Just Trying to Be Fair

Alrighty, I needed to laugh and John McCain and Yahoo travel guide presented me with a primo opportunity. I laughed myself silly.

In the interest of at least attempting to be fair though I'll say this: McCain was right. Three years ago. He was correct in saying that we had not deployed anywhere close to enough troops to stabilize the situation in Iraq. On that one issue he was correct but he did what nearly everyone did and did not look at the big picture.

I agreed with him, we didn't. The problem was then, and even more so now, we don't have the numbers that would be needed to do so. Even more significant is the fact that we most definitely do not have the numbers that we would need to do so for any length of time and that is key to the entire issue.

No one with the slightest comprehension of the social and political realities in Iraq is confused enough to believe that we could stabilize the nation via military presence in anything less than a generation. A generation would be the optimistic view, we'd probably be looking at several generations.

Now, is there anyone who believes we can and will maintain a troop presence in Iraq numbering in the hundreds of thousands for a period of 50 or even 10 years? I don't believe that for a minute but unless that is what we commit to we are accomplishing nothing but putting off the inevitable moment when we will be forced to accept reality and withdraw.

Yes, executions of citizens are down significantly. They are down because we have our military essentially babysitting the Iraqi police, many of who were the same people making up the "death squads". They can't run around killing the citizens with those doggone Americans watching their every move in Baghdad. Not stopping them elsewhere but in Baghdad at least it has slowed them down.

That's a good thing but now what? Stay until every Iraqi with insurgent or death squad ambitions dies of old age? Based on their previously exhibited ability to devise new and different ways to kill, maim, and torture I'm fairly certain it's only a matter of time before they figure out a new tactic to subvert our attempts to squelch the violence. Yup, I have faith in their ability to thwart all attempts at imposing civilized behaviour. No, I don't think that means all Iraqis so get off the soapbox...I'm talking about those Iraqis who have a penchant for this sort of behaviour.

In the meantime we have a whole new generation growing up in this nightmare. I have to go back to my background in mental health. A person's prognosis is largely based upon their baseline, baseline being the optimum level of functioning that person achieved prior to becoming ill. It's nearly impossible to return a person to a better state of functioning than they had before their troubles began. So what do you suppose the baseline for Iraq's children is? Murder and mayhem and hate for every other religious or ethnic group and especially the Americans.

You see why I say it would take generations for a military presence to stabilize the country?

Is Iraq going to sink into chaos if we leave? Most likely, yes. Is it going to anyway? Most likely, yes. Is it possible to at least soften the blow with diplomacy? Maybe.

There's the other insurmountable obstacle. This administration cannot negotiate effectively with anyone. Not even if they really, really wanted to. No one on the planet likes, trusts, or respects them except for the roughly 20% or 30% of westerners who believe the earth is only 8,000 years old and are secretly hoping we'll just kill all of the middle easterners and have done with it.

If the rest of us are truly interested in saving as many lives as possible both American and Iraqi we have only one possible course of action. Impeach Bush and Cheney. If we truly had looked at the "big picture" we would have already done so. Getting them out and appointing an interim government to begin diplomatic negotiations is the only logical course of action.

Well, that's assuming we actually do care about the situation for more reasons than as a bone of political contention.