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3 Responses to “Iraq War, How I see It”
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I too agree with you, but I think the problem the American people have with the “war” in Iraq now is not so much with initial justification, but concerns more with the rules of engagement, and the high casualty counts that have occurred out of those rules, not to mention the Administration’s ignorance of the fact that the Muslim religion seems to have no end to followers willing to blow themselves up in the name of Allah. Bush, and to a large extent McCain, keep talking about “victory” in Iraq, but how is that term defined? I do not believe violence in Muslim countries will ever end… so long as there are Shia’s and Sunni’s left anyway, but at what point do we pull our troops out of a “peacekeeping” mission that in and of itself is set up for failure, not through the fault of our brave military personnel, but rather, through the fault of politicians of all stripes who have created rules of engagement largely for political purposes, and not out of concern for pure military objectives and protection of those personnel, and who fail to recognize the realities of radical Islam and its connection to violence as a way of religious life. It would appear to me now, that perhaps the “war” in Iraq should shift from a large troop presence, to more of a clandestine “special operations” type war, targeting the organized terrorist elements in and around Iraq, much like the raid in Syria. To the extent larger troop concentrations may be necessary for certain tasks/raids/offensives, why not station them offshore in the Navy LP’s, where they can be safe when not in actual combat, and get them out of the “sitting duck” situation they are largely in right now. Time to let Iraq take control of its own day-to-day security situation. I’m not promoting an all out withdrawal like the Democrats desire for political gain, but I do think we need a substantial change in the way we are approaching the Iraq security situation (and Afghanistan for that matter too).
I’d agree with you but I wish our leaders had used the 10 years of ignoring and flaunting the UN as the reason to go in. Instead we used WMDs and that became a point that liberals beat the Administration over the head with.
Had we said, “We signed a peace treaty with Iraq at the end of the war with conditions in it. They’re not meeting those conditions, therefore we are still at a state of war with them.” I think we would have been much better off.
The mid game so to speak was where we failed miserably. We thought it would be a piece of cake to occupy and obviously it wasn’t. I believe that’s where the failures occurred but they seem to have been largely corrected with the surge.