Ren said: The insurgents want to appear to be rebelling against the occupation and the Iraqi government, but their actions say otherwise – they are killing people of other ethnicities and beliefs simply because they differ from their own. The U.S. occupying forces just happen to fit into that extremely broad category, and the invasion was an opportunity and excuse for them to start exercising some of the hate and ignorance that consumes them. They’ll happily keep killing after we withdraw”
Ren, this is exactly what is happening and it is a civil war, a civil war that we unleashed unfortunately, unless we are willing to take sides and plan to fight accordingly we are just in the way (and convenient targets).
And the idea that we “holier than thou” Americans can come in to an ancient culture and mend cultural/ethnic differences, or teach them to get along and work together for the greater good, shows our ignorance. I had a high school teacher in 1969 who explained that democracy is not necessarily the best government for everyone – he argued that dictatorship may be the best system for some countries. I believe that Iraq may be one of those countries, when you have tribal / ethnic / religious peoples who historically clash, and who want it to stay that way, then there needs to be a powerful figure to lay down the rules, hopefully a “benevolent” dictator.
jamsvet said: “And Killing and killing and killing. It’ll be genocide”
Same argument we got for our sticking it out in Vietnam – and when we finally did get out the genocide didn’t happen, granted some people suffered greatly, but out continued presence in Vietnam, propping up an unpopular government just sustained a lot of suffering and postponed the inevitable. I think one could argue now that 30 years of communism has been good for Vietnam in the long run, and that and the country is possibly better-off that we didn’t win.
We’re fighting this war just like we fought in Vietnam – pretending that we are just trying to help a country -it’s a lie. We’re just there to set-up a government that we can keep in our back pocket by creating an elite ruling group that will keep a strangle hold on the countries natural resources for our advantage. We were just fine with Saddam as long as he was the enemy of our enemy, played footsie with us, and only gassed the Kurds, but when he tried to occupy oily Kuwait we decided he was a Hitler (Bush sr.) and had to be stopped.
