"There were no terrorists commiting terrible acts of violence. There were no terrorists blowing up convoys then dragging the burning bodies out and hanging them on a bridge. You really are brainwashed by the war mongoring right.A humanitarian effort was not the reason given for us to go to war. It only became that after all of the others had fallen through..and what happened to your beloved shrubs policy about not nation building? You can't guarentee the insurgency will ever stop. Staying forever is not an option and even if the insurgency did quit for a while they'd just start up again once our armed forces left. Iraqi security forces? HAHAHAHAHA. Yeah and they're made up of the same people who cut and ran when they thought they were gonna lose a battle. Some security force."
Humanitarian was a reason given. You, along with the media frenzy for WMD, had and have no care for anything else.
1) Girls as young as 12 were "legally" taken into "specialized" rooms and raped for crimes of the family. I've seen these rooms. These crimes involved anything between talking against the Saddam Regime to not hanging enough pictures of their "leader" in their homes. There is no way to know how many tens or hundreds of 12 year olds lost their virginities to this very common form of "terror."
2) The soldiers under Saddam had complete control of it's sectors and was authorized to use brutality whenever they needed the "training". This involved the massacres of dozens of Iraqis at any given time and their bodies are still being discovered in mass graves on the outskirts of the villages and towns.
3) Kurds and Shi'ites lived in constant fear and in a petrified state, because they, simply, were not Sunnis Arabs.
4) Executing a father, husband, or a son for crimes against the state was common place. Most of the time, the family wasn't given a reason. "Crimes against the state" sufficed.
The most important thing is to have realistic expectations. Iraq will never be Iowa, and Afghanistan will not become Vermont. Do not dismiss them simply because they could not immediately pull it together without the rule of state sponsered rape, murder, and oppression. It is all they have ever known. The operative question is this: Will these countries be better for our intervention? I believe the answer, clearly, is that they already are better. Far from perfect, but better. Few Afghans want the Taliban back, and even fewer Iraqis want Saddam Hussein and his sons back. Today, the people of Iraq, regrettably, still must fear violence from the last, hard-line remnants of the old regime and the insurgency. That is being taken care of. But, overall, the people of Iraq now may breathe and live more freely than ever before. The public hear only about the problems. "Sewage Plant Working Again" does not make a good headline, though an American death does. "Burning bodies from bridges" will always make the news so that our liberal masses can quench their thirst on any attrocity. Thus far, the Shiites, overall, are cooperating to a greater degree than many expected, the Kurds are doing their best to cooperate and support us on many fronts, and even many Sunni Arabs support us. The dead-enders get the headlines. But life is improving in Iraq, every single day.
Iraq will only become a democracy if the Iraqi's join this fight. We can't do it and no amount of additional troops deployed to the country will make it so. Now, we have the firepower and can deploy it without the loss of a single American life to level the Sunni problem areas, but this is not the strategy that will remake this culture. We have to help create a culture that spills it's own blood for freedom. Unfortunately, this means more of our own blood is spilled as well, but if sparking a free society from oppressions and having it spread from Iraq to neighboring countries will offer less terrorists...then it is worth it.
A pessimist offers no solutions...only criticisms and the need for failure.
PS...By the end of next Summer there will be a huge percentage cut of troops in Iraq.
