There were many warnings out there to Bush and Company that this would not be a walk.
I believe even Colin Powell told
all of them that if they went in there they would own it.
I don't remember the exact quote.
I do remember Wellstone's words and you can find them on youtube
If only they had listened.
I see some of the posts supporting you pretty much got snark..
I'd make the same point as you - only probably take longer to do so - there isn't proof of significant improvement - the benefits of 'the surge' - questionable at best as about the surge - but those benefits are tapering off, and they, the Iraqi Government, makes no progress on politics ever, it seems.
So, how long does it take?
More than that, what does "see it through" mean - are we willing to kill another 500,000 Iraqis (indirectly to be sure, but WE started this thing) - is there a limit to how much collateral damage we're willing to volunteer the Iraqi people to suffer?
There is littel evidence our continuing presence is leading to a solution, and a LOT of evidence that we're spending a lot accomplishing that little. Is it worth staying, or are we merely putting off an inevitible internecine war? I think the latter is the answer, so then our presence is of no legitimate value.
There will be utter chaos no matter when we leave.
How many more kids do we want to see die??
I doubt if the Hawks will open the US doors to all of the displaced Iraqi's.
Meanwhile China may own us by then, so it will be there problem.
China may own us, Gigi, but we own them, as well. We're increasingly interdependent; that's a fact. Much of Europe is both owned by and owns China, as well.
I'm convinced that this is a concerted effort by the West (North America and Europe) to avoid a war with China (and vice versa), which as late as 2001 (when one of our spy planes was smashed into and brought down by a Chinese fighter plane, which occurred after numerous "bugs" were found in the Chinese premier's plane following a trip to D.C., neither of which heavily-publicized stories anyone seems to remember, amazingly...and typically) was an emerging possibility.
During the Clinton Administration, the Pentagon was murmuring about a war with China "sometime in the next twenty years." Because the economy was strong, no one paid attention to it, but it was discussed in our national press quite a bit at the time.
I'm not at all a fan of moving manufacturing jobs abroad and leaving people here at home out of work. It's distasteful in a lot of ways, but I think the notion is that if our countries/continents own each other, we can't nuke each other, or even threaten to do so, because even threatening to do so would mean the collapse of many economies due to frozen assets, etc.
Giggle all you want. Then read the European press; this was figured out at least twenty years ago. And our politicians know it; so do our business leaders, who are quite happy to move jobs to cheaper markets. Anything for a buck, right?
In a sort of horrific way, this awful scenario may work out--certainly not now, but down the road....
Yes, I dislike it and I wish there was a better way, too.
By the way, I am not suggesting that business leaders and the national government are involved in an X-Files-type conspiracy; I'm simply suggesting that the federal government, Republican or Democratic, is often quite happy indeed to have businesses follow potential profits to places like China in order to create more and more necessary ties between our countries and decrease the possibility of a worldwide conflict, while simultaneously investing in India (which we are currently doing) in order to offset China's influence for a while.
It's geopolitics, and this is becoming one interconnected world more and more each and every day.
Hasslington,
You ascribe far more altruism to the government's blind-eye about China than it deserves.
We have moved jobs to China, despite its rampant humanitarian abuses and dismal record on product safety, for one reason and one reason only, profits trump all other concerns, first last and always.
The right complained and moaned about China in the 1990, accused Clinton of Treason, over Wen Ho Lee (Li?), over Los Alamos - because first they didn't like Clinton so anything was fair game even BS like him being responsible for Los Alamos - but far more importantly, because they knew they needed another boogey-man to justify a large military. That aligned perfectly fine with the corporatists, who wanted money for military programs.
Once China became a viable place to move jobs to maximize profits by slashing wages, suddenly, China wasn't REALLY a bad place, and wasn't REALLY a threat, they'd come around to .. well something.. given enough time. Heck, they even allowed limited free marketeering, which, while doing nothing about the political and social ills of communism - was all they really cared about.
I don't think the ties that bind are going to be sufficient in the end. We need energy, and so do they. They have our manufacturing jobs, and we're at risk as a result. We have invested in their country, to be sure, but they can pretty easily nationalize anything they like, and other than impacts to stock prices, they would pay little in the way of price. We might not trust them for 20 years, but just like Vietnam, business has short memories.. we'd trust them soon enough.
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