Quote:
Originally Posted by Luggage
(Post 1991163)
It's fairly obvious that the original mission was to kill terrorists, and of course they didn't like that, some have the mission expanded and nobody bothered to complain like they did in the Vietnam days (moderator I'm not being political).
We seem to have been let on a chain to discuss poppy fields, well there are a lot more worse things than cheap heroin and I in fact think if it was cheap we have a lot less crime. If you follow TV news about drugs and I mean the rabbit ears TVs, and you know Americans have a lot more problems like oxycodone, drunk drivers that still kill and these little sticks called cigarettes. The Taliban that have just done a public service announcement seem to understand how America works by Allaying fears and allowing others to leave or at least saying they will give them that chance. Who is to say what type of civilization and culture is the right one my wife may not like hearing it but there's about a billion Muslims that live with the wife staying at home with a veil and not learning much education. Star Trek pretty much I had a rule that we have learned not to touch the other civilizations because they have to grow up as they want to and every time we interfere we will be screw up. Was Afghanistan a better place 20 years ago without US troops? We will never know what will become of that area of the world has surely we will never go back there again with American troops unless unfortunately God forbid they would be another 9/11 in which case I fear some president would use an atomic bomb to simply wipe all the Muslims off the face of the Earth. Again dear moderator I'm not being political
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Excellent points made in the quoted post.
America is all too often blinded by her own ideals, going back to the Big Stick policy of Teddy Roosevelt and probably even before that. We seem to have this mindset that because our system of majority rule and free elections works so well for us, it will therefore work equally as well for everyone. No matter how often it is disproved, we still insist on it.
Iraq is a prime example, but not the only one by far. Gulf War I was justified; we were bound by treaty with an ally and we honored that. And even though it was unpopular at the time, stopping short of taking Baghdad and ousting Saddam Hussein was proven, in hindsight, to be the correct course of action as shown by the fiasco of Gulf War II and it's aftermath.
Again, blinded by idealism, we ousted the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein and forced a shiny new democracy on the Iraqis. Rule of law was going to triumph. Women were going to have equal rights and all. Everybody was going to have a say. And to emphasize the point, we hung Saddam and a fair number of his cronies, sat back and waited for this shiny new jewel of a democratic Iraq to take form and act as a beacon to the world. Except that it didn't. As brutal and cruel as he was, ol' Saddam knew precisely what it took to keep peace in Iraq. Before Gulf War II, Iraq was a country of relative peace; a secular country where all religions were tolerated (Saddam had Christians in high places in his government) and life, at least by the standards of the region, was pretty darn good. Of course, Saddam and his operatives had to rip out a few tongues and toss a few people off walls to keep it that way, but life was (relatively) good.
But today? Today, Iraq resembles Afghanistan far more than it resembles a western democracy. Rule by warlord and Islamic idealists predominates. There are many Iraqis who yearn for the good old days of Saddam Sussein. Things are bad and getting worse. In Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and quite a few other spots around the area and the world.
You cannot force a democracy, nor implement rule of law, on a people who do not want either. We've bollixed up the Middle East with our misdirected idealism. Time to get out, and to finally realize that we should be nowhere in the world militarily unless vital American interests are at stake. Let people rule themselves.
