Reply #90: Precisely my point.

[JDPriestly]

Bush's plan (which is silently supported by many Democrats in Congress including, I suspect, Hillary) is to have a permanent strike force in the Middle East. I suspect the idea is to establish the American presence in a permanent way so that we are a given in the life of the Middle East the way we are in Europe where we have what have become permanent military outposts in Germany and membership.

Our presence in Western Europe is not perceived by the people who live there as being hostile at this point. We went into Europe as allies of European countries and with many, many friends in countries in which the then governments (during WWII) were puppets of the NAZIs. We shared a common cultural history with Europe. In contrast, we went into Iraq as invaders and we do not share a common cultural heritage. There is no evidence that the populations of the countries neighboring Iraq view us as friends. They don't really want us there at all.

Bush is just sending our soldiers in to act as targets. That is the reality of his "fight them over there so they won't come here" argument.


Bush's plan is for perpetual war. He is not building a bridge to peace. He is not creating relationships of mutual trust with the people in the Middle East. He is not leading the way toward cultural and religious tolerance. This perpetual war will fail as has every other Bush plan or effort.

We have to leave Iraq and draw all out troops out. If we can't keep our embassy safe, we will just have to conduct diplomatic relations with future Iraqi governments from Jordan or Kuwait or some other country in the region. We have inflicted terrible suffering on the Iraqi people. We have a moral obligation to get out and let some other institution like the United Nations Peacekeepers or an alliance of neighboring countries move in and establish the peace. We do not have the resources to fight in Iran, Iraq and who knows what country next.

Do you realize what would happen to oil supplies (and prices) if we invade Iran? Our economy would collapse. People in urban areas could starve. It is unthinkable. We cannot risk war with Iran. They tried to cross the border into Iraq way back in the '80s when they fought with Hussein. If the Iranians now tried to go in waves into Iraq to fight our meager forces in Iraq, their armies would be welcomed by the Iraqi Shiites, and I fear what the result would be for our armies. Iran is a very large country with a large population.