Do Iraqis care about their future? I suspect not.

Submitted by Pat (United States), Oct 24, 2006 at 14:07

Why should coalition forces spend another dime or another day fighting in Iraq? Why should another life or limb be lost protecting people who refuse to live in peace? Why shouldn't those who do the most business with Iraq (France, Russia, Germany and China) take on the task? They would seem to have an interest in a stable Iraq. Let them pay for it.

The Shia can hardly claim to be the downtrodden majority. They have discovered the uses of violence very quickly. The Kurds are the only group worth protecting. If we redeploy anywhere within Iraq, it should be to the areas necessary to protect the Kurds from their own countrymen. Let the Shia and the Sunnis fight it out amongst themselves.

One argument that held sway originally was that we couldn't understand the effect living under Saddam had on the Iraqi people - every neighbor a spy, etc. The Iraqis needed time to learn to trust others and understand what it meant to be an open society, etc. But why does this excuse still hold long after Saddam has been put in prison and his sons killed? Was the Baathist regime all that different from the Soviets? Aren't the people of Iraq capable of rising above what was done to them in the past?

How does our redeployment within Iraq accomplish anything?

1. Letting Iraqis run Iraq. That's exactly what we're doing. They don't need us in the country for that.

2. Seeing violence in Iraq as an Iraqi problem. "The coalition should realize it has no more responsibility for keeping the peace between Iraqis than it does among Liberians or Somalis." So why do we need to be there at all?

3. Terminating the mammoth US embassy in Baghdad - Wasn't the new embassy meant to demonstrate our commitment? If we're not there, then what is the commitment? We might as well operate out of a storefront. A huge embassy is a sop to our own pride.

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