ok, then i get something very different from the below (your text), than you do (not being facetious: we are two individuals separated by a common language ;-)):
| CB: We Americans have some say in deciding for Americans, who are the
| ones doing the war on Iraq.
|
| CB: Well, yea. Transitional arrangements _without_ the U.S. involved.
| Send some Swiss Guards to Iraq.
to be fair to you, you start out by saying:
| The history of the U.S. military interventions around
| the world is such that I judge that the U.S. must get out of Iraq
| immediately.
onwards with the latest post:
> CB: Isn't there "all out chaos" there now ?
well, it keeps getting worse. is that because of the US presence? or because of the lack of right action? doesn't the US have some history of reconstructing nations/regions? japan? europe? marshall[sp?] plan?
[more below]
> CB: U.S. withdrawal will save the most Iraqi and American lives. I
> don't agree with your "chaos" analysis of Iraq. That's why U.S.
> withdrawal is the optimum viable alternative.
will the withdrawal of US troops make things better? why? because the insurgents are primarily opposed to US presence? what about the presence of US troops as part of a UN force? yeah, what am i smoking, right? well, you have to be smoking something or the other to be a leftist...
Carrol writes:
>
> Ravi is daydreaming if he thinks it is possible to force or persuade
> the u.s. government to follow even as minimally decent program in
> Iraq. We have no influence whatever, we will NEVER have any influence
> whatever on _how_ the u.s. acts in Iraq or Yugoslavia or Afghanistan.
> The only power (or possible power) we have is to hasten u.s.
> withdrawal. When Ravi asks that the u.s. not withdraw until it has
> done something decent he is, though he seems not to realize it,
> favoring the u.s. to stay there forever killing more and more
> Iraqis.
>
why? because that's what happened in vietnam? as wojtek (or someone else points out) we cannot always resort to this sort of reasoning by analogy. this is a different US govt, population, etc. one does not have to be anti-american to the core, to be a leftist. when a majority (or close to a majority) of americans support continual US troop presence, they are at worst misguided, but still, i would venture, doing so out of a sense of responsibility. is there reason to believe, today, that US troops are any more violent than the insurgents?
as uvj points out, the iraqis are living through this mess that the US created (and unlike CB, i, as a USer, do hold myself responsible for it -- i could have done more than what i did from the safety of my cubicle, to prevent this war). what are their wishes? if, as jimD correctly suggests, the US should pay restitution, should that not heed the wishes of the iraqis?
recent polls (again, admittedly not the most reliable tool, as CB points out) show that iraqis are against US presence, but:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=a8bOqxuFldV0&refer=top_world_news
| U.S. Poll Shows Iraqis Oppose Presence of Coalition Troops
|
| July 1 (Bloomberg) -- An internal U.S. government poll found a
| majority of Iraqis oppose having the U.S.-led multinational force in
| their country and feel less safe when foreign troops are patrolling
| their neighborhoods.
|
| A majority of Iraqis also says the coalition should stay at least
| until a permanent government is elected, indicating they are as
| conflicted and contradictory in their attitudes toward the U.S.
| presence as the American public is. The poll suggests the insurgency
| is unpopular, despite pockets of support in places such as Saddam
| Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.
|
for completeness, the piece goes on:
|
| Professional pollsters cautioned about the reliability of data from
| people living in an area where the security situation is unstable.
| ``The problem you have in conducting surveys there is doing
| face-to-face interviews in places where it is dangerous to go outside
| is inherently difficult,'' said Evans Witt, president of Princeton
| Survey Research, a polling group that conducts surveys in the U.S.
| and abroad.
Carrol continues:
> "Solutions" that exist only in the brains of well-intentioned people are
> far far far worse than no solution at all.
>
by that token we should abandon most leftist "solutions", especially in the US, since they have zero real world presence...??
> ravi wrote:
>>
>>> the swiss guard did not create the mess in iraq. the US did. if as an
>>> american you wish to have a say in US troop involvement, it seems
>>> logical to suggest that you have, equally, a responsibility for the mess
>>> that the US has created. may i suggest you qualify your post with viable
>>> alternatives, so it (your post) does not reduce to merely [the
>>> expression of] an attempt to save american lives.
>
> Ravi, this sort of argument was a factor (not the most important factor
> but a real one) in the deaths of several million people In Vietnam. Over
> and over the defenders of u.s. aggression in Vietnam insisted that the
> defenders of decency were not qualified to defend decency unless we had
> a positive program to suggest. Over and over again the defenders of u.s.
> aggression in Vietnam insisted that the opponents of that aggression had
> no right to oppose it unless we had "viable alternatives."
>
i fail to see your analogy. is the viet cong / north vietnam the analogy to the iraqi insurgency? is not the target of the latter nothing but increasing chaos?
your use of the word "decency" is unfair and argues by assumption: the very reason i consider the argument that we (the US) are responsible and have to pay/fix in some manner is on grounds of decency. not in opposition to it.
> Do you want the u.s. to kill (say) half a million Iraqis before they
> leave Iraq in chaos or would it be better if the u.s. killed only one or
> two hundred thousand before it leaves Iraq in chaos.
how do you come up with these numbers? does the current rate of iraqi deaths caused by US troops project to 500,000? (i.e., minus the initial senseless bombardment). and at what rate are the insurgents killing iraqis?
> If you really think that there exists a "viable alternative" to chaos
> and death in Iraq you are practicing sandbox politics. No matter how
> long the u.s. stays in Iraq, no matter what opponents say or do, no
> matter what wishful thining those on the sidelines do, things are going
> to get worse and worse there until the u.s. simply butts out and leaves
> the Iraqis to fight out their own destiny without help or hindrance from
> outside.
OK, fine, scratch "viable alternative". but as a member of the left, i am used to fighting (well, at least whining) to make the better options viable. if you are going to yell "US out of Iraq", why not rather (or also) "UN in Iraq" or "US reparations for Iraq"? if the slogans of the left are inconsequential irrespective of their content, let us at least ask for the full enchilada (if that's the expression). there are, i am sure, enough on the right calling for just "Bring home[sic] the troops".
--ravi