I love to answer questions. My solution to Iraq is
A. Announce we are leaving!
B. Hold a conference with any nation interested in "post USA occupation" planning. Invite, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, U.A.E, Kuwait, but don't turn down anyone who wants to talk.
C. Spell out situation in Iraq and let each nation speak on its views, let Iraq make agreements with it's neighbors and figure out what it wants to do, who's help it wants to ask for, who's help it needs, how it wants to do things.
D. Let the conference vote on how long we need to stay yet, 30 days, 60, 90, 120. But keep it under 6 months.
E. Leave and let the region handle their own fucking problems.
"Here you give up before you even try"
We have been in Iraq going on 5 years. It was known to the world we would be going in since 2002. It's not news to the UN, or to the neighbors in the region. As for giving up before we have even tried, you can either agree or disagree that there is no military solution to the problem, but it has been tried for half a decade. Some of the goals of the invasion have been met, few if any of the pre-post war stuff will see the light of day while we occupy Iraq, the terrorists, and insurgents have made that clear. The legit members of the government have failed to act work out the problems that have created and kept the insurgency alive.
"You claim what needs to be done but give no plan as to how."
See the above.
"How do we kill them? We chase them?"
Who's the enemy in Iraq? The terrorists? How many are from AQ? Foreign fighters? Lots of these, what are their goals. Setting up post-US withdrawl, connections both political and strategic alliances inside the countries factions. How about the Iraqi's killing each other and shooting us up in the process? They are pissed that their lives suck. Is that a surprise? They are also angry at the rampant unemployment and living conditions. It's a spiraling cycle of violence and chaos that we cannot solve by just sitting on Iraq.
How about the guys setting up roadside bombs and trying to hit us where we are thought to be weak? Some are terrorists, some are foreign fighters, some are Iraqi's pissed about the way things are going. What's clear is the majority are not AQ!
"We bomb the countries they are hiding in?"
We have supposed that UBL and the taliban and AQ has been hiding out in the mountainous region of Pakistan, since 2001 or before! Yet we have yet to setup shop there, we chose to base in Afghanistan and rid the tailban and then work with the Pakistanis to rid AQ from the mountains. It's time for us to go into the mountains and take care of AQ ourselves, the Pakistanis didn't lose WTC 1&2, we did.
The goal in Iraq was only in part to engage terrorists, fact is, evidence of their existence in Iraq was shaky and sparse, and a lot of it was BS. Ridding Iraq of WMD, taking it from Saddam, and taking Saddam out of power were the goals, so he could not develop a program to make Nukes, and then sell it to terrorists.
"We need, as a country, to make a choice. If we accept the danger, do we a) wait for them to attack us, check every person, with no regards to invading the personal space, who enters the country, or do we
go after them by either asking the countries they are hiding in to help or force them to help."
Yes we do, we need to make a choice whether or not we are going to allow terrorists to dictate how we treat people from other nations who are not convicted of crimes of war but are detained in our prisons anyway without trial.
We further need to choose to treat these criminals, terrorists, whoever, with the basic human rights that we have fought and died for in the past to secure for people, civilians as well as enemy combatants. Choosing to ignore international laws, denying people liberty without due process and a trial is fueling the flames of those who use media and twist reality to shape their message of hate and destruction. Their ability to recruit is shaped by our image as a torturer, an opponent of Islam, of a massacrer or civilians.
Just because the enemy will use shock tactics to cause us to fear them, and violate the laws we have created for war, cutting off our heads, and targeting civilians doesn't make it right for us to be, caging people like animals, to denying them the right to practice their religion, and continuing to occupy Iraq. All of this gives the terrorists the political, ammo to continue to recruit, and make it a battle of us oppressing "them".
This should be a battle of right versus wrong. Of people committing criminal acts which on the scale they are willing, equate to acts of war, but just because it is a war we shouldn't pull out the ability of freedom living people to try suspects of terror crimes and punish them according to those laws. It doesn't mean we should hold people for years without evidence without charging them with crimes or war or terror.
