It is a given that the US will pull it's military (well, most of it) out of Iraq at some point.
It is also true that the United States has made a mess out of Iraq.
What I want to hear discussed is the morality of a cut and run policy. We have made a mess of that country and it's society. We have taken a very bad situation and made it worse. Is there not a moral obligation to find a way to make it better?
While I don't think that we should have been in Iraq in the first place, and that the Bush Administration has made a mistake after mistake, I still fail to see the benefit of an immediate, unilateral pull out. There are many more issues. Here are a few.
The very fact that the US military isin Iraq becomes a rallying point for jihadists who care little about Iraq, but who hate the United States.
The very fact that the US military is doing the work makes it seem that the Iraqi government does not really need to take ownership for the conflict or its resolution.
At the same time, the Iraqi government needs to take ownership for the political solution, and that is proving difficult when everyone sees it as a way to gain at the expense of some other group.
Immediate withdrawal of United States forces from Iraq would most likely ensure a deepening of the conflict and label the United States as a country that can not be trusted.
It would seem that there is a position in which the Iraqi government is given a fixed number of months to resolve its power sharing problems and during which it's military will need to be ready to take on any insurgency and, at the end of this period, the United States will leave under any circumstances. This is something like, you have six months to shape up and then we are shipping out.
Just my personal opinion.
Posted by Wes at August 25, 2005 09:10 AM