So, Bush is going to call for a temporary increase in troops in Iraq tonight, and there will be many voices of opposition. Should be interesting.
This is my take. We the United States are not responsible to settle every squabble and fight and solve every problem in the world. We cannot do that. And many places are not well able to accept parliamentary or representative democracy. This may be due to long standing ill will between groups of people, or it may be due to conflict between secularism and theocracy, as in many Muslim countries. I am sure it’s very complicated. It took us a long time to figure it out and we’re still working on it.
We may or may not succeed in bringing true order to Iraq. Adding to the internecine fighting is unhelpful input from surrounding countries, and frankly, our own decision to disband their army and much of their police infrastructure.
Rightly or wrongly we invaded and we got rid of Saddam Hussein. We have done many good things there which go under the media radar for the most part.
But it is a big mess. Will the potential leaders of Iraq be able to pull their country together with increased help from us? I don’t know. We may at the end of the day have to leave the place a total wreck.
However, since we invaded, destroyed much of their infrastructure, exposed their citizens, men women and children, to months and years of fighting and unrest, I believe that we have a moral responsibility to go the extra mile to try to bring as much stability as we possibly can, even at the risk of more casualties and more pressure on our already stretched armed forces.
For me it would be unconscionable to leave the place in a worse state than we found it. We simply cannot and must not do that to the normal everyday people of Iraq. It would, to me, be profoundly unjust, indeed, morally cruel to do so, and we would share with the intractable Iraqi clerics and leaders the blood guilt for what followed.
I don’t think we have yet gone the extra mile. So I think it is right to try to secure more stability, buy time to train more Iraqi troops and police and leaders, and help the fledgling Iraqi government as much as we can.
It is easy for us to criticize them and say they are not carrying their weight, but that is asking a lot in just a few short years following the brutal dictatorship they had.
So, I for one am glad for the troop increase. I cannot say that I know it will work or achieve its objective. But I think we owe it in a profound way to the Iraqi people to try, no matter if we should have gone in in the first place.
And that’s my two cents.
Joel
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
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5 comments:
I feel as you do Joel. I was against going in in the first place even though I believed then and believe now that Saddam did indeed have WMD's. He did afterall already use them on the Kurds. But, it was not our place to go after him, it was Europes place if anyone. However, we did and now that we have made a bigger mess for the everyday people as you call them then it behooves us to at the very least give it our best try to stabilize the country. We have been in Korea for 50 years now and the South Koreans have a stable and able to defend themselves country. That is, able to defend themselves if they were willing to spend the funds, but why should they since the good old US of A is still there. We are also still in Germany and severl other countries where we don't belong. And, we didn't break Korea or start the war that broke Germany! We broke Iraq. BB
I only heard a small portion of the President's speech live, but this got my attention, especially the portion I bolded:
"This new approach comes after consultations with Congress about the different courses we could take in Iraq. Many are concerned that the Iraqis are becoming too dependent on the United States, and therefore, our policy should focus on protecting Iraq's borders and hunting down al Qaeda. Their solution is to scale back America's efforts in Baghdad -- or announce the phased withdrawal of our combat forces. We carefully considered these proposals. And we concluded that to step back now would force a collapse of the Iraqi government, tear the country apart, and result in mass killings on an unimaginable scale. Such a scenario would result in our troops being forced to stay in Iraq even longer, and confront an enemy that is even more lethal. If we increase our support at this crucial moment, and help the Iraqis break the current cycle of violence, we can hasten the day our troops begin coming home.
This is an implicit admission that not having enough troops from the get-go has caused our presence in Iraq to be longer than it could have been. My support for the surge would be based upon a connection between the increase in numbers and their eventual withdrawal. This requires an explanation because it is counter-intuitive, "I'll bring them home sooner by sending more over and keeping those already there longer than originally planned." It also requires a level of trust that, for me, has been eroded to nearly nothing over the course of the war.
For those that have called for higher troop strengths either pre-war or early on, this action is bittersweet. Notions like "The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people -- and it is unacceptable to me." or "It is clear that we need to change our strategy in Iraq." are OK for Bush to say today, but when spoken 2 or 3 years ago were somehow unpatriotic.
Our current leadership is inept-- 20,000 or 200,000 more troops won't solve the problem until America understands our being in Iraq IS the problem.
With different leadership I might change my mind but all Bush is doing is providing 20,000 fresh new targets thus making Iraq a more target rich environment for the insurgents.
Also, may I remind you that a world power has NEVER won a war against a grass roots insurgency and we ARE fighting a grass roots insurgency in Iraq and staying there will only make matters worse.
Jim,
The view that I take is not really related to how President Bush does or does not articulate it. I said from the beginning that our troop strength was too small. The President is ultimately responsible for this, but I think he was under the spell of the Rumsfeld/Cheney/Wolfowitz faction and leaned too much on their opinions. Nevertheless, my interest now is not to vindicate or defend the President. I think he laid out the options before us pretty well however. We can continue is we are. I think that is unacceptable to everyone and is unfair to the Iraqi people. We can withdraw. I think that would be morally reprehensible option myself, in regard to what that would mean to the Iraqi people, given the state of things. Plus, it would increase the rise of Shiite/Sunni fighting, would pit the Suni led moderate nations against Iran and Syria, would give Al Qaeda a great base of operations, and so forth. I think it would draw us back in, and back into a situation worse than what we have today. It could easily totally disrupt the energy flow to the world from the Middle East, and that could ring about both economic hardship and world wide economic disaster for a lot of ordinary people everywhere. I just think that is not an option. If I had my way I'd send 100,000 more troops over there. Maybe Bush would to, but he knows I suppose he cannot get that. I also agree that had we not gone in at all, there would be a nuclear arms race between Iraq and Iran, on top of Saddam Hussein's other antics. So think we're just plain stuck with a whole slew of bad options. But going one more extra mile to try to bring order to the area is better to me than the options. This is what I think Bush may mean: if this approach works (big "if") it would bring resolution faster than if we left and got drawn back into a huge region wide conflict. I think we need to take out al-Sadr, though there will be hell to pay for that too. Somebody is going to have to take out Iran's nuclear weapons program, and that sounds unpleasant to say the least.
I will tell you the one think that bothers me the most. I agree that this is the conflict of our era, and that it is not going away. So I believe that there is an international war on terrorism. I see what we have in Iraq now, today, as part of that.
So, if we are at war, and it is international in scope, let's start asking more of the American people. I agree with Thomas Friedman that we need to take drastic measures to free ourselves of the need for Middle East oil. We are bankrolling our enemies! We do need I believe to increase the size of our overall military. We have long since lost the Clinton “peace dividend.” 9/11 changed that. Now Iraq has changed it for good
So, for myself, I am not really concerned with interacting with how Bush pouts things. Neither am I trying or wanting to vindicate his position. I am looking at the mess we’re in today, and thinking, what is the right and best thing to do today, given where we are. That’s why I support a troop surge. I just wish it were bigger.
Joel
Billy,
Leaving there will make matters worse still. It is a matter of choosing between bad options to me.
Though an insurgency should have been expected, which would have argued for more troops, we clearly increased the likelihood of an insurgency by bad decisions make along the way.
I think we are in a better position now than we will be in in 2-3 years post departure with other stateside leadership after the whole region has gone to hell in a hand basket.
To me the only reason to leave now is what I call the cynical "Risk" strategy. That is, lay low (in Australia or South America) and let your enemies wipe each other out. There may be times for doing that, but in this case, the blood of many tens of thousands of people would be on our heads, and I think that is just wrong.
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