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Comments? Additions? "War on Iraq " in the Subject Heading, and we will print your comments, rants, raves, etc., with your permission, anonymously or under any name you wish, as long as it is not slander, malicious, hateful racism, nor subject to libel. It's just a another place for your voice to be heard. The views expressed herein may or may not be the views of the moderator, webmistress, The Away Team, or this site Better yet, just write your Congress persons by going to back to Rant and Roll |
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| Are we allowed to say Quagmire yet? | ||||||||||||||
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Nik Green |
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"The state of play in Iraq is a circular mess with no way out. One may ask: Why it is that the troops are still there? The usual answer is that ‘the insurgents need to be defeated’. But one also needs to ask the obvious, which is: ‘Why are the insurgents still fighting us?’ One answer is supremely obvious: People, regardless of race, color, creed or whatever, tend to despise the presence of foreign troops on their land, especially foreign troops who are abusive, disrespectful or ignorant of ethnic customs and traditions. Doubling the number of troops on the ground will merely provide more targets for the insurgents, and undoubtedly will encourage more angry Iraqis to join the fight. Think of it this way, (and I think Defense Sec. Rumsfeld put it correctly when he said that the insurgency could go on for a decade of more): If it was America that happened to on the sharp end of a superior and unwelcome foreign occupying force (fortunately, this is a thought experiment rather than a likely future scenario), I would imagine that most able-bodied patriotic Americans capable of firing a weapon would be taking the fight to the enemy in whatever way they could. I would for sure. This is a no-brainer. Withdrawing the troops right now will be no different, in effect, to withdrawing the troops in, say, two, five , or even twelve years or more from now. If any degree of security was to have been achieved in Iraq, then it would have become evident 18 months to two years ago, enough time after Saddam Hussein's ousting for US and UK ground forces to nip any resistance in the bud. In quite the converse, the situation has been getting declining since then, and the trend is an ever steeper downhill slide. The longer the the occupation continues, then the stronger the domestic insurgency will become. Not just that, but a deteriorating security situation, caused by Iraqi anger towards the occupation, will render that nation a suitable base for any disgruntled anti-Western extremist groups. I am not suggesting a way out of the mess, for the simple reason that any workable solution involves some degree of “loss-of-face” for the architects of this war. Knowing that “loss-of-face” is the ultimate no-go area for the gaggle of testosterone-addled neocon hawks at the Pentagon, then it's plain that we are in there for a long and painful haul. Are we allowed to say "quagmire" yet? |
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