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Originally Posted by tk27
This board doesn't care for my, or anyones, armchair quarterbacking. Did we win over the people and provide for their basic needs following in the months following the fall of Baghdad? We sent a businessman/bureaucrat to run the CPA, my opinion is that we would have been far better served if we has sent a council made up of this boards moderators.
I don't know what a victory would be, any such victory would be in relation to a regional, global, and US climate, it would happen in the context of everything else. Pack it in? We have a few interests there to look over, but I believe we should no longer sacrifice our citizens in the name of Iraqi democracy.
So are you reading to much into my analogy? Again, my opinion is that its not a black-white thing, and thats the tragic part.
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I care for your armchair quaterbacking. Especially when it comes to clarifying vague statements I don't understand. Let me ask you this. If you don't know what a victory would be, how can you be sure all the "windows" are shut?
I may be less dogmatic than others but I believe that we're sending our citizen soldiers out in the name of US National Security. Think about it. If Iraq was a small, non-muslim, African country, do you think we'd give a damn about their government, or their stability?
That's the key word, stability. The stability of the Middle East plays a primary role in protecting US National Security, especially in our post-9/11 world. While everyone talks about ideology and whether or not it's ethical to force democracy on a tribal people, or even more useless, whether or not we should have gone in there in the first place, few are looking at what the cost of failure will be to the National Security of the US.
If we stop "sacrificing our citizens" as you put it, we'll have more than just the blood of a failed democracy on our hands; we'll have given unmeasurable strength to our enemies. The defeat of the US by any Muslim opponent (even if said opponent is a factured country in the midst of civil war) will embolden and empower those that wish to do us harm.
In regards to your original statement of the window being closed, remember. Our country is the most powerful country on Earth. The window for victory shuts when we say it does.
--Aric