I woke up this morning with this in my head, so I figured I had better blog it....
Iraqi Dumpty sat on a wall
Iraqi Dumpty had a great fall
All Rummy's horses & all of his men
Couldn't put Iraqi Dumpty back together again...
Egg broke.
There are really only 3 countries in the Middle East - Turkey, Egypt & Iran. All the rest were created by the French & English after they beat the Ottoman Empire after WWI. The whole place is a bunch of tribes that have 1000 year old feuds and in the end, they are just going to have to work out their feud on their own.
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3 comments:
Study history. Some people said the same thing in our own Civil War, the Normandy Invasion, and Iwo Jima.
We won't know if "egg broke" for 5-10 years when we see if Iraq emerges as a democracy which is an ally against the bad guys.
To stay the course or not stay the course, that is the question.
Wars in the past like the Revolutionary War, US Civil War, Iwo Jima & the Normandy Invasion all had major setbacks, mistakes and outright disasters, but they were all for a noble cause. I just don't see that any more in Iraq - it might have started out as a noble cause, but now it's a morass and a civil war between two sects of Muslims and what we are currently doing isn't helping. A third party military can't solve a civil war unless they take one side and defeat the other side. The Shia & Sunni Muslims have been split since 632AD. How do we expect to make that go away. Iraq is going to have to figure it out for themselves.
The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome.
The only thing that has been a constant in our approach is to try and help the democratically elected government take control of the country. That is what Bush means by "Stay the course". Are the Democrats against that?
It is also a noble cause. Democracy in Iraq will yield many dividends in our fight against the jihadists and countries like Iran and Syria.
How you achieve that goal is the question. We have changed tactics many times over the last 3.5 years. If you want to keep track of the different tactics going on in Iraq, there is no better website than:
www.billroggio.com
I agree that the Sunnis and the Shiites are going to have to learn how to live with each other or else the Shiites (with the help of the Kurds) are going to put the hammer down since they are the majority.
Right now the government is letting the militias put the hammer down. The last two months we have tried putting more U.S. troops in Baghdad and it hasn't helped. In fact the government is pushing back against us because of the political support the militias have. I agree with what Congressman Duncan Hunter recently said. We should tell the Iraqi government to send more Iraqi troops into Baghdad if they want to control the situation.
That is not the same thing as bailing out of the country like the Democrats want us to do.
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