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What should we do about Iraq?

What should we do about Iraq?

  • Total voters
    59
FreedomFromAll said:
And I agree. That is wy I voted to 'stay out'. I think that most Americans will agree enough is enough.

But at some point we wil look back and realize that despite the political disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan, we should have nipped Greater Syria in the bud when we had a chance. These folks taking over Iraq are not going to just go away. Unlike the old Al-Qaeda that we come to love to hate this new one as an actual goal that the people in the region can actually get behind. The borders in the middle east were not drawn be the inhabitants they were drawn by the west. They want their own lines to be drawn by themselves. And now there is a movement that has taken up that goal. But the movement is about as bad as it gets. They wont be content with just the middle east.
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Not only this but what if ISIS takes over Baghdad and the southern oil fields, and drives oil prices above $150 a barrel? What if the whole region blows up into a multinational conflict, involving Saudi Arabia and restricting oil thru the Persian Gulf? We will look back then as we pay $10+ a gallon at the pump and say, "gee, guess we should've done something."

I'm afraid we have to finish what WE started. We wanted to remove all the dictators (Saddam, Gaddafi, Mubarak, Assad) and spread democracy, now we have the results of our nation building.
 
If we are fortunate an American public, war weary of empire building, tired of being broke and wiser for all the mistakes made and the lives destroyed, will just this once stop the chicken hawks in Washington and stop the military industrial complex. I am not optimistic, but I am hopeful.

At this point it is not about what or who got us involved in the middle eastern cluster****, which time, and for what reasons. At this moment it is about that we cannot be involved anymore. We cannot commit more people, more materiel, more money. Now is the time to begin saying no, as we have nothing left to give. It is beyond time to walk away and let the middle east handle itself.

 
joG said:
We are allies and not their protectors. They (exclude France and uk) have been free riding long enough and complaining so long about how the USA has done things that their populations think the US is the problem and evil. Let them show us how it works.
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that sounds great on paper to pass the buck. But this will look different to everyone in a while. But lets not forget the Turks, Kurds, Iraqis, and Iranians they dont like the Jihadists. And when war start spilling over borders what then?

I still say stay out because really we wont do any good right now. But eventually that will change. So at some point the UN will have to respond. My guess is when Israel becomes involved then things will get ugly.
 
I said go back but I'm not talking about our previous presence but a small behind the scenes force of intelligence and direct action teams that can take out HVTs.
I was a member of such a unit (Task Force Dagger) and it was highly successful.

I have deployed with conventional forces and unconventional forces (and while this is no hit on conventional forces) I feel sof units are more effective in this type of environment.

I believe allot of people are playing politics with this liberals to slam Bush for starting it, and conservatives for the President pulling out early and sending troops back in.

I think we can all agree that allowing units like Al Qaeda and ISIS to have safe haven is in none of our best interest. Particularly in light of A) our borders are ineffective at keeping people out, B) by taking over countries like Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, these groups are getting access large quantities of weapons they did not previously have access to. C) looting of banks is giving them access to funds so they can hold larger and more effective attacks.
 
MadLib said:
For those urging that we stay out until Iraq poses a direct threat to our nation: a situation similar to that of Afghanistan in the late 1990s is beginning to emerge in Iraq. I definitely oppose any boots on the ground, and I'd prefer that we not take sides in the sectarian aspect of this conflict, but we cannot have an al-Qaeda-esque movement take control of vast swaths of territory.
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Neither can Europe. Or Israel. Their turn.
 
grip said:
Not only this but what if ISIS takes over Baghdad and the southern oil fields, and drives oil prices above $150 a barrel? What if the whole region blows up into a multinational conflict, involving Saudi Arabia and restricting oil thru the Persian Gulf? We will look back then as we pay $10+ a gallon at the pump and say, "gee, guess we should've done something."

I'm afraid we have to finish what WE started. We wanted to remove all the dictators (Saddam, Gaddafi, Mubarak, Assad) and spread democracy, now we have the results of our nation building.
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Lol we agree on something :p
 
FreedomFromAll said:
that sounds great on paper to pass the buck. But this will look different to everyone in a while. But lets not forget the Turks, Kurds, Iraqis, and Iranians they dont like the Jihadists. And when war start spilling over borders what then?

I still say stay out because really we wont do any good right now. But eventually that will change. So at some point the UN will have to respond. My guess is when Israel becomes involved then things will get ugly.
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When things get ugly it will be important that the dead and destruction belong to the Europeans, Russians and the rest of that neigborhood. We can help but we should not do. Heck. They can use Nato and us assets.
 
joG said:
When things get ugly it will be important that the dead and destruction belong to the Europeans, Russians and the rest of that neigborhood. We can help but we should not do. Heck. They can use Nato and us assets.
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I said nothing about unilateral American forces doing anything. I said that the UN will have to do something at some point. The problem is that I dont think that everyone will agree with what needs to be done. And there is a awful lot of oil at stake. Oil that people would like to get their hands on. This all has a potential of escalating to places no one wants to go. Its a tender box and we should tread lightly up until it explodes. At that point we will have to tread hard very hard.
 
