Are you ok with the Shiite majority govt. using its army to kill Sunnis?

[bigtree]

. . . the army that so many claim the new government needs to build up so that our soldiers can leave? Is it alright with you that their main mission is now, and will be in the future, the suppression of the 'rejectionists' (as Bush has labeled the Sunni resistance)? The army that we have encouraged, funded, and equipped in Iraq is backed up by the heavy hand of our military, Even under Murtha's plan to redeploy our forces, our military will still be in the business of propping up a government that holds an artificial majority as a result of a lopsided power-sharing agreement.

Worse, there is a clear majority of the Iraqi people who want our military, and the heavy hand of that influence, out of Iraq and out of Iraqi politics. The propped-up government there does not represent the population and will always generate resistance until they manage to get the full participation of all parties in the political process, something that hasn't yet happened, and won't have a chance of happening until we leave. This business of focusing on helping buildup the Iraqis militarily seems to be incredible folly. We are not getting a government there that is at all in our interest, except in their bending to our military presence. But, they are using our forces as a wedge against their political opponents. That's not democracy forming, it's a junta, a recipe for perpetual resistance to the existing authority.

We need to get back in the business of preparing the Iraqis with the diplomatic tools necessary to ease the proportionment that our invasion and occupation has created and allowed. There is no role for our military anymore in Iraq outside of suppressing the newly formed authority's political opponents. That will be the main function of the new Iraqi army that we are encouraging, funding, and arming. Is that okay with us?

[TX-RAT]

1. How would you stop them?

[bigtree]

2. we are in the way

that's the point. There can be no true reconcilliation, no true unification with our heavy hand involved there. I don't think we have a role to play in Iraq. Where's our credibility?

[TX-RAT]

3. If we leave now, the Sunnis are toast.

[Karenina]

4. If you don't leave now...

YOU are toast.

[bigtree]

5. Toast because of the military power we have given to the Shiite

dominated authority. Typically, the cabal has been making noise about protecting Sunni rights. Not suprising, considering we spent the last few decades supporting them against the emergence of some of the very factions we have cleared the way to power in Iraq.

It is a concern, but you can't convince me that our military forces should be in the middle of this. What possible good can they do, what can they do, except preserve the status quo? Is this what we want? A suppressed Sunni minority and an emerging Muslim theocracy? Why is this our concern anyway, outside of a clumsy attempt to clean up the mess we've already made? What we're doing now doesn't seem to be the right prescription for the Iraqis. Just because we are able to suppress one side or the other, and prop up one side or the other is not democracy, it's nothing more than military meddling. Haven't we had enough of this?

[K-W]

8. That is very not true.

If the US military and government forces cannot together defeat the resistance right now what makes you think the government forces can do it alone?

You are however predicting the future if we use Bush'e exit plan.

[SkiGuy]

6. Is it OK

to just say let them fight their own fight and bring OUR kids home?

[bigtree]

7. darn right it is!

our soldiers have done their misguided job. It's past time to bring them back.

[GRLMGC]

12. There shouldn't have been a damn fight in the first place

They're screwed either way and that's a horrible tragedy

[bigtree]

16. One thing is certain

U.S. intervention has never been the right prescription for what ails Iraq. Now we are the primary obstacle to any reconcilliation that may have come from the removal of their dictator, Saddam. They might have a chance at getting together if we leave and relinquish all holds on their resources and territory.

[NNN0LHI]

9. I would be more worried about the Shiites and Sunnis joining forces...

...and kicking the Kurds ass. Don't Shiites and Sunnis intermarry? I think they do.

I also think most of the death squads are made up of Kurdish Peshmergas. That is who the US brought into Fallujah to kill Iraqis who were living there.

Don

[bigtree]

10. yeah, I simplified it to make a point

there are the northern Sunnis who are more disenfranchised than the southern Sunnis, and you have the Kurds and their quest for autonomy. But, the Sunnis have lost the most ground. Kurds got pretty good representation out of the past 'election'. What's sparking the violence is resistance to us, and resistance to the government we fostered. The Sunnis lost the most. They are logically resisting the most, imo.

