If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

[rzr]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

Like I said, it was an analogy. Shoot down the original theory, not the analogy. Pulling America out of iraq when it's too 'emotionally' unstable could and probably would be detrimental to the world's warfare.

[devonin]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

It was plenty stable before they went in, and they destablized it. While I'm all in favour of making people clean up their own messes, they are making things worse and not better.

They should withdraw, and ask the UN to send in a peacekeeping force to maintain order.

[rzr]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

If you think being stabilized is having a murderous dictator running the country through genocide and terror then yes, Iraq was the most stable country on the face of the planet. Hell, so was Germany when Hitler ran it based on that version of stability.

[Zythus]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

Godwin's law + Zythus' law. You lose epically.

It is evident that Us prescence in Iraq is a huge disturbance, yet when withdrawn, I would think that Iraq will fall deeper into pandemonium. With no truly fortified government entwined with the whole clash of which sect of religion should gain supremacy, US leaving may leave crimson consequences. I think I do not need to remind you that Middle Easterns take their religion serious enough to initiate "divine judgment" saying it be the will of god. Iraq is a nation that will collapse into itself if it loses its framework, its a tad unfortunate that US became an element of this framework in the first place.

(Vaguely, I recall reading articles that says some religious extremeists stand by traffic lights and used machetes to cut off women's arms if they weren't veiled.)

[rzr]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

Again, I completely agree with you and have no objections to it.

[devonin]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

See here's the thing though: The middle east has been forced to stay static by the west this whole time. It's a subcontinent running like it's still the colonial heydey of the late 19th century. Lines on a map forced on tribal cultures that don't line up with that map at all.

WHat needs to happen is a little chaos and instability. It's inevitable, and the longer it is resisted, the worse it will be. Iraq as a "country" isn't a country. It is functionally three countries, a suni, a shi'a and a kurdish country forced to live together now under an american style democracy. You can't elect a leader when your country should be three seperate and distinct countries.

Did you know that the Kurds in Iraq/surrounding area are the single largest ethnic group ON EARTH that doesn't have their own country somewhere? There are 30 MILLION Kurds in that area, made to forcibly integrate into Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Jordan etc etc.

Saddam was a dictator yes, but a dictator has -always- been needed to keep multiple cultures being forced to cohabitate in line. Remove the dictator, and there is NO way you can slide a democracy in there and expect it to work. It is simply impossible.

So the US can either do what it has done MANY times in the past, and install a dictator that seems friendly to the US (Surprise surprise, both Osama bin Laden -and- Saddam Hussein were such people. Put into power and armed by the US because they were a friendly alternative) or they can leave, and let the political landscape of the area finally get to sort itself out for once without foreign interference, or they can continue to occupy FOREVER, because if they want to insist on a democracy in the existing borders of Iraq, they will NEVER be able to leave.

[rzr]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

True, the longer America occupies Iraq the more hostile it will get. But at the same time; leaving now would make it screwed up. It would be like letting the guards out of a prison. Who's to say there wouldn't be an uprising?

[devonin]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

Did you read my post? An uprising is 100% absolutely inevitable unless the US stays there FOREVER. In fact an uprising is a GOOD thing, because a newly independant Kurdistan would be much more a friend to the west than any of the nations that would lose land and people to it. The status quo in the middle east is no longer viable because the US is slowly losing military, economic and cultural hegemony in the world, and oil is going to slowly move away from being the major commodity of the world.

[rzr]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

So we're agreed that America shouldn't leave Iraq?

[devonin]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

Um...no, not even a teeny tiny bit.

The US should never have been there, and barring time travel to fix it, should leave NOW.

The enforced status quo that the US has built in the middle east IS going to collapse, there is no way around it unless the US wants to actually invade and occupy basically the entire middle east. Since the collapse is inevitable, the US would be far better served simply leaving now while they can pretend to salvage some pride, because the alternative is a bad bad thing for America. They will be forced out, via whatever means are necessary. That's where your big scary consequences come in: Attacks on the Americans that are there and refuse to leave will happen WELL before attacks on America -because- they left.

