November 20, 2005

Cut and Run or Not Beating a Dead Horse?

As the war in Iraq drags on many are coming to the sobering sense that the Iraqi people are not really capable at this time of coming together in a government confederating all of their diverse ethnic tribes and religious beliefs.

Truly the Bush administration underestimated the current problem and Saddam’s prediction of another Viet Nam lesson for America should be remembered. Saddam ruled Iraq by brute force. Today the U.S. Military along with it’s coalition allies imposes the rule of a shaky Iraqi coalition government in perhaps a slightly more benevolent way.

Saddam’s regime was most certainly brutal and in violation of the norms of international law. However, we now know that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq other than the resistance efforts to our occupation of it. Our presence in Iraq has created more lawlessness and terrorism than was the case prior to our invasion.

This past weeks proclamation by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa to begin the withdraw of our occupying force makes sense. Our continued presence is not in our own best interests at this point. Ultimately the factions in Iraq will have to make a compromise and peace with one another or commence a bloody civil war that may last for year to resolve their differences.

Iraq is not America. It’s people did not rise up against Saddam and overthrow him. The Iraqi people had neither the will nor the means to do this.

Apparently with Saddam gone they have neither the will nor the inclination to re-unite their country by forming a stable government. The true depth of the internal Iraqi conflict just becomes more apparent with each consecutive terror attack by the opposition and the newly forming government’s repressive methods of controlling the Iraqi people.

Looks like the new boss is the same as the old boss.

Beating this dead horse will only cost us $187 million per day that we can ill afford to say nothing of the unforgivable further waste of the lives of both American servicemen and Iraqi civilians.

It’s time to pull back to close by staging grounds as Rep. John Murtha has called for and protect the integrity of Iraq’s borders while the Iraqi’s themselves sort out their future.