Well, the right-wingers (scarce on this board) have a proclivity to want to turn the entire Middle East into a parking lot.

The left-wingers spend all (literally all) their time going on about how the war has been wrong, how the United States is to blame for terrorism, and so on. I've never seen a proposition by left-wingers on what to do about this situation.

This isn't a taunt to either side. I'm actually interested to see what your solution is. Support it with reasoning - don't just go for a one-word audience rouser that'll have fifty board members quoting it in support and adding nothing to the discussion. If you want to see shit blown up, then why violence? How would you answer the question of Iraq as an unjust war?

If you want negotiations, why would you think Muslim extremists would open talks with Christians? If you want reparations and apologies, how would it affect their declaration of Jihad? If you want isolationism, then what about America's supposed duty to help the rest of the world?

Please keep in-fighting to a minimum. This thread is, for lack of a better way to say it, proactive - not reactive.

Personally I'd nuke Falluja... create a hundred thousand more terrorists. Have a horrible series of terrorist attacks in the West, and then after the worst is over... maybe everyone will grow the fuck up and stop bombing each other.

Does that answer your question?

Withdraw the foreign troops in stages. From the accounts of many foreign correspondents on the ground in Iraq, the people do want to move on, they just don't want the foreign (esp US) presence. If these people are right, well, I guess a stage-by-stage withdrawal would work.

Iraqis must take control of their own affairs. The West, and by the West I mean the people in "the coalition of the willing", have a duty to fund the rebuilding of all that they destroyed. Beyond this financial aid, I do not believe there is a role for foreign intervention. Pride and nationalism is a big factor here.

I don't really have any ideas about how to solve the situation...I think the damage has been done and is irreversible.

In Sept 01, I was all for flattening Afganistan to find bin Laden, but since dubya decided to give him a head start, it seemed useless (for lack of a better word) to go in when we all knew it was too late to find him.

And invading Iraq? That was just dubya's smoke and mirrors (IMHO) to misdirect the American people from the fact that he did not go after the real bad guy when he had the chance and when even die hard liberals like me were saying, "okay, bomb the fuck out of Afganistan".

I find the whole middle east war as orchestrated by dubya the biggest embarrassment in recent American history, and now we are left between a rock and a hard place. We can't stay, but we can't go either.

I'm completely resigned to whatever happens, and that is depressing as shit.

So waiting one month gave OBL a "head start." Waiting 13 years, however, was a rush to war.

Good job.

huh?

It is my opinion, and it is not one that all people share, that Iraq was not an immediate threat to the US, nor was Iraq directly involved in the 9/11 attacks, and this is the etiology of my commentary.

Never did I say we "rushed into war" never did I indicate that we needed to withdraw, never did I indicate that I thought that action was not needed in the Middle East.

I did not even indicate that I thought Iraq should be left alone. Something needed to be done eventually in Iraq, but not while there were bigger fish to fry. The war in Iraq is smoke and mirrors for a miscalculation, IMO.

Let's try to keep this non-reactionary as Darrin suggested, okay?

So, Iraq wasn't an immediate threat, but it did need to be dealt with.

Eventually.

And since America obviously cannot chew gum and walk at the same time...

I love it. It's okay to just...roll over Afghanistan when liberal politicians and emotionally charged leftists say, "GO FOR IT!" But when it came to Iraq and liberal politicians were saying "GO FOR IT!" We couldn't do it...

No problem with letting Iraq and the rest of the middle east continue to stew, but OBL! MUST GET REVENGE! I don't understand what the problem is. 9-11 was nothing more than verification that a reactionary stance over the past two decades in regards to terrorism, treating it like any other crime, was the wrong position to take.

::swoon::

I wouldn't mind hearing some dates for decreased numbers of troops until we're down to a Korean Neutral Zone number of troops.

I don't expect a withdrawl date, but something like (numbers made up):

By October 05 we'll be down to 100,000 troops with 50,000 Iraqi troops.
By January 06 we'll be down to 75,000 troops with 75,000 Iraqi troops.
By December 06 we'll be down to 5,000 troops, we do not know their final removal date, but at that point, they will be trainers, advisors, and maybe a few peacekeepers and UN will be rotating soldiers in for some of ours.

Again, I don't know numbers, but that kind of pattern makes me feel warm inside.

Id build a time machine and we can go back and put this much effort into finding OBL.

Putting a date on diminishing troops would be a bad idea i think, there are too many variables to be able to say we can withdraw X amount on X date. As much as id love to see them all come home, i think itd be worse if that happened.

Its just such a mess right now i dont even care to follow it anymore.

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Exactly. The guy that got us into this mess got another four years to figure out how to get us out of it. I have no hope that he will, but it's his fucking job to figure this shit out. That's why he's the president, not me. I don't see why saying you're against something automatically means you're supposed to have all the answers.

What I think will happen is that nothing will significantly change in Iraq in the next few years. There will continue to be suicide bombings, there will be some progress in forming a stable government, but I think Iraq is already in the midst of a civil war, and it's going to take a lot of work to keep it from falling into complete chaos. As American casualties continue to mount, and more and more people realize that a war with Iraq was not worthwhile, I'm guessing by the 2008 elections it will basically come down to the exit strategy of each candidate. I think the end result will be that we'll have lost some 3,000 soldiers for a fight that in the end, most people won't feel was necessary. And that will be the legacy of George W. Bush--the man who manipulated the greatest American tragedy into a war cry against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, had no WMD program, and was about as much of a threat to the United States as Luxembourg.

