Pat Buchanan says PULL OUT!

[wadestock]

Place: McLaughlin Group Sunday May 2, 2004
Issue: War in Iraq...what should the US strategy be?

If the media was liberal bias you'd be seeing this tape being played till the cows come home.

McLaughlin is the quintessential "Adam Smith" capitalist, but hasn't been on W's side with the war. The group has had heated debate about the justification for war, but generally feels that MORE troops will be necessary and that we'll be there for the long haul.

This logic makes no sense to me. I applaud Buchanan's intelligence about pulling out. Consider the following logic:

a. Iraq will never become a democracy with its fundamental religious/political forces the way they are. You can't become a democracy unless the people really believe in it and THOSE WILLING TO EXERT POWER (in this case those who have the capability to do so) believe in it too.

b. America will accomplish nothing by trying to oversee Iraq's social/political evolution with 100,000 plus troops acting as policemen. Polls of Iraqis clearly show they see us as occupiers and want us out within 3 months (over 70% per McLaughlin group this Sunday).

c. The political power which will naturally come to the forefront in Iraq does not represent moderate democratic ideals and never will. Whether this ends up being some Republican Guard like force and led by whatever person from the former power structure is not important. The important point to realize is that Islamic moderates don't naturally push for "US like" democracy. These people are inherently submissive to more radical political forces.

d. Since we are way out of line trying to social engineer a new democracy in Iraq, we have to now look at the entire situation as a lesser of evils and seriously examine alternate plans to reduce the behemoth waste of American resources and lives.

Plan for exit:

1. Overall plan is as Kerry said...best end game is stability, not fragile US engineered democratic puppet government(s).

2. Do no more military confrontations. Encourage Iraqi power structure to take over. Anything which is capable of repressing terrorist attacks must be viewed as positive. Act as policemen for another 3 to 6 months while testing this new army and its ability to suppress terrorist attacks. Monitor this force coming in with the bottom line measure of success being that the average Iraqi citizen is not afraid to go out of their house.

3. Since we have destroyed their Army and fighting ability, we have to announce to the world that we will be guarding Iraq from foreign invasions (yuk, thanks George).

4. Pull out the businesses.

5. Send aid only if the new power structure advocates suppression of terrorism, no WMD, and weapons inspections.


In retrospect:

Bush wanted regime change, he got it. He got rid of his nemisis Saddam, and his 2 sons are dead. Now that we know that WMD was no real threat all we have to do is ensure that we can have strict entry to ensure new WMD factories don't resurface. This should have been the real issue in the first place, even if Bush's fairtale democracy were to have been put in place. So the bottom line is maintaining some working agreement to have inspections of facilities.

News is now coming out that the Saudis told us the only way we could really win in Iraq was to buy out the Republican guard, and they were right. On the balance, Americans have to recognize that there are many other dictatorships or "non 2 party capitalist systems" throughout the world, and that "military invasive social engineering" just doesn't work as a rule.

Those that have lost their lives have done so in the name of George W. Bush and his uninformed and historically ignorant belief that he could "rewrite the history books" and bring a new breath of fresh democracy into the region which all other Islamic nations could see and suddenly be in awe of. This man was a drunk till the age of 40 and probably never progressed much past a 8th grade level of intelligence.

In the future....use the US Military when it REALLY counts.

[brokensymmetry]

1. Pull out - now!

Buchanan is right. We need to bring the troops home.

[TahitiNut]

5. Waritus Interruptus?

You can't get megalomaniacs to stop wars until they've exhausted all 'resources' in their wargasms.

[brokensymmetry]

6. True.

Unfortunately, they leave behind smoking ruins instead of cigarettes. :evilfrown:

[BlueEyedSon]

2. Link?

[Pepperbelly]

3. my disagreement with the outline policy lies chiefly ...

in the exit plan, step 5: "Send aid only if the new power structure advocates suppression of terrorism, no WMD, and weapons inspections."

As closely as we've gone over the place, I see no need for any "weapons inspections." They have da nada.

[senseandsensibility]

4. Nice

One question though. Is he still supporting *?

[mitchum]

7. But isn't Pat a devout Catholic?

Sorry. Bad bad joke about a serious subject :)

Yes , we do need to leave.