First off, what's all this "We" shit? It's awful easy to say "We did this" and "We did that" when no one here has thier life on the line.
That being said, I hope this does not turn into another bash-America thread. Don't assume that because our "leader" is a moron that the rest of us are as well. I supported this in the beginning for no other reason than the removal of a raving lunatic dictator who was ethnically cleansing his own people. Period. No other reason. Of course I feel lied to, as do many Americans, over the actual reasons for going in. And this is now starting to turn into this generations Vietnam. These poor guys over there never had an inkling that they'd be in a God-forsaken hell-hole for over a year at a time. There was never any kind of intelligent exit strategy.
However, even the pro-war voices here do have a point. The rest of the world sees the position this decision has put America in and seems to be playing politcal ping-pong rather than working together to solve a world problem. Taking advantage of it for thier own gain or in some cases just for spite. This should have been a world-body solution from the beginning. And I don't mean the beginning of the failed resolution that brought us to this, but the beginning of the problem years ago. France, Germany, Russia and others have gotten just as much out of Iraqi oil and such as America, so now isn't the time to play coy or holier-than-thou. Just as personal politics led America into this, personal politics also dumped it into our laps. It's not as if Europe is ever going to be happy with us anyway. We all get lumped together under some "cowboy" stereotype, until we can be of service. In Iraq: Why are the Americans there? In Liberia: Where are the Americans? Geeez....
On the other side, this administration is coming close to being a joke. We're falling into this "Support the War or You're a Communist" attitude, fully supported by our own government. Perhaps the real truth behind this war will never be known, nor all the minute details. To go to war under misunderstood information is one thing, to go to war over fabricated information is quite another. I pray it is never shown that the latter was the case. And even though every self-proclaimed expert already "knows" the truth, it will probably never really be told.
The Middle East is a HUGE problem. Not just Iraq, either. And this problem affects the whole damn world. These regions are under the control of religions who preach hatred, violence and death. Religious beliefs that a civilised society should have purged centuries ago. Freedom of religion be damned, you don't have the right in a civilized world to preach "Our Way or Death." National soveriegnity should be a distant second in importance to these concepts.
But...we ALL need to be on the same page here. Not OUR page, not YOUR page...just SOME page that keeps us all alive and happy. It was New York and Washington in 2000. If this level of bloodshed and violence, not to mention the sheer childishness of almost every nation involved, isn't stopped...it will be Berlin or Paris or Brussells very soon. If people think the US are the only ones these fanatics hate, just look at the bombing of the UN headquarters. A headquarters with no American prescence at thier own request.
It would be folly to think this thread won't become another "your fault/our fault" cry-fest, and that's the exact sort of environment that allows wars like this to happen in the first place. It CAN be fixed now, but with the self-centered "men" running the world at the moment, I don't see it happening. This whole thing, from the lack of interest the world showed from the start, to the BS that brought us into it, to the slimy politics on the other side of the world, to the ignorant desert rats that only want death anyway, has just made me sick.
Maybe we should just dump all of our money into space exploration, colonize Mars and start all over again.
