Why we're in Iraq

The Middle East sucks. It's hot, arid, and quite inhospitable in parts. Its full of corrupt governmental leadership with no real democratic proces to remove those governments from power. Not only that, but the region is experiencing a population boom (due to uneducated women) and consequently high unemployment for youths. The religeon and culture focuses agression away from internal stresses and instead on external infidels. Combined with a Middle-ages mindset where the afterlife more important than life and charity economics fostering competition between extremist islamist groups, and you've got a very nasty situation.

So, you need a paradigm shift, where peoples ideas about government and religion are radically adjusted to reflect a new reality. You need tolerance and hope.

Iraq was our big shot at pulling this off. It was ruled by a non-theocracic dictatorship with no real allies, no country would really stand in the way of overthrowing the government. Iraq was fairly technologically advanced, with an educated population, and the highest profile females in the middle east. It also had sizable populations of both branches of Islam, sunni and shiia, as well as a sizable ethnic minority, the Kurds. If there was any place in the middle east to quickly foster a democratic movement Iraq was it.


Buuuut.... It's not working very well. Saddam wasn't oppressive enough to quell all the tribal, ethnic, and religeous rivalries... so the country seems to be sliding in the direction of Yugoslavia. Even worse for the Iraqi's: all the muslim extremists are heading there in hopes of getting Americans, which is good for us in that they're fighting there rather than here but it sucks for them.

So the US is kind of stuck: do we stick it out and help the Iraqi's thru this or do we pull out and hope the violence decreases in our absence? Oddly, in a civil war our presence or absense is almost irrelevant. Bottom line: the US should not leave until exiting makes the situation better than our presence. Since this won't be the case for quite some time, we should remain until that qualification is met, reguardless of the circumstances.



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