Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble,
And if I stay it will be double
--Should I Stay or Should I Go, The Clash
The Sky is cryin'
Can't you see the tears roll down the street?
--The Sky is Crying, James/Robinson/Lewis
__________
Ranger Question of the Day:
Why does America care if the Iraqis kill each other after we leave?
Presently the U.S. taxpayers are paying billions upon billions to kill Iraqis.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to let them kill each other?
___________
If I go there will be trouble,
And if I stay it will be double
--Should I Stay or Should I Go, The Clash
The Sky is cryin'
Can't you see the tears roll down the street?
--The Sky is Crying, James/Robinson/Lewis
__________
Ranger Question of the Day:
Why does America care if the Iraqis kill each other after we leave?
Presently the U.S. taxpayers are paying billions upon billions to kill Iraqis.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to let them kill each other?
___________
The standard justification for U.S. troops remaining in Iraq is that violence will erupt when they leave. This ignores the fact that the violence has already done erupted, even with the presence of U.S. combat power, and possibly --just possibly -- the level of violence will abate when U.S. forces leave the country.
Either argument, whether to stay or go, is both emotional and unquantifiable.
Lacking a soothsayer or a template, no one can predict accurately what any course of action will produce.
The U.S. government should do what is best for America. Iraq is not an American state.
Either argument, whether to stay or go, is both emotional and unquantifiable.
Lacking a soothsayer or a template, no one can predict accurately what any course of action will produce.
The U.S. government should do what is best for America. Iraq is not an American state.
Labels: let iraqis duke it out
posted by rangeragainstwar at 12:12 AM
9 Comments:
But Bush's America IS doing what is good for his segment of America: the ones making money off the war. I MEAN, come on, Blackwater and KBR have already been paid MORE than the total cost of the first Gulf War.
Screw the rest of us, right along with Iraq, we are just pennies to be pitched. Until enough Americans (especially the gutless ones in Congress) get the point and stop listening to soundbites, it will only get worse.
::::thinking how to be a BAD penny:::
i've also been totally befuddled by the lack of people noticing that those predicting the coming bloodbath if we withdraw are the same folks who have been absolutely, totally, greviously, wrong about every other thing they have said would happen in iraq.
if this is the case, it it is what will happen, why hasn't basra erupted into a bloodbath with the british absent?
also, it appears to some that the bloodbath is already happening. it's already there, and it might be that the only thing left to accomplish is to save as many american lives as we can by getting them the hell out of there.
the worst part of all of this is that these are questions and conundrums that shouldn't have to be posed. we never should have gone in. we never should have occupied. we certainly never should have stayed this long.
there is no explainable objective in iraq other than to maintain an armed presence. we are looking at another report in march which will probably say that we've made progress. the part they will leave out is that our progress only brings us to where we were last year, before the surge.
it's like the folks that claimed "military victory" after tet. eight months after the beginning of the tet offensive, as our military leaders were claiming their victory we had merely regained the ground that had been lost in the initial assaults. at the end of the tet battles we controlled, practically controlled about 25% of the country. same as before. although we had, after bitter struggles to hold them, abandoned several bases (khe sanh being the most famous) once the sieges as been broken or lifted. our much trumpeted victory was a return to and resumption of, status quo.
according to sun tsu, clausewitz, and most other military philosophers, that is called defeat. status quo, stalemate, and other ties always go to the defender. not the invader. invaders must keep gaining and then holding ground to be victors.
if status quo or stalemate is the fruits of battle, the tree has been poisoned and we are all dead dead dead.
labrys,
Don't spit-shine yourself--come out as a tarnished angry penny at every opportunity.
Lisa
MB,
"the invaders must keep gaining and then holding ground to be victors"
And of course, it is not our ground to gain nor to hold, and when we leave, whose ground is it, at ground. Whoever owns it, it will be paid for in U.S. blood and treasury.
T.S. Eliot: "Oh, to arrive at the beginning, and to know the place for the first time." (Pardon if I've butchered Little Gidding.) Too bad, we didn't learn from any number of precedents on this one, starting with Lawrence. Or since you're a classicist, Alexander (not Haig).
lawrence is not a bad source for the seeds of the modern dilemma we have here. "five pillars of islam" and "revolt in the desert" are all about dealing with the grandfathers of most of the main players in the region today. faisal, ali, abu-abodai, were the forerunners of the major arab nation states. and lawrence's own disillusionment with the failures of the british to make good on their promises of aid and assistence instead of the shameless colonial exploitation that occured, and his disappointment with the willingness of the arabs to slide right into greedy, sectariana and tribal monarchies with their attendant blood fueds and chaos all led lawrence to a bitter and gloomy later life. he probably welcomed the motorcycle crash because it represented that many fewer days of having to live with the reality of his accomplishments as opposed to the loftiness of his dreams.
i would never expect anyone, anywhere to ever apologise for an eliot citation.
MB,
That's the history in a nutshell, and on it goes.
[Lisa pulled the quote out, to humor me, the Eliot fan. It was close enough for guv-mint work.]
Humpty Dumpty?
I think we (the concerned "we" who want to end the occupation and bring the troops home) tend to agonize over the potential consequences of a US withdrawal for innocent Iraqis, and appreciate the irony of the Bush administration's protestations of concern for the well being of the people whose lives, homes, and country we have devastated.
I don't think we can assume that the US occupation is actually doing more good than harm, even in terms of the raw number of deaths of Iraqis of all creeds, and genders, and ages.
It's not that I don't care about the fate of the Iraqi peoples, quite the contrary. Our presence there clearly aggravates the everyday threats to life, health and safety. We are an ineffective, foreign, military occupation force. We are not peacekeepers. We are salt in the wound; we are fuel on the fire. People are dying BECAUSE we are there; so we must leave. I too assume that some people will die when we leave, and that hurts, so we must find a way to save as many lives as possible. Congress is on the verge of caving in to the Bush administration once again and appropriating $190 billion to maintain the "war" - how much "peace" could we buy for that much money instead? Could we fund peacekeeping forces from the UN or from other Arab or Muslim countries? Could we facilitate the exodus or relocation of the thousands of Iraqis who have already fled or who now feel the need to flee? Why don't we just hire Muqtada al Sadr instead of Blackwater - it couldn't be any worse than the Hell's Angels at Altamont, could it?
We are NEVER going to regain any semblance of "control" over the situation. To become an effective, foreign, military occupation force would require a bigger, more brutal army/police effort than even Sadddam had. And as the effectiveness of the surge dramatically demonstrated, any such effort can be expected to last forever -- and cost, presumably -- predictably, probably, CERTAINLY -- thousands more lives. And, of course, another blank check or two.
On the other hand, if we get out now, or tomorrow, or as soon as logistically possible, maybe, just maybe, the gang warfare might lose some of its impetus, and Iraqis might start talking to Iraqis.
We must leave so the people of Iraq can reclaim their lives. It would be nice if they could reclaim their land, their government, their future, their hopes and their dreams too -- but that's almost certainly a little much to ask, under the circumstances.
Whatever it is we've made Iraq into, we're surely not going to be the ones to fix it. All the king's horses and all the king's men will amount to no more than a band-aid.
It's interesting that you call it an occupation; I prefer "bloodletting of an entire society." We give a free term to GWB when we use surgical terms like occupation. It sounds almost benign.
Remember, it is not thousands of Iraqis who are fleeing their homeland, but rather, millions. We mustn't reduce the actual cost in any way. Millions displaced is a catastrophe.
I agree with all of your points, except, I will say, I do not care about Iraq. I do care very much about my country and addressing the actual threat to our nation. Our present actions are dissipating our energies and our international prestige.
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