Iraq and Donald Trump

On this Memorial Day with our boys (and especially sad to me, now girls) dying overseas, I thought I would revisit politics, perhaps to clarify my thoughts.

First of all, I would like to clarify that my previous post WAS anti-war.

However, being anti-war is not the same thing as saying that you think the United States is in the wrong, or somehow does not have a right to fight with another country.

The fact is, we were already at war with Saddam from the first Gulf war. The mistake we made there was to not finish him off the first time. I supported getting rid of him, and it had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. The world is a better place without Saddam Hussein.

Having done that, the United States liberally felt an obligation to leave the country in better shape than we found it in. We could have just packed it in and gone home at that point, but we wanted to repair facilities and set up a peaceful and free society. Those who want to impune some sort of selfish motive in this simply do not know or are willfully ignorant of the United States of America in my opinion. No one thought bad of us after we helped out the countries we beat in World War II get back on their feet.

However to do this requires one thing that we can not provide, it requires a people that want it just as much as want to give it to them. If they would prefer a violent and unequal society than a peaceful and free society then there is absolutley nothing we can do for them.

Another example of this is in this article from that bastion of impartiality the New York Times. It describes how our troops caught a bomber and on him was an ID card identifying the man as a member of the Iraqi army. So basically we are equipping and fighting our own supposed allies!

Someone said that if there were people with uniforms in our country uninvited they would be tempted to take shots at them, too. That is not my beef. I understand that someone wants to take shots at our uniformed troops. If that were the only problem, we could just go home and that would be the end of it. But that is not the problem. The biggest problem is that they are blowing each other up!

Here is why those that are doing the violence in Iraq are crazy or stupid: if you want us to go, just lay low and stop the violence. We would then leave, and then you could do whatever you want. If they would just wait until we left, and then flaired up again there is no way the American president could get the political will to go back. It worked for the North Vietnamese.

The inescapable conclusion is that they who do violence either like the violence, have no common sense, or simply have no contact with reality. My last post about constructing a school for children with bombs built into it I argued for the latter, but I could be convinced of the first two possibilities as well. I do not think I could be convinced that this is civilized rational behavior on their part.

The sad fact is that people usually do get the government that they deserve. The sad fact is that there are probably many good and fair minded Iraqis who want a better society, but there do not appear to be enough of them to make their will a reality even with our help, which does not bode well for the future of Iraq as a country.

Ironically, it appears that Donald Trump may have been right about this way back in 2004. People do not give The Donald enough credit.


As for the future, if we just cut and run I think their would be a blood bath as the three main factions in Iraq go after each other. I wonder if all of the people calling for just this would accept responsibility for the result? I am guessing not.

Maybe we should divide the country in three, one part for each faction? This would not be popular, but may be the most effective solution to the sectarian violence.

The last sad fact is that sometimes there are no easy solutions, but I do not accept the idea that the United States is somehow not trying to make the world a better place for everyone. You can impune the results, but if you want to attack the motive you will have an argument from me.