[buggyone]

I just read an article in The Daily Sun titled "It just feels like a waste: vets watch as insurgents undo sacrifices in Iraq". It speaks of the sacrifices of the war that killed 4500 Americans and " feels like a waste". The US spent billions of dollars training the Iraq troops who now just throw down their weapons and quit. Their government got rich off American dollars. Their president did not want the US there any longer.

Compare that to Vietnam where the US was for 12 years in their civil war and the US lost over 58,000 soldiers. Very similar.

Both wars were ones the US should not have been involved with and were built on lies by the President when the US got involved.

Will these serve as lessons learned?

[mickey100]

Well said.

[Bonnevie]

as someone who worked with veterans and saw first hand the suffering that resulted from this war already, it saddens me deeply. anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the history of the shia/sunni conflict could have predicted this.

[billethkid]

I suppose someone/anyone could say there are no wars that one should not be involved in and be accurate.

politics aside.....now the enemy/terrorists can safely march/drive down the streets of Iraq in their newly aquired American supplied equipment and weapons that the multi billion dollar US trained and US equipped Iraq army abandoned and ran for the hills.

50 to 60,000 trained Iraqis running from less than 10,000!!!!

The message here is loud and clear. Same message for Afghanistan. Or anywhere else in the middle east.

Why do we think we can change what has been going on for centuries. Words may work here but not in these countries.

[Chi-Town]

One note of consolation is now the insurgents can be the ones driving around in poorly armored Humvees. It's like an Iraqi version of cash for clunkers.

[justjim]

Are you ready for $5.00 gasoline? This Iraq situation could bring it on!

[Taltarzac725]

I had a friend at the University of Denver Graduate School of Librarianship and Information Management in 1983-1984 who was a Librarian at the University of Mosul in Iraq. I wonder what he is doing now. Here he is at Garden of the Gods near Colorado Springs back in late 1983 or so. Garden of the Gods - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He had told me his brother was a General or something like that in Saddam Hussein's army. And, my friend often wanted to get in the fight. Unfortunately he may get this wish if he has not already.

It is ironic that the war he spoke to me so much-- the Iran-Iraq War-- may now heat up again once the US loses its influence in the region. The Second Iran-Iraq War and the American Switch | Blog | BillMoyers.com

This has always been a religious conflict with the control of oil fields being one of its results.

[zcaveman]

Maybe not every country was meant to be a democracy.

Z

[Taltarzac725]

Originally Posted by zcaveman

Maybe not every country was meant to be a democracy.

Z

Not in 2014 anyway. I do not believe Iraq nor Iran have ever been democracies in the US and UK understanding of the word. The Middle Eastern huge influence of religion is an incredibly hard hurdle to get over or a support depending on how you see things. I had tried to be a pen pal of my Iraqi friend after he moved back to Mosul and I ended up the Summer of 1984 in Scottsdale, AZ but his hatred of the West intensified in his letters until we both had to stop writing one another. Kind of quite a different worldview when almost every decision you make revolves around your God.

[Chi-Town]

Iraq - Iran.... Arabia - Persia. We're talking eternal enemies, like lions and hyenas. The Iran-Iraq war lasted eight years and ended in a stalemate with a million lives lost. Not much foreign inflence in that dispute.

[Rags123]

While the OP is extremely political, I assume it is ok for this discussion. He has critiqued Bush and Kennedy, so allow me to remind everyone...no matter the mistake in going to Iraq, our current administration was told years ago that what IS happening WOULD happen if he insisted on pulling out as he did. That includes all his military advisors. People say he could not get an agreement for allowing troops to stay for stabilization, as we have done so many times with great success. That is not true.

I am not debating our beginnings in Iraq, but we have to understand how "small" the world is (we certainly tout that fact when it fits), ignoring everyone and simply giving great speeches will not do this country any good long term.

I hate war....it is horrible, but if our attitude is to allow anything as long as they are not in our country, then...they will shortly in our country.

Folks say it is religious.....I think not. These groups bound and determined use religion as their shield.

[Bogie Shooter]

Not OK.

[rubicon]

Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan are prime examples of what happens when politicians called the shots rather than generals. Suffice is to say that if America stayed committed to the goals to establish a democracy something that takes time as it did with the founding of our Republic and following WWII then it might have had an appreciable chance of success. But then, we Americans seem to have short attention spans.

The events occurring now in the middle east will not set well with future warriors. make no mistake this is a dangerous world and while now of us like war, war is an inevitable human condition

[CFrance]

We get very little of our oil from the Middle East. 12.9% Where Does America Get Oil? You May Be Surprised : NPR

We should leave these countries alone to wage their wars and concentrate on developing alternatives to oil. (And not ethanol--or at least not ethanol made from corn. Make it from grass, like the Brazilians do.)

[Bogie Shooter]

Originally Posted by CFrance

We get very little of our oil from the Middle East. 12.9% Where Does America Get Oil? You May Be Surprised : NPR

We should leave these countries alone to wage their wars and concentrate on developing alternatives to oil. (And not ethanol--or at least not ethanol made from corn. Make it from grass, like the Brazilians do.)

Its made from sugarcane.
Wikipedia

Brazil�s 37-year-old ethanol fuel program is based on the most efficient agricultural technology for sugarcane cultivation in the world,[12] uses modern equipment and cheap sugar cane as feedstock, the residual cane-waste (bagasse) is used to produce heat and power, which results in a very competitive price and also in a high energy balance (output energy/input energy), which varies from 8.3 for average conditions to 10.2 for best practice production