Caution – Long winded post ahead.
Tallcal101, you are keeping me quite busy writing replies.
You Wrote – “1.The civil war has started. It will be a miracle if the cleric's can put things back on track. Although the elections were very positive, they mean nothing if the disenfranchised (as they perceive themselves) don't stop destroying religious place's of worship. They are Muslims first and sectarian Muslims at that. It’s a little like the religious factions in Northern Ireland, and we know how well they get along. Same Christ, different notions of him.
Throw in the Kurds and the Christians, and you have quite a tiger by the tail.
We have never been loved there, and lets face it, no one is better off with the mess there now. Still no sewers, no air conditioning, no oil, no anything. Saddam was a punk, had no hand in 911, who Chaney and Rumsfield wanted to take down. .He was no great threat. He did not count when N Korea and Iran are for real.â€
Ok I have to say you still seem to miss something here. First there is a real civil war taking place that has been going on since the split of the different sects within the Islamic world, at least 1100 years – YES 1100 YEARS. We have nothing to do with this (find the US on a map from 900 AD), we were not the catalyst, we were not the cause of the underlying hatred or for that matter we were not the ones who created the different sects in the first place.
Comparison to Northern Ireland, NOT! Different culture, Different Attitude. the Clerics and other leaders are being controlled outside of Iraq, this is the problem. Look at the riots over cartoons that were printed last uh.. SEPTEMBER. News does not travel by Camel anymore.
As for being Muslim first, well you see it is not that simple and you don’t get how many of them think, they are Sunni, Shi’a or Wahhabi first and only. Islam is their religion and their God is the common bond but beyond that it is a different story. They unify when there are common enemies – but that is all. Look at what happened when the Turks fell in WW1 and the peninsula had to deal with the political vacuum before the Brits stepped in.
Now the Kurds are more to do with a race than a religion, do the home work – there is more to the Kurdish issue than has been reported and it seems like no one wants to support them.
I can’t understand how people in Istanbul, Baghdad, Tehran and other places lived together as Christians, Jews and Muslims for all these years and with very little problems. I mean that Tariq Aziz was Christian, funny that the Deputy Prime Minister of an Islamic country was Christian, ain’t it?
No Sewers, No Air condition No what ever – Dude go over there and see what is going on. Even though there is bombings and killing in some parts of the country, you can’t find an area in the world that is economically growing, YES growing, like that. The BP owner around the corner is from Iraq and I talked to him to day, as I was talking to him his brother called him from Baghdad on his cell. He just opened up his second store selling items from the US. For some reason people want things from the US – don’t ask me why but he is making money and so is many others. They can’t fix the sewers or a lot of the other things because of the existing infrastructure need to be rebuilt, not because of the US, but because it was built in the 1950/60’s and little has been updated.
You Wrote – “2.Afghanistan is producing 5 times more poppie's today then they were 5 years ago. We sold the people down the river and the war lords cut a fat deal with the US in exchange for providing worthless intelligence on Bin Laden. He got away. So that one don't carry water.’
You know that may be right about the drug thing but here is the problem, we were liberators not dictators and their society – Agriculturally based – we could not tell them without being dictators to plant other crops, you have to respect them and convince them. This whole issue has been the focus of a lot of people who are trying to convert their farms from poppies to other crops that can be exported to the world.
Let me ask you as a liberal do you want the women of the world to lose their freedoms, be repressed and if they do something, like lift their veil be whipped (or is the PC term Flogged?)? Of course not, so why do you think we did wrong to the Afghanis? From all accounts we gave them something they needed, Freedom. It amazes me that people complain about what we did over there without even know where the country is.
As for Bin Laden, look we have a really delicate situation with India and Pakistan, somewhere near by Afghanistan. We need to depend on people who know the area and not get bombing the h*ll out of Pakistan. The use of the War Lords was correct to do but I don’t think it really mattered when you come down to it, the network of support is still there for Bin Laden and we need to eliminate that first.
You Wrote – “3.The UN really has nothing to do with any of this other then they suggested we wait another 6 months and let the inspectors finish their job. Should have waited. Violations of the no fly zone were a joke, everyone knows that. Their attempt to shoot down our aircraft was like trying to kill a honker with a bb gun. It’s all propaganda, once again, for Cheany and Rumsfeld to grind old axe's.â€
The UN has everything to do with this, so does Jimmy Carter. If it wasn’t for Carter, we would not have these issues, if the UN did their job, Saddam would not have been in power. They stopped the first coalition from entering Baghdad, Remember?
You Wrote – “4.AS a result of our invasion, we have created thousands of more terrorists, and played right into Osamas hands.â€
Well there is a lot more to do with recruiting of terrorist than our invasion. I think Israel and the Gaza Strip has something to do with it and so does Lebanon and the up and coming crisis many see there. Don’t forget how the recruiting works, it is a religious thing.
You Wrote – “So, where's the good news.
We waited to long in Viet Naum, let's not wait to long this time.â€
The good news is that Iraq is actually getting better, no s**t, the people don’t view us as occupiers, many have welcomed the changes and there are more successes than failures every day. You hear about how many bombs a day? Twenty, thirty or fifty? Now do you think that if there was real insurgency and a real true struggle, wouldn’t there be blood every where in every town?
The problem with Vietnam was the war protestor in the US, the fact that the Vietcong almost gave up and we didn’t recognize it and that everyone hated Nixon. I agree that we never should have been in that war, period but we should not been in Asia at all since we left Japan as an occupational force in 1953. To correct T-Hawk, Truman knew about Ho Chi Min during 1945 and ignored him and his delegation, instead allowed the Japanese to continue to occupy Vietnam until the French arrived there in force to take their colony over. Ho Chi Min was in Moscow in the 30’s and met Stalin. Oh well I could go on with uncle Ho but…. Oh I blame the French some how for every war in the Twentieth Century we were in – when will we learn.
