What is YOUR solution to the Iraq situation?

[palehorse]

Ok, the general purpose of this thread is to hear from everyone exactly what their specific ideas are to ultimately bring peace to Iraq. I see too many people attacking the current administration's plans without themselves offering a viable alternative. Sooo, here's the big test: do you have a better idea? a workable solution? If so, please let me know here!

I'll begin with a quote of Catnap in another thread. I'll then post my response, and my PERSONAL perspective on the situation. Devil's advocate if you will...

Originally posted by: catnap1972
If the tables were turned and Iraq was invading the US, what would YOU do? Sit like a doormat or fight back?

IMO:
WE would have the common sense to realize that it's our fellow countrymen and neighbors across the street who are making our lives hell, NOT the fault of those who liberated us. What would -I- do? I'd figure out a way for my neighbor and I to reach a compromise and live together in peace, or I'd kill them. (in other words, exactly what Iraqi's are doing).

MOST of the blame falls on THEIR inability to compromise with EACHOTHER and act like civilized human beings. They are aiming at and killing EACHOTHER, for the most part, so this is MOSTLY their damn fault.

So let's get it straight: Their fratricide is THEIR fault and THEIR problem to solve. The environment permitting the fratricide to occur is OUR fault and OUR problem.

Therefore, we must figure out a way to make said environment less condusive to violence. How do we do that? Well, IMO, and the current administration's for that matter, we simply continue to train their Army and police to eventually clean up the violent environment themselves.

so here we are. everyone trackin so far?

Ok, that said, what would YOU propose that we do NOW instead? (not 3 years ago!! I want to hear any/all of your ideas as to what we need to do TODAY and TOMORROW. Let's try not to BLAME people here, and for once, just this once, let's try to brainstorm ideas and solutions for the FUTURE in Iraq. got it?)

GL!

 

[judasmachine]

a tailored biological agent to kill off all the humans, and left mother nature have it back?

seriously there is no easy solution. i would say flip a coin, but there are not enough sides to represent each option. i personally would like to see our boys home, but that doesn't solve the problem.

 

[ITJunkie]

Well...one idea I have is to pull all our troops back closer to the border and "ring" the country. The idea being to let Sunni's, Kurds, and Shiite's try to come up with their own solutions while keeping Islamic Fundie's from outside getting in.
Yes, I know this idea is full of holes but...crap I don't know, it's such a friggin' mess that maybe there isn't anything that can be done now.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: palehorse74
Ok, the general purpose of this thread is to hear from everyone exactly what their specific ideas are to ultimately bring peace to Iraq.

Oh come on your question is flawed.

There will never be any such thing as "peace" in any of the Middle East areas.

It's literally and always will be a Hell hole because of the coming together in one area of too many religious extremists.

They don't want peace.

Each of them wants their own religion to dominate the area and other people.

My solution is simple and will certainly work.

They want to be seperate, seperate them.

Wall each and every of the seperate extremes.

A bunch of Berlin Walls with a real purpose.

Walls instead of troops.

Simple.

Thank you

 

[Sheik Yerbouti]

Try to look at it from a historical perspective, You are looking at the US circa 1863, the civil war is at top speed, or even 1861, when it was just starting to roll. What would you do to try to establish peace between the north and the south? Allow the south to secede?
It's really not a simple answer. However, unlike the Civil war in the US, Iraq was started by an outside entity. The Iraqi's had no say over what was going to happen. Now it's falling apart. Suicide bombers almost on a daily basis, mass excecutions, and the US army can't do a damn thing, can't help side a without reaping the ire of side b, and visa versa.
There is no 'right' answer, and I think that most people with a modicum of intelligence will agree this should have never been started.

 

[Aimster]

Saddam Hussein was good for Iraq.

They are charging him with cimes... well those crimes is what kept Iraq together.

Think about it. If he was some nice guy his country would have collapsed into a billion little pieces .. sort of like what is happening now.

 

[dullard]

No, there is not one correct answer. All routes from here will be painful.

The easy short-term solution would be to split Iraq up into smaller chunks, where each one is a state with their own control. Sunnis get their control, Kurds get their control, etc. This can be done relatively peacefully now. Unfortunately, we know the long term results - it'll be just like Israel is now. Forced land separation always results in endless bickering and fighting. We will always need a presence to keep the relative peace.

