POLL: Is it time to leave Iraq?

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Saddam is captured, his sons are dead, and there are clearly no WMD. Why are we still in Iraq? I was for the war, and I still think it was a good idea to take Saddam out, but I honestly think our work is done. The price we're paying for this in lives(both American and Iraqi), just isn't worth it.

Poll Information
This poll contains 1 question(s). 22 user(s) have voted.
You may not view the results of this poll without voting.

Poll Results: Is it time to leave Iraq? (22 votes.)

Is it time to leave Iraq? (Choose 1)
* Yes - 32% (7)
* No - 68% (15)

 

Nah. Might as well finish the job.

 

Now that they already are there they need to finish, no one except the staunchest Iraqi nationalists would thank the US for abandoning Iraq now. If the US leave now we would probably see a nice little civil war or some such. If you start something you should see it through. However, the US has to leave sometime, preferably without just leaving a puppet regime with no public support. Whatever the Bush regime motivations I hope that they truly are trying to give a decent country to the Iraqis.

 

Yeah, if the US leave now, it will end like Afghanistan, which the US also "took care of" and is in a clan war right now...

 

Nope, they still have to suck the life and oil out of Iraq first.

 

Leaving now would mean an unfinished job. First the infrastructure needs to be rebuild, then the country needs to be able to elect a president, or whatever, of THEIR OWN CHOICE.

Once that is done, all foreign troops can pack their gear and go back home.

 

No, they must not leave it yet.
There are still very many problems there.
Their presence is needed yet.

 

I wasn't in favor of the war either, but leaving now would be more of an atrocity than what the U.S. has already perpetrated in Iraq. No, you can say that we shouldn't have gone in the first place, but if you want what is best for the Iraqi people (and now, according to Bush, that was the reason behind the war) then we aren't going anywhere now, or anytime soon.

 

We wanted what was "best" for the Vietnamese, too.

 

However that isn't the issue right now, Sojourner. Stay there and help the damn country. See what America did for Japan after World War II? Sure the nukes were harsh but after that they assisted and went above and beyond what they had to do for the country. A repeat of that in Iraq (without the nukes of course) would go far along the way for repirations for the invasion in the first place.

 

Iraq.Iraq.Iraq. Blah.Blah Blah. I'm sick to death of hearing about Saddam, Iraq, Hutton, David Kelly and the whole flipping lot of it. AAAAGH

[If you're sick of Iraq, why boost a topic on Iraq by posting in it? - BTA]

[ February 07, 2004, 03:03: Message edited by: Blackthorne TA ]

 

I somewhat question the veracity of this, but I'll paste it anyway. Regardless, I don't believe the job is done and we shouldn't leave Iraq until it is.

 

http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/combatend.asp

Check out the Iraqi site linked.

and here is a similar one:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/rydbom.asp

There is an underlying and, unsurprisingly, commonly ignored point lurking somewhere around here though.

 

I agree that it would be a mistake to pull out now, even though they shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

A link inside Laches first link has a commentary by an Iraqi citizen (which is the one I assume Laches was referring to), which refutes many of the points in Snook’s list. He concludes with:

 

Laches,
When Bush Jr. in his recent State of the Union address said: “America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country.” he missed the point. He said it in the context of the war against Iraq. By now the last dupe should have understood that, form all possible reasons, is certainly wasn’t about defending the US, much less from an imminent threat.

Your well meaning soldier from Iraq probably is right to a point. I’m confident US troops try their very best, despite their excesses – that is: Except for kicking in doors and shocking and awing the Iraqi population and making them, well, at least not friends. Cynics might add: Only fair to see them doing the reconstructing, eventually it was them who blew up Iraq in first place.

Soldiers viewpoints aren’t that helpful at the example of Iraq - sure they are close to the action but that's also their problem. They obey orders as good as they can, as soldiers have to. They don’t question their commander in Chief while in active duty, or in war. That’s what they understand as loyalty.
And busy doing their work in a dangerous and straining environment, mostly isolated from outside news, they don’t have sufficient information, let alone the time and to reflect on the reasons or the deeper meaning of what they do. That will come once they are home.

When the Germans blitzed through Russia at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa the frontline troops took pride in liberating Russia from Stalin, without a doubt as much a pig as Hitler, and Bolshevism. The personal reasons to go to war – to help the opressed Iraqis, to topple Saddam, to topple Stalin, to liberate Russia are just as irrelevant to judge Germany’s invasion of Russia as to judge Bush’s liberation of Iraq.
And no, the US is not so special that is wouldn’t be subject to a “hijacking” of their soldiers idealism and the US are not immune to war fever and militarism. Mark Twain observed just that when America went to war against Spain and on the Philipines. And we were able to observe it just a year ago again - "Either you're pro war or you're with the terrorists!", live on FOX and from administration officials like Cheney and Rumsfeld and their hired goons such as Richard Perle or writers like Max Boot as especially vocal examples.