[dusmcj]

11. the Sunnis are unpleasant because they're nationalists

I have a strong suspicion that the administration's problem with the Sunnis is not that they supported Saddam so much as that under Saddam, with his Baathist and Sunni supporters, Iraq was a regional powerbase of the northern secular socialist Arabs. They engaged in dangerous experiments like pan-Arabism, Arab nationalism, secular socialism, equal rights for women (after a fashion), education, a modest standard of living for all instead of economic stratification, etc. These are all threats to upholders of the animal status quo after all. The Shiites by contrast, are at least religious fundamentalists, and so are a more familiar quantity to this administration. They put religion and ideology before nation and people. The Sunnis may have their Wahabists, but those are the province of Bin Laden and his ilk, who were no favorites of Saddam. So I suspect that the Iraqi Sunnis, just like Saddam, are vilified because they hold the potential of creating a nation state which threatens to be practically able to ignore at least some of the calls for obedience from the rooster state that the administration's cocks have made this nation. They are not as pliant as other minorities who, never having had power of their own, are more ready to stick their nose up their Daddy's ass and keep it there.

[bigtree]

13. I love trying to use logic to explain the actions of this Bush cabal.

Sometimes I think they just want instability so that they can just plant themselves in the middle of the chaos as some sort of regulator. I think some form of religon oriented authority is going to remain the dominant force in that region, no matter what secular wedge we can engineer with the Sunnis, the Batthists, or whoever. The experimenting is all on our side, and it's backfiring. We are being drawn deeper into a web of sectarian struggle for power that has been going on there for decades. We can only complicate and aggravate the political situation with our military and our control of their resources. We need to quit.

[K-W]

14. Remember, chaos for chaos' sake is a victory for the US.

Saddam was a independent leader with a developing country who wasnt playing ball with US investors. We have now ereased that.

The experimenting is all on our side, and it's backfiring.

What is backfiring? We are constructing a new, threatned government reliant on US support for its survival and giving the US the ability to control Iraq's economic development and leave bases in the region.

We are being drawn deeper into a web of sectarian struggle for power that has been going on there for decades.

Hardly. We are antagonizing such struggles, which is the only reason the occupation is working. If the Iraqi's werent fighting with each other they would all be fighting us.

We can only complicate and aggravate the political situation with our military and our control of their resources. We need to quit.

Agreed, but Washington will drag its feet as long as it can to further entrench US control in Iraq. Washington will not quit until people start getting voted out of office for supporting the war.

[bigtree]

15. if you mean that someone in the cabal gets what they want out of it

then it's a victory for them I suppose. Still, it's hard to assign motive to such a brainless leader as Bush. There are competing neocrats positioning for whatever they can get out of Iraq that is in line with their interests.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

17. The Mighty American Military has proven it's incompetance..again.

They really should stick to more managable efforts at "spreading democracy". The dangerous super-power Grenada comes to mind.

[bigtree]

18. In 1984, Reagan joked that Grenada had to be invaded because

it was the world's largest producer of nutmeg.

Reagan:

"What I wanted to -- the story I want to tell, I've been telling it all over the Capital, and I hope it hasn't gotten here yet. It comes from a young first lieutenant, a marine lieutenant who flies a Cobra. He was at Grenada, and now he's in Beirut. He moved on when the relief force moved over there. And he wrote back and said that while he was in Grenada, he noticed that every news story about Grenada contained one line that never varied, that Grenada produced more nutmeg than any other place on Earth. And he decided that was a code. And he was going to break the code. And so he wrote back to say he did.

In six steps he had broken the code. Number one, Grenada does produce more nutmeg than any other place on Earth. Number two, the Soviets and the Cubans are trying to take Grenada. Number three, you can't have Christmas -- or you can't make eggnog -- you can't make eggnog without nutmeg. Number four, you can't have Christmas without eggnog. Number five, the Soviets and the Cubans were trying to steal Christmas. And, he wrote, number six, we stopped them."

http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1984/12684h.htm

Don't we still have troops there?