[r9etb]

Your post is almost -- no, it is -- as obtuse as Buchanan's little screed. On the plus side, you've packed most of the Keyboard Kommando catchphrases ("PC war," "kill 'em all," etc.) into a remarkably compact paragraph, for which you're to be congratulated.

Your lack of understanding of why a stable Iraqi government is crucial to the larger strategy, however.... That's just not excuseable.

[Wristpin]

Your lack of understanding of why a stable Iraqi government is crucial to the larger strategy, however.... That's just not excuseable.

Pre 9/11 Afghanistan is the perfect example. We broke it, we need to fix it.

[Alberta's Child]

Your lack of understanding of why a stable Iraqi government is crucial to the larger strategy, however.... That's just not excuseable.

I think that's part of the problem here. If "a stable Iraqi government" is crucial to the larger strategy, then the U.S. ought to take Saddam Hussein out of his prison cell, put a $3,000 Armani suit on him, and call him the President of Iraq.

What a lot of people seem to overlook here is that we are dealing with a country and a region where "freedom" and "stability" are mutually exclusive, and where brutal, totalitarian rule is pretty much a prerequisite for stability.

[ARCADIA]

Your lack of understanding of why a stable Iraqi government is crucial to the larger strategy, however.... That's just not excuseable.

I have a higher standard then you do. I am not after a stable government in Iraq; if that were enough I would have left it with Saddam. I am after a stable government that is a strongly allied with US interests. Putting in a puppet mouthpiece, and a new theocracy is not going to help us in the WOT. You are satisfied with pretense, I want nothing less then performance. Iraq should have a fully tolerant and secular government; that is actively opposed to institutionalization of Islamic law and the fundamentalism which drives it, and that is a far cry from what is evolving there.

War is about imposing your will over others; if we were going to leave it card blanch to the Iraqi population then we never should have gone in. Somewhere along the line we lost track of US interests and fell for an overly idealistic vision democracy. It is fine to want a democratic regime, but if we focus too much on that and not enough on our own objectives, we are going to forfeit the main objective of the war.