Tuesday, March 27, 2007
  When to get out of Iraq
As soon as humanely possible. And yes, that is humanely, not humanly. :)

It's going to be a mess whenever we leave. The longer we stay, the bigger the mess is likely to be, the deeper the divides within the country, the longer and nastier the civil war that will surely follow our exit will be.

But that's just the military we're talking about. Getting the military out (and keeping it out of Iran) makes good sense. Both for their country and ours.

After that we need a Marshall plan for the Middle East. We destroyed Iraq's infrastructure. We should rebuild it. That's, no doubt, quite a bit cheaper than keeping our military there for a few more years or decades. In fact, we could probably fund a lot of reconstruction (after the civil war peters out) and still have plenty left over to rescue social security, increase funding to schools, and so on.
 
Comments:
Pamela,

It is people like you that give progressives a bad name.

Let me summarize your opinion. Pull the troops out. Let the slaughter begin that is in your mind inevitable. After a million or two people die, then send people in.

Your position is IMORAL. Civil Wars can be stopped. They can be controlled. They can be kept from the immoral place you will allow it to be.

Further, you don't seem to allow for a regional war. How do you stop that?

Everyone who wants to pull troops out is SELFISH. They care only for themselves or their vision of what is romantic.

You don't care what happens to the people of the middle east. Pull them out no moatter what huh?

It was people like you that led to the slaughter of millons in North Korea after we stopped fighting. The slaughter of millions in Vietnam and Cambodia after we pulled out.

While people who fight wars might have the blood of a few hundred thousand on their hands, people who end wars with no consideration to what happens next are no better than the idiots who started a war without considering what happens next.

It is time to start thinking and planning NOW. Marshal Plan NOW. You will send millions to their deaths to satisfy your romantic notions of peace.

You should be ashamed to be a human being, let alone a muslim.

Iraq needs help now. Encourage diplomacy. Encourage action.

You just want to see a bloodbath that with no historical basis you see as inevitable!

SHAME!
 
Wow.

Slaughter is going on now. Slaughter will continue as long as we are there, and likely long after we leave. My goal is to reduce the amount of slaughter going on. Period. I do not see that our troops being there is going to reduce the amount of slaughter in the short or the long run, as we are one of the root causes of that slaughter.

I believe the Iraqis will do a far better job of controlling and stopping their own civil war than any outside power ever can.

I really don't believe the conflict will spread throughout the region. Maybe I'm naive, but I don't think Iran will invade, or Syria. They will no doubt take sides as the did in Lebanon, but I doubt the war with spread beyond Iraq's borders.

As for the a MidEast Marshall plan, it should be implemented as soon as possible...

I really think you are being far too harsh in assuming that I don't care about Middle Eastern lives.
 
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Progressive Muslim, feminist, mom, writer, mystic, lover of the universe and Doug Schmidt, cellist, theologian and imam.


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