February 15, 2008
100 Years
In keeping with the outside world focus (a rarity around here)...McCain says we could be in Iraq for 100 years. Well, duh.
The U.S. doesn't have the best of luck fighting wars against insurgents who are willing to employ suicidal methods. Look at Japan...once the Japanese got so desperate in WWII that they made suicide missions a regular part of their battle plans, the United States got awfully nervous about continuing the fight to the Japanese mainland with traditional means. So they dropped a couple large bombs and took out a couple medium-sized cities, civilians and all.
(Then some other countries got The Bomb, and it wasn't so easy to drop those anymore. Repercussions, you know...)
Since the United States after Vietnam does not have the stomach for casualties on its own side, and since it does not want to mow down civilians in a country it "liberated", what are the options here? Leave, and abandon the Iraqis who support and want us--and depend on us for protection. Or stay, and try to protect the democracy we attempted to install.
If we stay, the United States needs to have clearly defined objectives and policy. We can't waiver back and forth with the political tides. You can't look at a town like Fallujah, harboring terrorists, attack it, pull back when it's too hard, promise not to attack it again, threaten to attack again, warn of attack, attack when all the insurgents are gone anyway, come in with promises to rebuild what you just leveled, then attack again a month later. That doesn't make friends on either side.
I don't have the answers, but the problem is that I don't think Washington has the answers, either.
And thus concludes my political post for the year.
Posted by Jenelle at February 15, 2008 09:00 AM | TrackBackInteresting view on the end of WWII. You could also look at it as the US didn't want to destroy Japan as a nation and end up with millions dead.
I thought that was implied...no? Maybe I'll post about it in greater detail at some point. Spell it out.
-JEN
If you back Mccain, you back continuous war and death. We are not fighting for America's freedom in Iraq, we are fighting for Oil and GOP ideology.
Iraq never threatened or attacked us when we invaded and arracked them.
As far as Japan and Germany are concerned, it's time to get out of those countries, too, McCain. Move them to Afghanistan(you know, the forgotten war where we were supposed to go after Osama Bin Forgotten and the Taliban that supports OBF).
Four more years of Bush? You've got to have your head examined!!!!
You're confusing me with someone else.
Posted by: Jenelle at February 18, 2008 10:31 AMThe war in Iraq (I mean the war military against military) last about 2 minutes, and it was over. This has been an occupation for 4 years now, and we just can't afford this endless occupation business anymore. You can't sell democracy to a people who have neither wanted it nor dreamed of it.
Posted by: Chris at February 19, 2008 04:32 PM