Why pull out of Iraq? We just got there. Why don't we take a FIFO (First in, First Out) approach. Lets pull out all out troops from Europe, because those troops have been there the longest. We can send half home and half to Iraq. Next lets pull all troops our of South Korea, we can send half home and half to Iraq. We can post some subs to keep an nuclear eye on North Korea. Next lets pull troops out of Vietnam (I don't really think we have very many there, but I am just mentioning it here for completeness.)
Once we have removed troops from all the places they were before Iraq and relocated them to Iraq, I would support pulling out of Iraq.
cube
18 comments:
"I am just going to hope that the "First In, First Out" approach was a joke and that it does not need any serious debate."
Not a joke, i was pointing out how absurd the left's argument is. If we do not have a good reason to stay in Iraq, we do not have a good reason to be anywhere. And if we do not belong anywhere, then start bringing ALL of our guys home and decomission the entire army, starting with the places we have been the longest.
" 1)The cost of war has gotten too high (with both military casualties and civilian)"
I don't care what it costs and any patriot should not care. I am not saying the money should not be spend wisely (because it should), but the temporary costs will be worth it. We did not ask how much defeating communism or Nazi germany. It was obvious that it needed to be done.
I belive that it is obvious that we need to defeat terrorism and it's root casues.
"2) Whether or not we have encouraged more terrorism by our presence is now the debate (as opposed to how many days, weeks or months before the operation can be considered complete)."
Yes the flypaper theory. If we have encouraged more terrorism, it has only been in Arab states where the battle should be raged. Their are obvious stragetic advantages to taking the fight to the enemy.
Either we take it to them or they bring it here.
" 3)The purpose of our being there is now highly questionable."
No it is not. At least not any more debatable than our presense in any other country in the world.
Secondly, we can always leave and see what happens. It would pain me to see Iraq become worse that it has ever been, but hey at least it is not our country, right.
"The Iraq case is special and people against it and pushing for a pullout deserve some response other than "no", "it is a cowardly retreat in the face of the enemy" or "we have not yet completed our task"."
Really, both of those reasons are ture and accurate?
The fact is that nation building is something the democrats belive in, they just can't bring theirselves to get behind bush.
Let me punch a couple holes in your first in first out idea. Most of the troops stationed overseas do Iraq rotations every other year (like me). Second, the reason we maintain 725 overseas bases (not counting Iraq or Afghanistan) is to quickly deploy troops anywhere. There is some debate as to whether or not the US should maintain a global military presence, but at the moment we do. This has absolutely nothing to do with anything in Iraq.
And in your cost comment I think you are missing one of the key points of this war. NO TERRORISTS WERE OPERATING OUT OF IRAQ UNTIL WE TOOK OVER! So, no this doesn't really further our war on terrorism. To the contrary it makes it easier for groups like Al Qaeda to polarize opinion against the US and recruit more terrorists.
"This has absolutely nothing to do with anything in Iraq."
No it has everything to do with Iraq. If we do not have a good reason to stay in Iraq, we don't have a good reason to be anywhere.
"NO TERRORISTS WERE OPERATING OUT OF IRAQ UNTIL WE TOOK OVER! So, no this doesn't really further our war on terrorism. "
They are now, so defeating them in Iraq does further the current war on terror. you can argure wheather it is our fault or not that they are in Iraq (I do not belive it is our fault or the Iraqies fault, it is the fault of the terrorists.)
"At some point the cost is too high. I do not claim to have the perfect number figured, perhaps we have already reached it, perhaps we should permit it to get 10x higher; but to "not care" at all is to state rather boldly that freedom and protection from death are not among the goals of our presence in Iraq."
That is a week argument. Only by completely defeating the threat can you have protections and freedom from the threat. If it is out goal gain freedom and protection from the threat, then we must defeat the threat. To defeat the threat you must do whatever is neccesary, because the cost of failure and inaction is always more than the cost of action (both in human, social, and econmic tersm).
"So really your weak attempt at an analogy is nothing more than an attempt to connect today's questionable campaign to one of the more horrific and dangerous groups in modern warfare and then to justify it by labelling them bad guys."
That is nonsense. For any person of right mind i should be fairly simple to see that the terrorist are bad guys and america are the good guys.
As to Iraq, it is fairly simple to see that they are caught up in a vicisous tribal warfare cycle that can only be ended by action from the outside.
It worked out for the indians (gambling) and it will work out for the Iraqies if they rid theirselves of the bad guys.
"If we do not have a good reason to stay in Iraq, we do not have a good reason to be anywhere."
"For this logic to work, the reasons for our having bases other than Iraq have to be the EXACT same. Then, and only then, would that argument be true. Sandcastle concisely pointed out that this is not the case."
No, they don't have to the EXACTLy the same. What i am saying is that if their are no good reasons to have troops in Iraq (where the enemny is and fighting) then we have no good reason to be anywhere. If they army is not fighting the enemy, they they are useless and a waste of money.
" At what point could we EVER end this war and be able to say that we did not retreat or leave the job unfinished?"
When Iraq is a stable demoracy, with a strong nationalitic sense of pride that casues them to rise above sectairan differences. When Iraq is fighting and killing their own terrorists by theirselves.
Once that happens, we can take our army and take and stablize some other country.
You are right we can never declare total victory, but we can create allies, and with those allies we can come much closer to winning than we can by ourselves.
"Bush has refused to give it, a sure way to irritate people, who being responsible to constituents must remind the president that he is also accountable."
not really, he can never run for president again.
"So either Bush has to swallow some pride, admit he was being stubborn and acting unaccountably, giving at least the Defense Committee a look at some exit strategy or the Democrats have to back down from their requests and just hope Bush gives them what the country really needs: a goal."
You mean this.
"The National Security Strategy of the United States of America"
http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html
Oh here is another one...
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/05/20040524-10.html
The democrats have their goal, they just don't seem to like it.
"There is seriously no end in sight to this war."
you have a choice. You can either fight this war (iraq, afganistain, war on terror) or you can choose not to fight.
If you choose not to fight you loose.
If you choose to fight, and quit you loose.
If you choose to fight, you could still lose, but only by fighting do you win.
You think that there is some sort of set number of terrorists in the world and we are sucking them all into Iraq. Congratulations you have been brainwashed by Fox News. The truth is that every time we invade an Arab country on evidence that never shows up or accidentally bomb the wrong building or shoot the wrong guy we are making more terrorists. Also, where do you think all of these bombs came from? They used to belong to Saddam. Some of them are weapons caches that he left open and others are AHAs that we failed to secure after we took them.
"You think that there is some sort of set number of terrorists in the world and we are sucking them all into Iraq."
Well isn't there. There has to be. There are a set number of people in the world. Let's say there are 6 billion people in the world. There cannot be anymore than 6 billion terrorists.
"The truth is that every time we invade an Arab country on evidence that never shows up or accidentally bomb the wrong building or shoot the wrong guy we are making more terrorists."
Ture, but everytime they are bombing a mosque, school, market, trian, subway, they are making more anti-terrorists.
I somehow think that we will still win.
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