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Iraq

Koch's Comments: Let's get out of Afghanistan and Iraq now

2009-04-01

...There was a time when our government under President George W. Bush believed we would never leave Iraq and would retain some kind of permanent base there. Now we have signed agreements with Iraq's government committing us to leave permanently no later than December 31, 2011, and if any referendum in Iraq requires that we leave by June 30, 2010, we have agreed to do so. If I had my way, we would leave at once.

I believe we will gain nothing by delaying our departure from Iraq to equal the inevitable American casualties. Does anyone think the Iraqis will come to love or even like us? I don't.

...What will make the Iraqis more capable of peacefully running their own country within the next 18 months? I believe the tribal killings there among the Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds based on historic animosities will continue after we leave - unless a repressive dictator akin to Saddam Hussein takes over. Rationally, Iraq should be divided into three separate countries - Kurdistan, Sunnistan and Shi'iastan - either totally independent from one another or, if acceptable to all, loosely confederated.

Posted by:g(r)omgoru

#5 Zhang, aren't you on the side of all those unionist occupying forces?

I've always favored the Union side, but for un-PC reasons probably similar to Lincoln's and some of the Unionists of the era. If the Confederacy had endured, the importation of slaves might have resumed. Given how breeding slaves was a profitable endeavor, I suspect a Confederate government would have greatly expanded the slave population. As the slave population grew in relation to the white population, they would eventually have taken over the Confederate government, either via slave revolts or eventual enfranchisement. Imagine the black-ruled Caribbean dystopias of today expanded to include the entire South. What the Union did was in the long term interests of the South - the slave-owners were simply too myopic to understand this fact, and the non-slave owners were too enraptured by the rhetoric of state's rights to figure out that a society with an increasing helot population (in relation to non-helots) will eventually be ruled by helots, and much of the non-helot population forced out.

Posted by: Zhang Fei 2009-04-01 16:33

#4 Just about every country in the world has historical animosities that get smoothed over. Indians had their ancestral lands completely taken over. They're not exactly running around killing the foreign interlopers who took over, are they? Blacks were taken in chains to this country, where they were bred like cattle into generations of chattel slavery. Are they running around blowing up the descendants of their white masters?

Zhang, aren't you on the side of all those unionist occupying forces?

Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2009-04-01 16:06

#3 Does anyone think the Iraqis will come to love or even like us? I don't.

Which of the European countries love or even like us? And yet the European and North African theaters cost us 300,000 dead - in a war where neither Germany nor Italy attacked a single square inch of American territory.

I believe the tribal killings there among the Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds based on historic animosities will continue after we leave - unless a repressive dictator akin to Saddam Hussein takes over.

Just about every country in the world has historical animosities that get smoothed over. Indians had their ancestral lands completely taken over. They're not exactly running around killing the foreign interlopers who took over, are they? Blacks were taken in chains to this country, where they were bred like cattle into generations of chattel slavery. Are they running around blowing up the descendants of their white masters?

Posted by: Zhang Fei 2009-04-01 15:43

#2 Does anyone think the Iraqis will come to love or even like us? I don't.

As a nation, I wouldn't want to be 'loved'. Respected as in tough but fair and one that you don't want to get on the bad side of.

Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-04-01 14:01

#1 It truly is a pity that you can't afford to retire, Ed.

Posted by: William Marcy Tweed 2009-04-01 12:07

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