The only remotely sustainable courses of action you can support that make any kind of logical sense are:

1) The US gets out now, and apologises to the UN for screwing up horribly and asks for help dealing with their mess

2) The US withdraws from the UN and invades at -least- Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Jordan, probably Kuwait too and tries to set up an american colonial system

The only real alternative besides this is pretending that just a few more years will magically "fix" Iraq, demonstrating once and for all the complete and utter ignorance that the West has of how middle eastern culture even works. The level of sectarian violence will increase as the factions try to each take control of a sufficiently legitimate looking government for the US to call it a job well done and leave them to resume their dictatorship while popular opinion continues to mount against the US as a hostile occupying force. Eventually nations in the UN are going to start agitating for sanctions against the US, which will cause the US to use its veto powers, bringing to a head a major conflict of US versus the World that has been brewing pretty much ever since the collapse of the soviet union.

[Zythus]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

I agree with the inevitability of another full blown civil war in Iraq after US extraction. Iraq is a country bad enough that dictatorship is needed to maintain order. I'm skeptical about Iraq being "magically" fixed anyday, but I don't see how the UN can make their situation any better by colonization. Unfortunately sounding pessimistic, it seems Iraq needs a considerable eradication before realizing the damage it has done to itself and thus, begin healing.

The difficulty of Iraq has a distinct difference with normal politic movements fighting for power. Like I said, the people there regard religion more predominate than anything in reality. The irking thing is that some tend to go extreme and/or persuade others to join their ranks of their "holy crusade". I'm being stereotypical here, yet it is not blown out of porportion to say that Iraqis can/might/will go extreme for their religion, whichever sect they may be.

[rzr]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

That's true, a dictator would serve as a better leader in such an unstable place. However, how would we put a dictator in there as a puppet (rofl, practically an oxymoron) then then take him out after the country is stable without re-upsetting the balance?
We couldn't, therefore leaving a dictator in charge of such a normally volatile country.

[Zythus]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

I was refering to Saddam when I mentioned there WAS dictatorship. Iraq wouldn't be stable anytime soon due to the meddling US. Present or not in Iraq, its still an unstable country. You can say I blame the US for making it the way it is.

[rzr]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

I was refering to Saddam when I mentioned there WAS dictatorship. Iraq wouldn't be stable anytime soon due to the meddling US. Present or not in Iraq, its still an unstable country. You can say I blame the US for making it the way it is.

They most certaitly did not. Years of miserable life under said dictator made it unstable. Th best way I can summarize my thoughts is with a quote: "The devil you know is better than the devil you don't"

[devonin]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

"The devil you know is better than the devil you don't"

And Saddam was the devil they knew. And love him or hate him, he was pretty much the personal embodiment of stability in Iraq. As long as he was in power, they were a very stable country. It wasn't until he was toppled that all of the sectarian problems started to flare up again.

Edit: Oh there were more posts than I saw. Let's keep going then!

The concept of "Iraqi civil war" is actually pretty ridiculous when you consider the realities of the middle east. Like Africa, the nation-state system in the middle east is largely a product of Europe and the Peace of Westphalia. Carving up the middle east after the collapse of the Ottoman Turks into a number of countries happened along the lines of satisfying whoever was the majority ethic group in a given area.

"Iraq" makes no sense whatsoever as a country. It is functionally three countries with vastly different cultures, politics, and faiths, and forcing them to be one country is absurd. An "Iraqi Civil war" would be like the Rwandan civil war. Two tribes that had been enemies for years magically found themselves bordered in by european drawn maplines, and simply continued acting as they always had. As a result, it took -way- too long for the UN to get involved in a "civil war" (which they usually keep out of) when what was really going on was tribal warfare and attempted genocide.