The BIG problem with Iraq is thqt it presents a no win situation for us. The attack on the 25th that left loads dead in Sadre city is anothe example of the no-victory scenario. It makes no difference whether the site attacked was an insurgent stronghold or not. The perception is that of the US attacking a mosque and killing men praying. This is only the latest example of how our very presense in Iraq is the problem. There is no solution grand enough for us to look like anything other than the problem. We have enmeshed oursleves in such a complicated problem that we may be unable to simply walk away. This situation is actually worse than Vietnam in that in Vietnam there was, since 1945, an ongoing civil war not of our making. We went in to try and save the nationalist south but we were not the instigators of the mess. So we could, with some justification, claim that we tried our best but the Vietnamese simply had to fight "Their War" themselves.
Iraq is totally different. There was no war in Iraq before we went in there. We started this madness. We instigated it. And so there is far more pressure on us to solve it. I fear we are stuck there no matter what. Bush and his subordinates need to be imprisoned for this huge mistake.
Or...
Not to take away from the demonstratable failure that is US~Iraq policy but there is another way of looking at this situation. As an American it might not be a happy way of looking at the situation but it may be, in the long run, a breakthrough in world affairs.
Since the fall of the Nazi's the world has been really a one-power world. Despite the belicose rumblings of the now-defunct USSR, for the past 60 years the world has pretty much been run by the USA. Its economy has been the engine that powered the entire world vehicle. Its agenda was, for good or bad, the worlds agenda, either in walking in lock step with America like NATO, or in constantly having to react to it like the USSR. Either way America was the mover and shaker of the world.
Iraq is proving to be a defining moment for the USA. It has taken the spotlight but unlike the first gulf-war what the world has been shown is a super-power that is not really so super. The last 6 years have shown America to be just another nation. Capable of doing good and bad. Capable of suffering like the rest of the world. Now before all the red-blooded America lovers get all PO'd I want to say that this is not a bad position to be in.
In the 1980's America got the hell kicked out of it by Japan in the form of manufacturing, technology, and business organization. This did not lead to the destruction of the USA. It led to the the boom of the 1990's in America and the bust of the 1990's in Japan. The Vietnam war, being totally lost by the mighty Americans, did not lead to the overthrough of the USA either. It lead to a series of breakthroughs with China and the USSR that made for a more stable and secure world. So having a super-power lowered back to the status of ordinary nation, something America will never really be, is not so bad. The checks on American power have been a benefit to America more than a hinderance.
Iraq shows that the world is a very complicated place where the desires of one nation, even a strong one like America, are never assured. We are in the process of being put back in our place. We do not like it but in the long run it will be better for the world and better for America.
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