"We need to accept or deny that we are in danger of a group of people determined to do us harm, be it physically, financially or mentally. Once we chose acceptance or denial we then chose what next action to take."
We shouldn't deny the danger of terrorists and their aims, but we shouldn't throw the entire Muslim population of the world into that lot. Nor should we be performing the job of security and government in Iraq as an occupier which is what we are doing, and how we are being seen by the rest of the world. If it is clear that we intend to leave and are leaving, things will change. The insurgency will come to a head, and stand or fall, Iraq will stabilize, foreign fighters will have nothing to fight for because Iraq will be a truly sovereign nation fighting for their own freedom against terrorists, insurgents, criminals, anyone who would attempt to deny the the government of the people their ability to rule their land.
If we allow anyone into this country we check their papers, verify they aren't wanted as criminals or suspects, terrorists, or dangers to society, duh! That's what we aren't doing right now, millions of people are coming in from all directions because, our borders are not borders, they are open and revolving doors with nobody but a guard watches on duty for 10 minutes of the day.
Really, we need to get a hold of illegal immigration and smuggling of people into our country. We need to deport criminals to authorities in the nations they come from. We need to build a wall between the USA and Mexico because Mexico is corrupted and not a willing and able partner in stopping this situation. To the north we need more agents to patrol the border, and monitor who comes in, who leaves, we need to unite with the Canadians because they are in a similar situation, a developed modern country with alliances to the United States. A lot of Canadians don't see themselves as a target to terrorists but they are.
"If we deny we are in danger and decide to go one with normal life. How do we handle a situation if they did attack while we were distracted, ignoring them?"
Nobody is denying the danger, but it shouldn't be overstated, we have a problem in this country with making a war on everything, and allowing the media to feed us fear whether its bullshit or not. Lots of times it is. Lately it's been the cheese bombs which were thought to be an attempt to smuggle C4 lol, before that the flying imams, before that, anthrax, the dc sniper shootings. All of this was tied to terrorism. The first thought when the Columbia shuttle blew up by most Americans was "those fucking terrorists" but really tragic as it was, it was a hole in the shuttle.
People die of terrorism and there are terrorists who would love to destroy the world, but you can't just wish it to happen. Our country and intelligence service has been on this now for a solid decade and progress is being made making the reporting and scope of our knowledge about these bastards more and more accurate. The media is way behind the curve, happily willing to blow anything that happens out of proportion or link it to terror. Sure it's possible something big is going to happen, "Gut feeling" but what does that all mean?
FEAR you cannot defeat it, you can just control it. I think we are finally getting control of our fear realizing what we need to do in the coming years.
A great man said that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Certainly if you are going to fear, at least go with something a little more statistical relevant then terrorism.
When I said "TERRORISTS will both not be impressed or DETERRED. The only way to stop them is to kill them." I meant it because it's true. Nothing we are doing in Iraq is helping us, shape the views of the world looking at us into a positive view. People, not terrorists, see a country that went against the rest of the world invading Iraq, they see us as an aggressor, both there and in Afghanistan, they see a daily barrage of violence from Iraq, Muslims being killed by Muslims. People also see and hear terrorist's using the Koran and Islam for their own perverted agenda on their local news. They read up on it, and what the extremists say about us.
They read from places like this, about Americans and it's hard to understand, for them, how we can be fighting a war just against extremists, and not against Islam. Especially when so many civilians are dying daily in Iraq. Consider they also get news from fewer independent sources and a lot of their news is as biased or more so then our own "journalistic defenders of American freedom" Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC.
I think it would be a different story if we leave, and it is seen that the violence stops, which is possible, or that it continues which is likely but doesn't involve us. That takes away the recruiting tool AQ has right now against us. It also takes away their battlefield, granted it may give them more focus on us at home, but that's a possibility not assured.
