This may surprise some of my GOP friends on here but I support a phased withdrawal of troops by the end of the year. Saddam is gone. Free elections were held. A new government is in place. More and more Iraqis are being trained to defend their land. These were most of the goals of the Bush Admin and they are being met. Iraq does not need to become Bush's Vietnam. He has achieved much and has much for which to be proud and I am proud he is my president.
Do it! Now! No! Wait aminute! Let's not pull out until we've sent Bush, Cheney, and every Congressperson and Supreme Court justice who allowed this war to happen over there and put them in the forefront of the hottest part of the battle and then withdraw that they may die.
Yes time to get out, but not because of our smashing success, as you imply (actually I guess we have been very good at smashing). The whole thing is a dismal, dismal failure. Are you sure that Iraqis are being trained faster than they're being killed? Question: which is the more dangerous occupation, paratrooper or Iraqi policeman? Yes it's time to call it quits and end the $7 billion per week lunacy. Oh and how have we paid for the war? By borrowing of course. Deficit spending. Think of the deficit as deferred taxes that we will all pay for eventually. Think about that the next time your friendly president starts peddling the tax cut bromide. Remember he's putting money back into your pocket, when all those Democrats want to raid your pockets. But what about the monstrous deficit? Isn't that raiding our pockets? Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, and DO NOT look at the caskets; they are not real. Go back to watching television. Bush’s approval ratings are the lowest in his presidency. Army recruitment is down, way down. The people are speaking. Time to listen and give up the spin. Bush is an utter failure. But yes, he might be good company over a beer. Maybe I’d even do a bike ride with him. Sadly, neither is a very good reason to be president. Time for him to go back to mismanaging baseball teams and inept oil companies. Geez, bring back his father at this point. At least he had the good sense to avoid quagmires instead of clumsily bull rushing them with blinders.
If after all this was a war for oil, then the US control of those precious resources must be secured prior to leaving the country.
Of course the Bush Administration should have a timetable for withdrawal, and here's why. One cannot predict the outcomes of war. We thought WWII in Europe would go faster than it did after D-Day. But this situation isn't the same. Remember the "Mission Accomplished" banner? That announced that the war part was over. What is remaining now is preparing the Iraqis to control their country. There is no reason that shouldn't be on a very defined timetable. If the schedule slips, fine. But this eternal blank check just screams about a lack of accountability. Look, it takes X amount of time to train Y number of troops, which will control Z amount of the government. Period. This is a government that doesn't want to be held accountable, that's all.
You might be surprised to learn that where I live I pay a bit over $6 per gallon of gas (€1.3/liter). Nevertheless it is not really about the cost, it is about the supply, and about a global strategy.
I travel to the Netherlands about twice a year either on business (Philips - Nijmegan) or with my wife so she can visit her family (she is Dutch from Haarlem). Gas is expensive in all of Europe, but not for the same reasons as it is expensive here. In Europe, gas is taxed at a much higher rate than in the United States to pay for roads, infrastructure, as well as national heath care. In the US, when gas prices increase, the only real benefactor is the oil companies. I suspect that if you were to take away the taxes, the actual price of gas would be about the same both in the US and Europe. (I suspect that Holland even gets it cheaper because Royal Dutch Shell, the largest gasoline producer in the world, is owned by the royal family). Don't you have to pay your automobile fees on a monthly basis? I seem to recall one of the fab managers mentioning that. How are politics in Holland these days? Things used to be so peaceful but after the Van Gough murder, it seems that things are getting out of hand. Hey - and what happened to your marvalous train system? As soon as they privatized it, it got worse. It sucks now! (lol)
I think that a timetable would be stupid. It would just be a message to the insurgents that if they can survive until such and such a date, they win. But even worse, it would be a message to everyone in the world that wants to challenge the United States, that the US has no courage. We have lots of fancy military machinery and few armies can stand before us in conventional combat. But kill a few Americans with snipers or roadside bombs and we run away like the cowards we are. It would tell every bad actor in the world that the world's democracies can't stand the media pressure associated with taking casulties on TV and can't act with determination without the whole thing being exploited in domestic political struggles. Running away now would just leave Iraq as a free-for-all, a power vacuum. A lot of very nasty private armies would fight over the scraps after our departure, the country would probably fragment into enclaves run by warlords, and the place would become terrorist-central in the Islamist struggle against the West. I think that the task for America right now is: A. Reduce exposure to casulties. The US army shouldn't be out patrolling fly-infested towns in humvees. We need Iraqis doing that stuff. B. Reduce monetary costs to us. Iraqi oil exports provide enough potential revenue to cover a lot of it. C. Build up Iraqi security forces with all deliberate speed. The ugly truth is that most of the successful states in that part of the world (and virtually all of the modernist ones) have been dictatorships or thinly veiled military autocracies. Saddam, Assad, Nasser, Mubarak, Musharraf... Even the quasi-Westernized Turks had their transformations dictated from the top by the Turkish military. I can see a new Iraqi government promoting all kinds of reforms: open media, free expression, a trustworthy legal system, women's emancipation, elections, market system, religious freedom and reconciliation, and all the rest of it. But that's only going to work if it comes from a position of strength. So the US needs to stick around, increasingly behind the scenes, and provide the fist within the glove for a while. I think that our best withdrawl schedule would be unannounced, incremental and almost imperceptable.
If the misson was truly to get Saddam out of power (despite the WMD lie), then the mission has been accomplished. Let look at it from this angle: How do we know that the insurgency is not being fueled by our mere presence? I know that if we had foreign soliders on our soil, I would be out there with my pea shooter taking a few out - I think we need to think the same thing is true for some Iraqi's. We need to cut our losses, say we won by getting rid of Saddam, and train a new Iraqi army and police force. It is there country and they need to set their own destiny. We did it for Germany an Japan and they are doing fine now (just think if we sat and controlled their country for an extended period of time what their citizenry would think)** I think the lesson to be learned from both Iraq and Vietnam is that we are not the world's policeman - nor should we be. If we were to go after every petty dicator, we would be at a constant state of war. Is that what we want? Just food for thought. ** Yes, I know that MacArthur lead an American occupation of Japan for an extended period after WWII. But after a new constitution and government was put into place, he left
Mr. Engineer, I hope you enjoy Father’s Day, and that movie with your family. I´ll try to be as brief as possible so we don’t hijack the thread. I don’t think that the Royal Family own Shell even though they may have a large packet of shares. But, I wouldn’t be too surprised if that’s true. Yes, you’re right about the taxation of the oil in Europe. Nevertheless, I insist, that wasn’t the point of my message. The US has global interests in that area that go beyond the price of a barrel of crude. If those interests haven’t been secured yet, then the US needs to stay. But in any case to set a timetable, as Bill suggests, is ridiculous. Regarding Holland, there has been no much change really since van Gogh’s death. Life for Muslims (the second religion in the country!!!!!!!) is increasingly becoming more difficult. Dutch people, who used to be the most tolerant of the world, request aggressively that foreigners "integrate" to prevent what they perceive to be an identity threat. Oh, yeah, the train system sucks. Last Friday, they just simply decided to strike, leaving millions without their daily transportation. Yes, we pay monthly for the use of cars depending on the weight of the vehicle, its energy source (diesel or “super”), and so on. They tax the air you breath. If sometime you come over here, I’ll invite you to a Frikandel Special and a Grolsch, and will speak to you clandestinely in English. Doe de groeten aan je Nederlandse wrouw. Regards
