I have been hearing a lot about the war in Iraq this week.
Scratch that. I have been hearing a lot about the domestic politics of the war in Iraq. I've heard almost nothing about the war.
I may get in trouble for saying so, but I think that out country's best policy is to stay in Iraq and keep up the fight. This whole "surge" gig is just getting under way, but all I hear is how it has already failed. Really? On what evidence?
The question of whether we should have gone into Iraq in the first place is a hard question, and one that I am not sure how to answer. But when I look at the situation there now, I can't find any good reasons to leave.
Success in Iraq establishes a stable popular government under the rule of law. Failure makes a failed state and sends a signal to Iran and Syria that the way to beat the United States is to wait out the will of the people.
In the end, we can only win wars we want to win. If we don't want to win, we've already lost. So the politics are important after all.
If the war is lost in your mind, it is lost. If you have the will to win, there is a good chance of winning.
Do you have the will? Should you? Should I?
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2 comments:
what is winning the war? i want to "win" because i hate losing, but if we withdraw our troops and find a better way to protect ourselves, are we losing the war?
There is no way for us to wait out the insurgents in a foreign country. That is our most basic problem - foreigners will never be able to outlast domestics in their own country. It didn't work in Vietnam and it won't work in Iraq.
All this talk of winning and losing... I'm pretty sure most of us are smarter than Bush and can dig a little deeper than to talk about wins/losses.
As for Syria and Iran, the seed of hatred has already been planted there. And we are only fueling the fire by forcing Iraqi refugees to flee to places like Syria. If we were concerned about these rogue nations, we would have dealt with the root causes of these concerns (eg our presence in Saudi Arabia and our support for Isreal) a long time ago.
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