An “ends justifiy the means” attitude is totally inadequate for Bush’s war on Iraq. That leads you to overlook the key flaws of this war:

Lemme count up a few things in the US that concern me, and very much so. We had here:

• An eclatant breach of international law, a breach that grave that in Nuremberg Nazis were hanged for if, for what was described as the ‘supreme crime’ – war of agression.
• Bush’s war got 500+ US soldiers killed and thousands more wounded and maimed. Plus, he killed an unknown number of Iraqis that is somewhere between 35.000 and 55.000.
• Bush’s war blew up of a billions of dollars tax payer’s money in ammunition alone.
• The war distracted from the actual war on terror and stretched US forces to an extent that they are about to break when the US Army War College is right.
• The Vice President set up a private second intelligence chain and national security organisation out of congessional control.
• Cheney bluntly refuses to give his energy commission papers to the General Accounting office, against the law.
• All that made possible by one-party-rule that made the congress fail to do his job to oversee the administration's activities.

I could go on. I mean, huh, Clinton was impeached for lying about his sex life - but compared to that his frolicking around is child's play.

The US has a very serious problem with controlling the executive branch. The congress, GOP controlled has no interest in obstrucing its presidential candidate. As a minority the Dems have hardly a way to achieve anything in the GOP headed comittees. And as that episode of Judge Scalia snuggling with Cheney and big oil shows the Judicative branch also isn’t doing its job as it might have been intended when the constitution was drafted. That should ring an alarm.

Rule of law my a**. But isn’t that what America’s constitution is built on?

And I tell you what - in case the US manage to get Bin Laden right before the elections (if they don't have him and save him for that occasion already) the US people will forget all that and hug Bush and the show will go on. Just like the Romans Americans as a people have a short attention span - they are happy with bred and games. Live tv footage of captured Bin Laden, maybe in night vision green and made by Hollywood experts, as today's counterpart to slaughtering gladiators on the collosseum - immensely entertaining. Wow, we kick ass! A head on a spike! Eventually ...
I mean, how does Bush manage to get away so easy with all the sh*t he does? He always has a new distraction to show up with.

And again thinking about staying in or leaving Iraq, I can’t quite see why leaving Iraq would necessarily be such a bad thing. It might lead to civil war and more instability – but it could also lead to a country, where, when Sistani gets his way, the Shia majority rules (well, with 60% of the population they have every right to) in a secular state and with the Sunnis and Kurds eventually arranging.
A withdrawal of US troops could take away the incentive for the Sunnis to radicalise. And it could avoud the risk of militarising the Shias too.

Maybe the people promoting the hardcore militarist pendant of free marked capitalsim are right – let the Iraqis duke it out their way – foreign intervention will only make it worse and bloodier. Give (civil) war a chance. Every decent country had one, it’s a cataclystic event that forges a nation - and perhaps Iraq just needs that. Who knows ...

[ February 10, 2004, 15:53: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

Ragusa,

I actually read your post this time. I think the last two paragraphs were actually on topic. The rest wasn't; which kinda' reinforces the "ignored unerlying point" idea I think.

 

I questioned in length your use of a soldier's point of view, the one of that officer in Iraq you made a few posts earlier. So what?

I eventually referred to that a soldiers personal motivation for Iraq, underlined by his proud reference to his achievememts, is completely beside the point to justify the war as a whole.

I went on to make a little overview on what the US should discuss instead of bragging about "Oh, the media is so unfair only to report our flaws and failures! Don't believe their lies." The US have a problem much graver than wether to stay in Iraq or not - to fix their government as a system. Iraq is a symptom of that defect.

I pointed out that the discussion of points like "progress on the ground in Iraq" is no metric to justify wether an occupation makes sense or is right.
Till now it should have become utterly clear: No one wants the US in Iraq, Chalabi & goons excluded. Neither the Sunnis, not the Shias and recently the Kurds too.

 

You nailed that one:

"We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy." - Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson, U.S. Representative to the International Conference on Military Trials, August 12, 1945

 

Regusa - Actually, I'm not even convinced that it was written by a real soldier, since the Pentagon is known for its "propaganda tricks." The overall tone of the editorials behind the links that Laches has posted is not only rhetorical in their content, (nothing like being preached to on the "good, wholesome qualities" of the war), but appears similiar to some phony letters that another major had put out for public consumption a while back, which was a news story just after the war was "declared over" by Shurb.

I just finished a pretty good biography on General Harold Johnson, who was Army Chief of Staff during the war in Vietnam. It is an amazing read because of how loyal soldiers can appear to be to the civilain adiministration, while at the same time, strongly disagreeing with their policies. Often, they stated in public the administration line, while in private, saying something completely different. This was pretty much the status-quo during the Vietnam years.

I'm not convinced that this is the case with these editorials, since their content is almost blatant propaganda. But I'm sure those who think the war is a good thing might find something "reinforcing" and worthwhile in their "content."

[ February 11, 2004, 01:01: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

 

Maybe I didn't make my point sufficiently clear in my replies to Laches:

This thread is about wether the US should stay in Iraq or not.

One cannot sensibly answer the question on the "stay" part without being clear if the US troops in Iraq are there rightfully. If they aren't, staying would mean to perpetuate unlawfulness and injustice.

That is, in order to answer the question wether the US troops should stay in Iraq the question for the case for war in Iraq has to be answered first. Unavoidably that question leads to Washington and the opinion- and decisionmaking process and the opinion- and decisionmakers; that was what Laches perceived as off topic.

Only then you can say wether they should stay or if they must go.