Look at this picture and then read a few of the comments from the U.S. soldiers over there about the desires of some of the Iraqis. Does it still sound like a blossoming Democracy the way it did 2 years ago?"We want the same thing. I want to go home to my wife," Graves, of Killeen, Tex .
Another U.S. officer put it more bluntly: "Nobody wants us here, so why are we here? That's the big question," said Maj. Brent E. Lilly. Lilly. "If we leave, all the attacks would stop, because we'd be gone."
Conditions in the city are so lacking that Hit's mayor recently asked the U.S. military to send him to Abu Ghraib prison -- "just for the summer," he told one U.S. officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic. "You have air conditioning, three meals a day, soccer balls. Abu Ghraib is a nice place," the mayor said, according to the U.S. officer.
One has to seriously re-examine one's usefulness to a country when the locals are asking to be put in the most notorious(in the mind of Iraqis) prison in the world because they think it's safer than being at home.
Look, I've been the biggest supporter of our adventure in Iraq. I think that Saddam Hussein needed to be captured and tried for crimes against humanity, his funding of world-wide terrorism and WMD programs needed to be stopped, and if the Iraqi people wanted to live essentially free lives in which they elect their leaders, then it was worthwhile for us to help them establish a democratic state in the middle east.
That being said, the sectarian violence between the Sunni's and Shiites has escalated to the point that it could be credibly described as a small-scale civil war already. It is a noble thing to help a nation convert from a ruthless, blood-thirsty dictatorship into a functioning democracy but if the people refuse to cooperate, what can we do but leave them to their own self-destruction? I believe that it is our business to be in Iraq up to the point when we are no longer wanted, and then it's up to them to finish the job.
We kicked out the tyrannical thug, we helped them establish a constitution according to their own societal laws, we guided them through their first two elections, and we are training their police force to whom daily we yield more areas over to their control, all at great cost to us. It is not our responsibility to provide indefinite security to a country that doesn't want it. I'm not calling for an immediate pullout, as the white-flag Democrats would have us do, but at some point, continued U.S. effort becomes futile in the face of rampant sectarian violence, increasing public distaste for U.S. presence, and the inability of the resident security forces to achieve any level of peace between the warring factions.
I hate to risk being associated with the John Murtha, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry cut-and-run, surrender-to-the-terrorists crowd, but Bush has to make a decision to crush the insurgency once and for all, using overwhelming force, and in addition, figure out a way to stop the Sunni/Shiite civil war, or start the pull-out process...one or the other. What have we accomplished in Iraq in the last six months besides running around forming targets for the terrorists?
The whole Israeli/Hezbollah thing could explode at any minute and I don't have to remind you, we do not want to be distracted, floundering in Iraq, when that particular poo hits the fan.
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