FreedomFromAll said:
I said nothing about unilateral American forces doing anything. I said that the UN will have to do something at some point. The problem is that I dont think that everyone will agree with what needs to be done. And there is a awful lot of oil at stake. Oil that people would like to get their hands on. This all has a potential of escalating to places no one wants to go. Its a tender box and we should tread lightly up until it explodes. At that point we will have to tread hard very hard.
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I hope it holds till Obama is gone, otherwise there will be red lines all over the place to confuse everyone and their dogs.
 
FreedomFromAll said:
I voted 'stay out'. But I suspect when Greater Syria brings their hate on us we will be looking back and regretting our decision to let Greater Syria take over the Middle East. I bet that everyone will blame Obama for letting it happen.
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I think that is extreeeeemely speculatory, and you're just assuming that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, Kuwait, Qatar and Turkey wouldn't do anything about it. Even if it managed to annex a few of its neighbors (unlikely considering it can't even keep its own country together), Syria does not have the battlefield power to conquer a region.
 
Navy Pride said:
And you say?
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Stay out.Get every American there on government/military business and tell the Iraqis they are on their own.I supported the last Iraq war mostly because I thought we were doing a great thing removing a dictator.But it seems those people will just trade one dictator for another plus over the past several years I have become to realize that no foreigner is worth the lives and money of American citizens. I realize some people will say "but you can't stay out of other country's business". It is interfering with other countries that got us into this mess.
 
Sell 'em a few bombs, for cash, and watch it implode on itself, goat herders won't know how to extract oil anyways.
 
We can never overcome Obama's incompetency but I believe we should help the Iraqis every way we can short of boots on the ground. That includes armed and un armed drones, air strikes, and bombing the terrorists supply lines.
 
RabidAlpaca said:
I think that is extreeeeemely speculatory, and you're just assuming that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, Kuwait, Qatar and Turkey wouldn't do anything about it. Even if it managed to annex a few of its neighbors (unlikely considering it can't even keep its own country together), Syria does not have the battlefield power to conquer a region.
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I am fully expecting them to do something. BTW Greater Syria has nothing to do with the country called Syria. You might want to research that a bit.
 
Navy Pride said:
And you say?
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What a piss poorly designed poll. The options are much wider than those. We could for example do air and missile strikes to aide the Iraqi government but not putting troops actually back in Iraq.
 
Redress said:
What happens when no one can agree on what the lessons learned are?
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THen we call it "business as usual".

In general, those on the right side of the political spectrum tend to ignore the effects from the way we have invoved ourselves in Arab affairs and those on the right tend to ignore the nature of Arabs, themselves.

When you take an ignorant and inbred population that bases its relationships on ties based upon blood rather than ideology and remove their strong-armed leader, the results should be fairly predictable. We share responsibility due to the way we removed the cork in the bottle of champaign so to speak and they are responsible by nature of their backwards culture,being incapable of governing themselves in any way where people of different blodlines CAN share power.

It's like the stupid arguments as to "why do they hate us?". The righties go on and on about how they hate us because of who we are.The lefties say,"no--they hate us because of what we do". On and on it goes with neither side realizing they are both right.
 
Gardener said:
THen we call it "business as usual".

In general, those on the right side of the political spectrum tend to ignore the effects from the way we have invoved ourselves in Arab affairs and those on the right tend to ignore the nature of Arabs, themselves.

When you take an ignorant and inbred population that bases its relationships on ties based upon blood rather than ideology and remove their strong-armed leader, the results should be fairly predictable. We share responsibility due to the way we removed the cork in the bottle of champaign so to speak and they are responsible by nature of their backwards culture,being incapable of governing themselves in any way where people of different blodlines CAN share power.

It's like the stupid arguments as to "why do they hate us?". The righties go on and on about how they hate us because of who we are.The lefties say,"no--they hate us because of what we do". On and on it goes with neither side realizing they are both right.
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maybe it was also a mistake of removing the entire political structure of iraq by disbanding the Baath party.
 
Unitedwestand13 said:
maybe it was also a mistake of removing the entire political structure of iraq by disbanding the Baath party.
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Hindsight is always 20/20,but to think that there could have been any result OTHER than what we are seeing seems awfully naive to me. You have a population that has never governed itself, has deep schisms based on blood, has a culture lacking notions such as pluralism and humanism, is profoundly illiberal and is deeply superstitious, and to expect as a foreign power to just waltz in there and somehow change them into us seems ridiculous.
 
Gardener said:
Hindsight is always 20/20,but to think that there could have been any result OTHER than what we are seeing seems awfully naive to me. You have a population that has never governed itself, has deep schisms based on blood, has a culture lacking notions such as pluralism and humanism, is profoundly illiberal and is deeply superstitious, and to expect as a foreign power to just waltz in there and somehow change them into us seems ridiculous.
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it was a stupid idea to remove every government official in sad dams regime, because they were the only ones with actual governing experience.

we kept nazis in power as mayors and other positions of power because there was no obvious replacement with adequate experience in government that was not a nazi.
 
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