Our “best friends” in Iraq, the Kurds (you know? The ones we FREED from Saddam's tyranny and murdering) are giving diplomatic imunity to members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards recently captured by US forces in Iraq??? These Iranians are proven to have supplied advanced IED technology to the insurgency and God only knows what else, and the Kurds want them released? (the already released one of the six captured).Get the troops home now. It doesn't matter anyway, the public, the absolutely out of control Leftist media, and a certain American political party are going to demand a withdrawal. So all these schools, electrical facilities, buildings, etc., etc., etc. we helped build in Iraq are going to just get blown up eventually. Yeah, I'm a tad bit discouraged right now.
I read through most of the article and I didn't see where it says the Kurds were involved. Obviously they're in Northern Iraq but perhaps it wasn't the Kurds who did this. Also, there might be more to the story than what was reported.
Ski you are going to have to accept the fact that the Iraqis are not going to do everything we want them to, and many times they are going to throw a bone to Iran in hopes of reconciliation since they live right next door to them. I'm sure many Iraqis are cynical about how long we are going to be there to protect them from Iran now that the Democrats are in power. If you put yourself in their shoes, you could probably see the temptation to stay on Iran's good side. Mind you I don't agree with it, but reality is reality. It is what it is.
Ski you are going to have to accept the fact that the Iraqis are not going to do everything we want them to, and many times they are going to throw a bone to Iran in hopes of reconciliation since they live right next door to them. I'm sure many Iraqis are cynical about how long we are going to be there to protect them from Iran now that the Democrats are in power. If you put yourself in their shoes, you could probably see the temptation to stay on Iran's good side. Mind you I don't agree with it, but reality is reality. It is what it is.
True. We also should accept the fact that the Iraqi government won't do everything - maybe even the majority of things - that we want it to do. Heck - our own government doesn't even do this, so we can't really expect that a foreign nation with values that are so culturally different to make every decision that we think it should.
OK, I accept the fact that the Iraqis aren't going to operate exactly how we operate, and that's because of the vastly different culture. Who said I was mad at the Kurds? OK, I am. But if our government lets them get away with this and does nothing, which is probably (hopefully I'm wrong) going to be the case, that's what I'm angry at. Sorry, but this is about OUR national security. The Kurdish official who is doing this should have been fired yesterday. I don't care if he was voted in democratically, I want our people in there. And who cares what the rest of the world or the Left says about that. I certainly don't want some Iran-friendly government official going over our heads like this. I'll give it a few days and see what happens, but I bet it will be nothing. The Bush administration will just keep their usual la-dee-da attitude when, instead, they should be clamping down real hard. My goodness, I sound like a Liberal. 😮
I know this is a very pessamistic attitude, but what differnce is it goingto make? People are going to do what they want regardless, and besides, it has been the same over there pretty much since the end of WW2. especially since the sixties. Nothing is going to change.
I agree with you for the most part. I think our intervention, at the very least, makes it difficult for things to get worse. But the way things are going here politically and with the media and all, I don't think we're going to be staying much longer.
Why waste resources and more importantly lives for something that wont matter anyway? I think the Iraq's are resentful for the American presence and therefore resentful of the change the Americans are trying to bring about.
Of course how do we pull out now without the region disintegrating into a hellish quagmire of internecine warfare among the various power brokers of the region? If it's going to be a hellish quagmire, it might as well be one we're in charge of rather than powerless to influence.
Of course how do we pull out now without the region disintegrating into a hellish quagmire of internecine warfare among the various power brokers of the region? If it's going to be a hellish quagmire, it might as well be one we're in charge of rather than powerless to influence.
Since I wrote this I've changed my mind. It's time to leave because the quagmire isn't going to happen now. Iraq is stable enough to handle the lingering affects of insurgency. We can't afford it anymore anyway. We need to get out of Afghanistan too. We can beat the Taliban back year in and year out, but we won't and can't destroy them completely. They just recruit fresh meat for the meat grinder. I no longer want my country in charge of anything in the Middle East. Let's get out now while we appear to be in good shape because the longer we stay, the likely hood of things going South again is only inevitable.
Don, that is the Vietnam solution you are advocating. Lets get going while the going is good. Persistence and consistency will lead us to victory. I have said for years that winning in Afghanistan is a generational fight. It will take at least one, maybe two generations to materially affect the culture and way of life of the average Afghan such that the Taliban no longer seem attractive.
Don, that is the Vietnam solution you are advocating. Lets get going while the going is good. Persistence and consistency will lead us to victory. I have said for years that winning in Afghanistan is a generational fight. It will take at least one, maybe two generations to materially affect the culture and way of life of the average Afghan such that the Taliban no longer seem attractive.
Even if we win, what do we win? We're not fighting communism anymore. We're fighting a backward culture who doesn't like us, and the longer we stay the more we exacerbate that. Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. Life was simpler when we were propping up dictators in the region instead of trying to build democracy (which is ironic since we are dismantling our own freedoms here at home). If it weren't for the oil, we really wouldn't be there in the first place since that is our only national security issue IMHO.