I know everyone is trying to make the best of the news that the U.S. is withdrawing all it's troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. But let's be honest--that is NOT what we wanted to do. That's not what the Pentagon wanted, not what the State Department wanted, and not what the White House wanted.

The decision was the result of the Iraqi Prime Minister and their Parliament not being able to agree on whether security is adequate or whether it can be made to work. They also won't permit U.S. troops to stay unless they have the right to prosecute them in their courts for war crimes.

The Shi'a dominated parliament simply won't agree with the Sunni prime minister. Geez, does this sound familiar? Just replace those names with "Democrats" and "Republicans" and we know how a stalemated government works. The only difference is that dozens of people are getting blown up in Iraq every day, a situation that may escalate without us there.

No one believes that the Iraqis are fully capable of securing their country. Virtually all believe that unrest and terrorism will escalate quickly after we leave. Many believe that a full-blown civil war will be the result, right there in the middle of the region.

But we did set up a supposedly democratic sovereign state and their government would not agree with our requests and suggestions that we at least leave some training troops there for several years. As our representatives described it,"...the talks fell apart."

So...we started a war, occupied a country for more than a decade, spent a trillion dollars, and killed about 5,000 young Americans. And now we're getting kicked out--there's no other way to say it--even though internal security is awful and many think a civil war right there in the center of the Middle East will be the result.

Was it worth it?

What do we do about Afghanistan? Do we start to re-build Libya in order to try to get their oil? We got kicked out of Iraq. We're close to being kicked out of Afghanistan. And some of our politicians are proposing that we go in and re-build Libya, set up a U.S.-style democratic government, courts, etc., hold elections and help them set up a constitution and set of laws. What if we do all that, spending another several hundred billion dollars, and the government we set up kicks us out of there too? India now has more people than China and they have nuclear weapons. How long will India tolerate the unsettled and unpredictable Pakistani situation on their northern border before they do something about it? Then there's a still very unsettled Egypt, Syria and Yemen. And Iran, for crying out loud.

This whole thing seems to be spiraling out of control and there's not a damn thing we can do about it...nor can we afford to do anything about it!