war for them. It needs to be treated like a war and not a police action. Then we can leave and perhaps maintain one base for furture operations.

 

[Heist]

If the US leaves Iraq before the country can maintain its own security and is stable. The country will fall into a bloody revolution.

You mean, as opposed to the bloody civil war that's already going on?

You can forget about pursuading Iran to do anything with their nuclear development program, and you can forget North Korea.

What.

The result is that the US will no longer be the power it is and the people will roll over and accept it. Because they have to. We will be reduced to slinging nuclear weapons. It will change our place in the world. Is that what you want?

So maybe we shouldn't have screwed it up in the first place.

Terrorists will make Iraq their trainng ground and Iraq's resources will be used to further their cause worldwide.

It isn't already? Wow, that sure is a relief.

9-11 will look like a shot across the bowel compared to what is likely to come. And the US will have to accept it, because we NEED the oil so you can drive to work, raise our crops, and run our economy.

A shot across the bowel. Is English your first language? No offense intended if you are, because in that case things like that are totally understandable. Otherwise, um..

It's nice to see how people have changed from "it's not a war for oil!" to "we need the precious, precious oil!"

My solution is that the US must change it tactics and win the war for them. It needs to be treated like a war and not a police action. Then we can leave and perhaps maintain one base for furture operations.

If it hasn't been blindingly obvious that the administration has mismanaged Iraq into the ground and down seven layers of strata, it should be now, with so many people agreeing that we must "change our tactics."

Really? No kidding? It's only what I and other people have been saying for years now except it's couched to look like something other than an admission that Rummie and Bush didn't do a very good job on this.

Think about it. They don't really give a rats patootie about "terror" or else the border would be sealed right proper, instead of being a gaping sieve that any Al Qaida agent can slip right through. Allow me to repeat for truth: They don't really care about "terror" or actual threats to the American People.

Now, aside from not just caring about the southern border, our representatives have also managed to mismanage and screw that up to the point of self sabotage. If they've been doing that, how can there be any doubt in anyone's mind that Iraq isn't the same sort of situation?

 

[22-rimfire]

All I can say is you don't know squat other than you hate Bush. So, anything that is done is not good enough.

You're one of those people... I have no time for you. Bye bye.

 

[Heist]

Yeah, us guys who voted for Bush really do hate him.

Just because some people are screaming moonbats who irrationally hate our President doesn't mean you can dismiss those of us who have legitimate problems with the administration as "bush haters." If you do, that's just a sign of being both intellectually lazy and religiously devoted to being myopic in the favor of someone you choose to like because of how you feel about him, not because of the facts.

PS: Apparently you can judge from my posts that I am somehow so misinformed about the entire geopolitical situation that you can confidently tell me that I don't know squat and am therefore not worth your time. I'll take that at face value instead of as a tactic of avoiding discussion- show me where I'm wrong, with proof.

Otherwise I'll accept an apology at your convenience, kind sir.

 

[Blue Heeler]

Geoff Timm - Thank you for the info about Muslims raping Christian women. Here (in Australia) there have been incidences of the very same thing. In Sydney a bunch of Muslims hunted down and raped 'white girls' - they said they were 'sluts' and deserved it. The Police caught them and the Judge sentenced them to 56 years in jail. That is a long lag! They will appeal of course, and get less time.
What concerns me is that our governments have let these bastards into our countries. How do we get rid of them? We have a democracy right? Can we have a referendum? How about 'Do you want Muslims in Australia/America?'
Common agricultural policy allows the destruction of a herd where one animal is infected (say Mad Cow disease) - why not apply this very sensible policy to Muslims? Of course I wish it were otherwise, but it ain't.
We need to do them or they will do us.

 

[Marko Kloos]

And that will be the end of this one.