The war with Iraq was and is very important. If we want to continue our way of life here in the U.S., we must win. If we want to assure freedom and tranquility for our allies, we must win. If we leave now, or even pull out in the next 4-6 years, Iraq will fall into civil war. Islamic radicals love to kill Americans, but killing other islamic radicals is a close second. The spread of terrorism will increase exponentially if civil war in Iraq becomes reality. And it won't respect any borders - it never does.
Yeah, I'm gonna have to go with SecDef and ask you to define "win." Because I've yet to hear a realistic or attainable version of it. I mean, I suppose we could just leave troops there indefinitely to prevent a civil war, but otherwise it's pretty obvious that they're not going to cooperate and the second we leave they're going to get to killing each other, pronto.
And six more years? Yeah, the cost/benefit ratio there isn't working out for me. But honestly, I care less and less as my ETS approaches. Let you and yours fight your war. This soldier is voting with his feet. I've seen what's going on over there, and it's certainly not worth my life. And I'm pretty sure it doesn't qualify as defending my country, either.
Unfortunately, I forsee an early pull-out of American troops followed by a bloody civil war that spills into at least one adjacent country. Throw in a nuclear Iran and things get real tricky real fast. Then we'll have some very difficult decisions to make. 3,000 dead American civilians and 3,000 dead troops will seem like nothing compared to what will happen if we pull out early. Our enemy will be emboldened and will come at us on our own turf again. Like TwoXForr says - take the fight to them!
First, maybe this is an argument that we should let them start their civil war
before Iran has nuclear weapons. And yes, I agree that the consequences of pulling out are bad, but I don't agree that simply staying longer will necessarily prevent them. I'm firmly convinced that we aren't getting Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Also, what exactly is "the fight?" Been there, didn't really see a "fight." More like playing cop and hoping not to get blown up by guys who don't give you an opportunity to fight back. So what this sounds like to me is more like letting our soldiers play decoy over there (indefinitely, apparently) so that the folks back here never have to worry about the consequences of their government's heavy-handed foreign policy. Yeah, like I said I'll pass on that. I didn't sign up to play bomb magnet for a bunch of scared little children too dense to realize that A) this is not the way to stop terrorism, and instead we've only created more terrorists making the problem worse and B) statistically I'm probably more likely to die driving to the store for a pint of Chunky Monkey than by a terrorist attack.
Seriously, listening to how the politics of fear are being used in this country and have been used since 9/11, I'm gonna go ahead and congratulate the terrorists on that one...they seem to have gotten exactly what they wanted.
Except maybe the virgins. I'm pretty sure they didn't get those.