Poll: What Should We Do About Iraq?

Well? What should we do?

Before you vote, I ought to warn you that the voting is public. Everyone's gonna see which one you voted for. Just fair warning.

 

I personally would do a real surge -- not just 20,000 more troops. Then we tell the Iraqis we'll buy them another 6 to 9 months and then we're going to start withdrawing American forces. Get serious or get out.

 

I knew I should have asked people what the choices ought to be before setting up the poll. I'd never have thought of that option myself.

Oh well, can't be helped now.

 

I've personally changed my stance on this issue as it's come to my attention recently that the majority of the Iraqi people want us to leave. Of course, the veracity of this is questionable as it comes from a poll, so I was thinking we should hold a plebiscite in Iraq to see whether or not they really want us gone.

Throwing all the "should we have gone in the first place" arguments out the window and looking at the situation as it stands now, if the Iraqi people say they do not wish for the United States to maintain its presence there then we have no right whatsoever to stay.

 

I'm glad you have seen the error of your previous position. The Iraqi people have NEVER wanted us to stay. If you have heard otherwise, you must have been getting your news from Fox,not unlike some other members of this forum.

 

huh

USMC, isn't that what we just did...

Here is another poll to reflect the opinions of Iraqis:

http://abcnews.go.com/images/US/1043a1IraqWhereThingsStand.pdf

In this one, the key questions for this thread are:

Coalition forces should leave now has gone from 35% to 47% since march.. This does not include the people who think they should leave in an orderly manner in a phased withdrawl either.

Oppose presence of coalition forces in Iraq: 79%

If 79% of people don't want us there, why should we be sending out soldiers to die if the people we are "liberating" don't want us there?

Also, why do you think that anything will move forward politically any differently if we are there or not.. If we put 3,000,000 troops on the ground and squashed the violence, why would this make political progress move any faster? If anything, it would slow down the process because it would alleviate the urgency.

 

No.

The Iraqis don't need an American presence to take care of their own political concerns. They need us there to stop the violence. After the American War for Independence, the French didn't stick around to help us with our political process.

 

minor planet,

I would like to ask your consideration on how this news affects your decisions.

 

Pullout...

What's interesting to me is I just finished reading "In Retrospect" by Robert McNamara -which goes into stunning detail about his involvement in Vietnam as Secretary of Defense from 1960-67. Not to compare the two wars (or conflicts) as similar, but there are some striking parallels in the way the government apparently handled Vietnam and the way it appears the government is handling Iraq.

I see the following parallels:

1. Lack of a clear reason for starting the conflict. In Vietnam, McNamara argues that there wasn't a clear consensus about how exactly (or even if) the fall of South Vietnam to communism would threaten the future and safety of the US. There also wasn't a clear consensus about how to deal with preventing the spread of communism into SK. This seems similar to the various reasons we've heard explaining our motives for invading Iraq (getting Saddam, getting terrorists, creating democracy, etc.) It makes me wonder if "behind the scenes" there's just as much confusion as there is out here in the public sphere.

2. Arguments about continued involvement and level of involvement. Of course, one of the main points of any Vietnam discussion is about our level of involvement. Throughout the book McNamara quotes various meetings and memos where no one could decide how long we'd need to stay there, what capacity or function our military would have, or how many troops we'd need to achieve the goals (which they also couldn't agree on). Definitely seems to match our current discussion about troop pullouts. Regarding Vietnam there began to be serious concern and discussion about a full pullout and what that would mean to the initial effort and the future.

