Originally posted by: Lemon law
I have to give chucky2 the award for persistence with endless repeating of---Again: To affect long term change in the ME, so as the people there do not continually get brainwashed by their political and religious Leadership, how will you accomplish that?
When Cliftonite has already given a very good answer---It is not our job to change anything. Lasting change is achieved when people realize that it is needed and do something to bring about that change. Not through invading a random country in a region.
See my responses to him.
Then there is that other factor of smarts and competence. Yes there may be a problem we can see with others and wish we could change. But as they say, a job worth doing is worth doing right. GWB tried to half ass it and blew it. By that metric we lost on the day Rummy fired Shinseki, we had enough people to win a war but not enough people or a plan to
to run an occupation. Now its so screwed up its almost impossible to fix.
Yep, The Admin has half @ssed and blown a lot of it so far...the Iraqi's themselves through mistrust and pettiness, and foreign forces out to cause instability, didn't do too bad a job of it either. You'll get no argument from me that we should have went in with at least 2x more troops (and yet, if that is what was truly asked for, it wouldn't have been given, which we all know), and there should have been a huge aid package waiting offshore (which was totally doable and quite possibly the biggest "miss" of the entire Iraq war).
And as we play doctor USA, we forget the Hippocratic oath which starts with first do no harm. And if we want to look at the roots of 911, Al-Quida, and the Taliban, look no further than Ronald Reagan who used Afghanistan as a tool to tweak the nose of the Russian bear. And then abandoned Afghanistan as a no longer needed tool. Fifteen years later it came back to bite us. As we sow, so shall we reap.
But wait LL, we shouldn't be in these countries, Right? So if we left Afghanistan after helping them kick out the USSR, that wouldn't be abandoning them, right? That'd be doing exactly what you'd want us to do? Which way do you want it again, because, you can't have it both.
Or maybe the the following analogy might fit better. A strong man buys a cart and a donkey to make his labors easier. So he puts his goods in the cart, harnesses the donkey to the cart, and then treats the donkey with total contempt. Stubborn Donkey that its is, it rebels and refuses to move. But strong man is strong enough to pick up the donkey, the cart, and the goods and move it somewhere. Thereby making his labors far harder. Its just the difference between stupid and smart.
That analogy was worse than mine. How about this one: A man mistreats some dogs early in his life. He then moves, but dogs raised in the same environment as the few he mistreated come to where he lives, and rips his kids apart. The man then goes back to the area he mistreated the original dogs, and tries to get rid of the bad dogs so the mass amount of good ones there don't turn bad...which if he can do, not only protects him and his extended family, but benefits all the good dogs as well. He can't always tell which are good and which are bad, and unfortunately a very small few of the good ones he hurts. The bad dogs in their frenzy that he's there attack not only him, but many of the good dogs as well.
Then from afar, while the man is trying to still get rid of the bads dogs, his extended family bemoans his treatment of dogs at every opportunity. They wail and beat the ground at his name, cursing him and slamming his efforts, all the while having 0 real way themselves to deal with the bad dogs other than to ignore them in the hopes that none will come for them, which isn't reality but hey, it makes them feel better.
So, you feel better right LL? Oh, and, again:
Long term: Short of invading Iraq, what is your plan to change the dynamics of the ME Leadership (both political and religious) to keep them from brainwashing their populous?
Chuck
P.S. No offense to Muslims meant by the dog reference...just got back from seeing the new Lab puppy in the family...