Posted 07 October 2005 - 10:05 AM
Haven't we already had this debate? Perhaps it was in the Bush thread.
Anyway.
Just gonna say this, then I shall shut up!
I happened to be in a US Government class when Bush was first going to the UN to start invasion of Iraq and all that stuff. My teacher loved it, went crazy over it, etc. So I remember this all very well. When Bush first gave American people the list of reasons why they were going to Iraq...WMD was only one of many many. However, who is bringing this news to the people? The media! The media went crazy with WMD...because breaking agreements, that's boring...but WEAPONS of MASS DESTRUCTION...that sells newspapers. =P So the media took it, and the White House, probably confident it was going to find SOMETHING anyway, went with it, and that is what they relied heavily on as a selling point. It was a bad selling point, because it didn't produce as they probably thought it would.
But anyway.
Saddam should have been taken down back when Bush Sr. was in office. I imagine that Dubya is just fulfilling his dad's original goals. It is less about oil than it is about, well, finishing up an old job. Cheney is in for it for the oil, no doubt. Bush is in for it because his dad meant to take Saddam down, and Clinton got elected before he could.
But ANYWAY.
Here's the defining point. We cannot withdraw from Iraq.
If we do, we are dooming the country to descend into chaos. The US military is really the only thing keeping the country from a civil war. Saddam was like the USSR. None of the countries under the USSR's rule LIKED it, but the USSR, the Iron Curtain, ruled with fear, and no one dared cross it.
However, when the USSR disbanded, and everyone was their own country again...wars broke out all over the place. For decades, the only thing keeping these ancient hatreds at bay was the fear of a greater power. Now, all gloves are down.
It is the same way with Iraq.
Saddam was keeping these different ethnic groups in a relative peace with one another, simply through fear. Now that Saddam is gone, they are back at their hundreds-year-old wars again, such as we see with the suicide bombings and what not.
The skirmishes in Iraq are two things:
The Iraqis fighting with one another, and the US coming in to stop them.
Or
The Iraqis fighting the US because the US keeps stopping them from fighting one another.
=P
Or because they don't like US simply for not liking the occupation. Despite the media attention, there are really not that many Iraqis who want us gone just yet, because they know that we are the only thing keeping them from being shot by someone else.