3. The apparent lack of troop support to achieve the basic goals. In Vietnam it's generally agreed now that there just weren't enough troops. Early military estimates done in the early 60s claimed a 1:10 ratio was necessary for a counterinsurgency campaign. The Vietcong were estimated to have 100,000 and growing troops, which means a 1,000,000 commitment from the US (for a period of years). The initial surges were much smaller - the people "running the show" so to speak just couldn't agree on troop numbers and seemed to forget this statistic that their military strategists quoted for them. I've also read a few articles and such that troop support in Iraq has been insufficient to truly establish a safe and controlled environment, which is apparently our goal. Granted, I don't want to send more people over there - it seems like we need to figure it out a bit more and concentrate on our goals more - but troop numbers and ratios seem to be an important issue and a hard pill to swallow. It's also interesting to note that far larger numbers of troops were used in the 91 Gulf War - I read the Brzezinski (sp?) book "Second Chance" which compared the two. I think in '91 there were total about 750,000 troops (with a large constituent from neighboring Arab states) - I don't think we've topped 500,000 in this occupation (which is also much, much longer) and most of those are our own.

In short, I recommend the McNamara book - it really gave me a handle on some of the issues facing is with our current conflict. It also highlights the fact that war is a huge undertaking and an incredibly complex and serious issue.

Also - if I'm wrong on any of these facts - feel more than free to correct me.

Rock out.

 

I voted for no withdrawal talk, that is for several reasons. I say with this caveat we shouldnt have gone in the first place. But we had our chance to make this right in 2003 and total ineptness is what has brought us to where we find ourselves today. We have a moral obligation at this point to those people, we broke, we bought it, we need to fix it. That being said, I think tomorrow, we need to end offensive combat operations. We need to be there only as a deterrant to foreign powers from invading such as is talk about Turkey and the Kurds. We focus on shutting down the borders, and keeping other foreign powers from interfering. Pump in huge amounts of human aide and infastructure improvements. Let the Iraqis figure out thier own violence and political issues. At this point if we were to grant the Iraqis $100b in foreign aide as a one time shot and we set up leases for a few bases and leave a nominal force of say 25k. But we need to end our role in combat tomorrow.

 

If we were truly letting them figure out their own issues, they'd have kicked us out of the country a while ago.

My own opinion used to run along these same lines, but the figures in those polls changed my mind. If they want us gone so badly, who are we to stay? Their "saviors"? How much "good" can we possibly do for a fledgling democracy when we're blatantly ignoring the will of the majority?

 

Only an idiot refuses to consider the possibility of changing his opinion.

 

VYO, again read my whole post, I think you totally missed the part about us ending combat operations, and doing it right now. We stay as a nominal force as exsists today in Korea. We give them foreign aide to repair thier infastructure, and re-establish thier trade networks, basically get them on thier feet. The US military stays there only as a deterrent to foreign powers from invading. Read this as Iran and Turkey.

 

No, I caught that part. The problem is that a majority of Iraqis just want us gone, period. So long as American troops are present in Iraq, we're not honoring their wishes and are, in fact, violating their sovereignty. If they wanted us to stay, then fine, sure, I'd be okay with it, but that's not what the polls are telling us. If their desire to see us gone outweighs their desire to prevent Iran or Turkey from interfering in their affairs, then who the hell are we to tell them what's "best" for them?

 

VYO, I dont disagree with you, I know they want us out. I want us out. I think at this point though, if we take a realistic look at this. If we leave, which I want us to, Iran swoops in and if we were in a stalemate before we would have surely lost at that point. I know the polls from Iraqis want us out. Thier government despite it being totally inept has not asked us to leave. The day they do, we need to start packing. The other raising issue and potential hotbed is incursions from the Turks in the Kurdish north. I started another thread on this issue in world politics titled Turks rattle the sabre. The Turks are more or less saying that if the US congress passes a resolution declaring the Ottoman-Armenian situation from 90-100 years ago as genocide that they will kick us out of Incirlik AFB which is absolutely critical to supplying the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, but I guess that might not be a bad thing. Even worse though is the potential for them to initiate cross border raids into Iraq. That could potentially destablize the one region that seems to be doing well...Kurdistan. Like I said, I want us out. But not at the expense of Iran moving in and controlling that much of the world's oil supply.
I also think it probably not the best solution to partition Iraq into three areas. But give the Kurds thier own homeland in the north. It gives them some of the oil wealth, but not all. It would also settle one aspect of the ethnic fighting in several different countries. Iraq, Iran and Turkey.