Argument for why we need to leave Iraq now.

[splat@14]

I have to admit being torn by the "we broke it, we fix" analogy preventing us from pulling out. Mr Holland's arguement for getting out is one of the best I've seen in support of this position. Good read, form your own opinion.
Splat



Stuck In Baghdad? Yeah, Right

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted October 13, 2005.


Don't believe what you hear from the White House and the Pentagon. We can leave Iraq anytime we please.

http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/Story+Image_thumb_101305_story.jpg


It is no longer justifiable for reasonable people to support the war in Iraq, if it ever was. At this point, "staying the course" is neither logically nor morally defensible.

Believing in the war's ever-shifting goals and in the competence and motivation of those tasked to accomplish them is no longer a matter of ideology or party affiliation. When it comes to facts on the ground, we have reached a moment of clear division between the "reality-based community" and those willing to accept the storyline of the day from proven liars in the White House and the Pentagon.

We're almost back to the days of the "Five O'Clock Follies," when the military told a frankly disbelieving press corps that everything was going swimmingly in Vietnam. Now, top commanders testify to Congress that we have little hope of "winning" in Iraq, and then go on the cable news show circuit and say that just the opposite is true.

With such a stark disconnect, it's no longer possible to tolerate differences about whether the war should be seen through to its questionable end.

We're not stuck in Iraq for the reasons the foreign policy elite in Washington would have us believe. We're not stuck there by history, or by the threat of the country devolving into civil war (although that's a troubling reality we need to face). We're stuck in Iraq because we have a leadership that wants to be "stuck" there, and a strategic class that lives in a bubble formed of its own endlessly repeated blather about "Vietnam syndromes" and "failed states" and "Powell doctrines." And we're stuck because making Iraq into an example of U.S. dominance and undoing the taint of Vietnam, or "finishing what we started" during the first Gulf War remain the goals of other constituents in Bush's foreign policy world
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/26777/

[AllegroRondo]

1. If we learned only one thing from ViteNam

it should be "dont get in the middle of a civil war".

[Joe Chi Minh]

2. I think the other issues

with the insurgents, (and for the Vichy Estabishment,) are going to be significantly easier to resolve, once Halliburton, Bechtel, etc, are repatriated, and the imperial adventure is acknowledged to be over.

The fact that the Shiite Iraqis and Kurds represent the large majority of the population should be a significant factor with regard to the avoidance of a civil-war blood-bath. The worst scenarios are when religious/ethnic populations in a country are more evenly balanced.

Of course, the hegemony of the Shiites and Kurds would run squarely counter to the historic secularising aims of US geopolitics, but aren't they currently accepting the inevitablity of it already?

I'm getting bad vibes about the commercial withdrawal, but they need to get used to the idea that it is going to happen, whether they like it or not.

[acmejack]

3. We are going to inevitably unilaterally withdraw.

And most likely be made to pay huge reparations to return to the civilized world's good graces.