Were going to the moon again!

[A Black Falcon]

Any form of government in Iraq will be hard to establish. It's not that easy to establish a new form of government right after the fall of another... Even "quasi-democracy". The fact remains, there's always going to be political squabbles and fights over everything. Iraq is a place that has barely any unity within; the groups that live there have different views on life and practice different religions. We're trying to modernize a country that is full of tradition and rituals. It's going to take years for the government to be fully effective. By then, fossil fuels are going to be useless to us.

Bush = idiot
Darunia = inconsiderate asshole who declares war because he can't do anything else
Black Falcon = better than Darunia.

Doesn't take much to be better than Darunia... :)

And you're right, it'll be years until the major problems in Iraq are dealt with. It is a people with not just no history of democracy, but with no history of unity except under a strongman. That is a major problem. The main comparisons here are Germany and Japan. Germany had already had an experiment with democracy and was united. Japan was autocratic, but had a very strong tradition of following orders and when told that the militarists were bad and democracy is the new thing people followed. Iraq doesn't have either of those... it's got disunity and autocracy instead. That means that it will take a long time to do it right. Six or seven years like we were in Germany and Japan? Minimum. And then you need to factor in how the longer we are there alone the more they will hate us... that is the opposite of Germany and Japan, where it got better as it went along. That will also be a major problem. What we need to do is bring in the international community. There is no other way to do this in a way that will truly work. Bringing in the international community in a meaningful way... it means not just asking for troops, but giving international organizations power in Iraq. Staying in the current 'just us' system will not work. Iraqis will realize more and more how it's just an occupation and how we are exploiting them with fat contracts to American companies who gave lots of money to the administration. And they already see it... they see us occupying their land and not letting in the international community. I know Bush hates the rest of the world, but the Iraqis don't... they like most of the world more than they like us, for sure. We need to realize that! Sure, we can put enough troops in to lessen attacks, but they won't be stopped until we both bring in international control, and troops... not just to present more targets, but to show skeptical Iraqis that we are not being unilateral. It's an absolutely vital step and without it we will not have nearly as much success in Iraq and there'll be a lot more violence lasting longer.

Oh yeah, and we need to focus on Afghanistan! We are ignoring it! That nation desperately, desperately needs serious help, and only we can give the push that gets it... most importantly it needs peacekeepers in the capitol. But it also needs adaquate funding...

And finally we just need to realize that because of realities in Iraq it'll be dangerous for American troops for many years to come. Especially with the very slow pace of political progress being made. A lot of Iraqis won't believe us until we actually give power to an Iraqi government... but that requires a lot of time consuming steps first. There is no good solution here, but we should do what we can starting with international control.