The debate continues with that familiar rhetoric that if we don't defeat the terrorists in Iraq, they'll follow us here. So hand over all the money and allow the Bush Administration to continue to perpetuate its own form of terror. They say that if you place a time limit on how long we will be there to get the job done, the terrorists will simply lay low until we're gone. Maybe so.
Before we can even enter into an argument about this issue, we need to face the fact that Iraq has always been tribal to some degree. That predates our occupation, that predates Saddam's reign, that predates the British occupation, etc. And once you understand that and the presence of different versions of Islamic belief, then you begin to understand that we are in the middle of a civil war not of our making. A civil war that really has nothing to do with us. People will die as a result. It may be a result of our ousting of Saddam, it may have been a long time coming. Regardless, it's here now. People will die as a result. It's just a matter of how quickly they'll die. Either our occupation will draw it out over months or years. Or it can happen very quickly if we step aside and let this difference in attitudes and ideologies work its way out.
Therefore, I don't think we need to discuss timetables or benchmarks. We just need to leave...TODAY. That's right, I said we need to leave today. There is going to be a vacuum when we leave no matter when that is. If we leave now, the world knows we were serious about wanting Iraq to get their butts in gear. No longer are we leaving the timetable to the Iraqis. They can have their little short-lived civil war and get the whole thing over with. We will just simply pull up stakes and head over to Afghanistan and finish what we were supposed to do in the first place. We will still be next to Iran to keep pressure on them, but now we are actually hunting the terrorists who attacked us.
Imagine one fine morning in Iraq. Everyone wakes up, stretches, yawns, prays, whatever the morning ritual is. Then someone looks around and says, "Where did the Americans go?" Then someone else says, "Damn, now we actually have to do something with our lives, our country, etc." I think that leaving will motivate them much faster than funding a continuing unwanted occupation. This is not a surrender, this is a re-deployment. Things change in war and a successful military startegy is a flexible one. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Let's stop the insanity and move on. It takes a big man to admit a mistake. Unfortunately, there are no big men in the current administration.
(Oh, and the terrorists won't follow us here, they don't need to. Their job is done, they've gotten us to rescind our freedoms through the Patriot Act and other freedom-squelching government acts).