Darrin, with all due respect man, I think you ought to spend a bit more time in this forum before you say things like what I quoted. It's not constructive at all. Some of us have been in this forum for two years solid talking about this stuff, and you come along and think you've got us all pegged into two neat little boxes just like that. These issues are complex, and there are many more opinions in this forum than the two you stated above.

And might I ask, what is your solution? Or are you fine with the way things are and just prefer to criticize people actually taking part in the discourse?

Any solution should have some thought and consistency to the position.

I can understand the strategy of spreading democracy and justice in the Middle East and the domino effect. Spreading Western ideals improving peoples lives and futures as proof and fueling further reform. However, there must be consistency. Guantanemo Bay was purposefully design to live outside international law, the invasion Iraq was rushed and consequently was undertaken without broad international support (when there was no immediate threat), the prisoner abuse scandals were not taken seriosuly enough that anyone other than low ranking officers were held accountable.

If you are going to talk the talk about justice and being civilised, then you must walk the walk.

You want me to get behind this ideology of spreading justice, democracy, reform, and general moral authority then some consistency of action along with the rhetoric. Until then it just smells like bullshit.


In a general tactical standpoint. I think the best way to deal with terrorism is to iscolate the Islamic Fundamentalists. This means lobbying moderate Islam to distance itself more from the fundementalists. This would help reduce new recruits and disrupt existing networks.

In the same we there needs to be unity from the West. Going into Iraq without the consensus of the UN was a mistake. Terrorism is meant to be disruptive and devisive and the conflict in Iraq divided countires who need to stay together to successfully defeat terrorism.

This does not present any sort of a solution.

The first step is a clearly defined foriegn policy which actually PRECLUDES the invasion of soveriegn nation rather than emphasizes it. Our military might, considerable by all estimations, should not be exhausted fighting wars without clear objectives. We have seen this fail twice now, and we can I'll afford to allow it to happen again. Not only does it weaken the moral of those who volunteer to serve us, it undermines any international diplomacy we may undertake.

We cannot characterize other countries as "evil" or "good". These absolutes mean nothing, they are innacuracies which serve only to distort views, harden our opinions and alienate us.

U.S. foriegn policy has, by its very nature, ruined our status abroad during the last half century. I think we need to take *gasp* a passive stance and withdrawl from world affairs. Its time for our nation to step back and look at ourselves. We are quick assault the world at large because we cannot address our own problems. Perhaps a bit of introspection could solve this.

It doesn't even present a coherent thought, what the hell are you saying?

I assume you are familiar with the "domino theory" and its application by Kennedy and later LBJ to the Vietnam war. At this point we know it to be a logical fallacy, geographic influence is, at best, minimal. You cannot successfully spread ideals by force, the more effort you exert in doing so the stronger your opposition becomes. You either annihilate your enemy or refrain from combat.

Obviously, I don't think that any type of solution short of carpet-bombing or nuking the Middle East will work in my lifetime, or for several lifetimes. This is a deep-seeded problem that won't go away. Every fanatic in the Middle East has crossed the line of reason and won't listen to anything at all.

What they want - the only thing that'll stop them - is something the United States cannot do. Of course they say that the first "call to action," as OBL has stated, is for our nation to convert to his type of Islam. That's just as plausible as nuking the Arab nations into a parking lot. The other solution - to stop the support of Israel - is equally as improbable due to the deep-seeded Christian belief in defending her.

My own opinion, as a Libertarian, is to withdrawl all troops from every base around the globe, withdrawl all unnecessary support from every single nation (and stop asking for unnecessary support from them), and restrict all practices to importing and exporting goods. Sending support to nations gathers spite from that nation's enemies and feeds this nonexistent, extraordinarily presumptuous idea that the American government has a "duty" to help everyone in the world (you can see the effects of this "duty" in terrorism today - we gave OBL and many others the weaponry they turned against us and against other nations, and more times than not our aid simply funnels into corruption).

War should not be fought unless the American people are attacked or threatened. This has nothing to do with nationalism (which is nothing more than saturated communism), but the proper function of government. Thus, for example, the Afghanistan war was proper, as it was a battle against a nation proven to harbor and support those who have killed and who wish to kill our citizens. (As a side note, it is the Taliban, and not the United States, who are responsible for the deaths of the Afghan citizens, because it was their decision to support those who attacked a nation that acted only in self-defense. ) Similarly, the Iraq war was not right because they did not attack American interests or threaten to attack American interests. Pre-emptive wars are in no way permissible without an overt, provable threat.

Even if the United States goes through the small, small chance to begin enacting this position, it would take at least a generation to start bearing fruit. At any rate, that's my own solution.

How about Japan? That is a US backed success story. A former enemy which experienced a vast economic and politcal transformation. There was a domino effect of sorts there where it inspired the development of South Korea, and many other east Asian "tiger" economies.

There is a decent argument that if they get Iraq right. That is reform in Iraq creates stable economic and political development it will encourage citizens in neighbouring countries to demand the same. That is the domino effect - where by countries reform without the need for direct intervention.

However, the Middle East is ridiculously complicated. In terms of religious factions, fundementalists and moderate, the weird power structures that oil has created, Israel, holy land, regional politics, poverty. That it is very hard to predict how any policy would play out.