It wasn't ending well before we got there.
Christopher Rake | Homepage | 08.29.03 - 11:15 am | #

I hope your friend is wrong Mark. We have a moral obligation to stay now. And a moral obligation to eradicate the terrorists there (and we can see how well Israel is doing with that). You can't just poke a stick into a hornets nest, and take off. We're in for the long haul, and there's nothing for it then to grin an bear it. God help our troops.
al | 08.29.03 - 11:16 am | #

Of course it won't end well. Look at NYC, DC, Chicago, LA, etc. Those fools never should have signed the DofI.
Norm | 08.29.03 - 11:19 am | #

al: You are absolutely right. Iraq is the fifty-first state now, like it or not.
jmc | 08.29.03 - 11:22 am | #

Actually, this will end up helping us. If enough of the Iraqi's realize that the terrorists don't like them either, they're going to start going after the terrorists as well.
Paul | Homepage | 08.29.03 - 11:23 am | #

"I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher -"
- as King Alfred was advised in Chesterton's version of his defense of civilization against the barbarians.

"Night shall be thrice night over us" or feel that way, anyhow, as the press reports our very minimal casualties to maximum propanda effect and does everything they can to ensure we fail our national gut check. Had these journalists been reporting in this tone on the Second World War, there'd be no France to second guess us today; had they been reporting the War Between the States, I would be writing my representative in Richmond. In fact, had they been reporting after Appomattox, they would have considered the depradations of Jesse James to be reason enough to pull the Federal troops out of the South and declare their succesful war lost! This attempt to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory must be thwarted -
Joe Long | 08.29.03 - 11:37 am | #

I truly can't comprehend the pessimism. I just can't. Bad things are going to happen over there. Worse things were happening before we got there.
S.F. | Homepage | 08.29.03 - 12:34 pm | #

I opposed the war in Iraq. Not that ousting Saddam was not a good thing; I just think the US really bungled the whole operation.

But now that it's done, we have a moral obligation to do everything we can to clean up the mess.
Mark S. | 08.29.03 - 12:44 pm | #

Bungled? The US-UK-led coalition knocked off a tyrant, defeated his army, and killed hundreds of "jihadists" who were eager for a one-way trip to paradise anyway--and liberated a country that had suffered dictatorship for more than 30 years. And we did so without turning Baghdad, Karbala, Basra, and Najaf into blasted heaths, destroying any major religious sites, and causing massive civilian casualties.
Insofar as the future is concerned, our option is . . .? The last time we cut and run from a war and abandoned people to their fate for domestic political reasons, we consigned South Vietnam to their Stalinist brethren to the North. I don't care to repeat that mistake and endure reprecussions like the ones we did in the 1970s.
SEB | 08.29.03 - 1:27 pm | #

Unkike a number of my countrymen, I applaud the U.S for what they did in Iraq. I don't think anyone in the administration thought it was going to be easy - despite wishful thinking.I am disappointed with our lefty Labour government for not backing the US Brits and Aussies when they went in.
I think 5 years will just about see it through now that the UN is getting more involved.
There are actually some good stories coming out of Iraq too
Don (Kiwi) | 08.29.03 - 3:59 pm | #

If we leave in five years or less, then in twenty or thirty years the Iraqis will have had their fill of this, and welcome us back. Those twenty or thirty years will be pretty tough, though, most of all for the Iraqis.
SJ | 08.30.03 - 9:45 pm | #

SEB wrote: "Bungled? The US-UK-led coalition knocked off a tyrant, defeated his army, and killed hundreds of "jihadists" who were eager for a one-way trip to paradise anyway."

Perhaps I misstated. The US did not bungle the war per se. It's hard for an elephant to bungle stepping on an ant.

The Administration did bungle their justification for their war. The American people were led to believe that Saddam had huge stockpiles of WMD, which he was ready, willing, and able to use on us and/or sell to the highest bidder.

Now that not a single WMD has been found, the war was suddenly, aw shucks, about deposing a tyrant all along. Weapons of mass destruction? What weapons of mass destruction? Saddam was a meanie and that's all that counts!

We have indeed deposed a tyrant, but now every hyper-fundamentalist fanatic group in the Middle East is bent on taking the reins. Aside from permanently occupying the place or finishing off the rest of the Middle East, there just isn't a whole lot we're going to be able to do to stop that. And let's be honest, the US doesn't exactly have the best track record for installing foreign governments. After all, Saddam was one of the guys we helped put into power.

I'm all for a just war when the war is just, but the more I smell this one, the more it stinks.
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Mark S. | 09.03.03 - 3:44 am | #