The only result I can forsee is a civil war. So, why prolong it? Just pull out, sit back, and let them fight themselves into a pulp - without our help on either side. A decade or so later, someone will be so weak, that it'll give up. Sure there will still be tension, but the result will be their own true compromise. Over time, the anger will subside - we aren't still having intense north/south battles in America.

As I see it, they hate us. ANY result of our intervention will be hated by them, even if the result is truely the best possible result. They will always hate that result and there will always be trouble. So why go down that path of guaranteed failure?

 

[OrByte]

Originally posted by: Aimster
Saddam Hussein was good for Iraq.

They are charging him with cimes... well those crimes is what kept Iraq together.

Think about it. If he was some nice guy his country would have collapsed into a billion little pieces .. sort of like what is happening now.

I think we are learning that democracy isnt for everybody....so in a way I agree with you. But going back to a dictatorship doesn't sound like the right answer either.

tough one.

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: OrByte
I think we are learning that democracy isnt for everybody.

I think, long-term, democracy can work for everybody. But it cannot work with many powerful anger-filled minorities artificially placed together and told to behave. Democracies and republics (or variations) that have worked started with slavery - or at least complete dominence of one group over the other (think of the US, South Africa, etc). Then centuries pass and the slavery ends, resulting in a stable democracy. I'm not promoting enslaving one of the Iraq groups. I'm just pointing out the extremes that were necessary to reach stable democracies. Extremes that I don't think are going to happen now in Iraq.

 

[Aimster]

The U.S had a civil war.

Let Iraq have their civil war.

We ended up just fine. They will too.

 

[EatSpam]

Sell stock in Haliburton. Pull troops out, sit them on the Mexico-United States border. Watch the Iraqi civil war continue from a distance.

 

[istari101]

Originally posted by: palehorse74
I see too many people attacking the current administration's plans without themselves offering a viable alternative.

I don't think that there are any viable alternatives to this quagmire, and the only real options are those that minimze fallout. Iraq's current condition seems very representative of the overall state of the Middle East: a war-torn hotbed of religious issues that can only be resolved at the end of a (figurative) sword.

There are no viable alternatives or peaceful solutions here because the radical militants on both sides of the fence don't want peace.

 

[smack Down]

Time travel. Go back in time and slap all the people in FL that voted for Bush.

 

[OrByte]

Originally posted by: dullard

Originally posted by: OrByte
I think we are learning that democracy isnt for everybody.

I think, long-term, democracy can work for everybody. But it cannot work with many powerful anger-filled minorities artificially placed together and told to behave. Democracies that have worked started with slavery - complete dominence of one group over the other. Then centuries pass and the slavery ends, resulting in a stable democracy. I'm not promoting enslaving one of the Iraq groups. I'm just pointing out the extremes that were necessary to reach stable democracies. Extremes that I don't think are going to happen now in Iraq.

I agree with you that long term there may be hope for a stable democracy. But is that what Iraq needs now? I dunno if can work.

OUR Democracy started with slavery, slavery as a means of commerce. Commerce isn't the issue in Iraq, Iraq hasn't even got that far. Our Democracy did not have the religous complexities of these factions in Iraq, but it can be somewhat equated to our founding fathers leaving Europe, and religious persecution, for the Americas. Can that be done now with Iraq? who knows, I don't think anyone is going to want to leave anywhere and besides where will they go? Imho the tribal and religious fractures within Iraq are something that cannot be governed with a democratic state like we see in the west, there has to be some type of hybrid. No one has yet figured it out.

 

[EatSpam]

Originally posted by: smack Down
Time travel. Go back in time and slap all the people everywhere that voted for Bush.

Fixed for you!

 

[magomago]

So is the OP telling us now that the blame lies on the Iraqis themselves? That they brought all of this upon themselves?
No offense, but when you have a power vaccum expect the greediest to rush to try to get the power first by ANY means possible. This maybe through militas, seeking injunctions or religious decrees to try to provide yourself a based from which to govern, through pure violence, through $$$ (Chalabi...)
I would expect this to happen in any nation regardless of location or "modernity". If this happened in the USA I would expect us to do the exact same thing, although we wouldn't see power stem from people sharing the same last name But the power grab would ALWAYS still exist.

The blame lies at the fault of those who took us to war. Beyond the fact that the whole basis for the war is on shaky ground, we were told repeatedly that we need 500-600k troops. But to appease the populatin in the short term and get us in Iraq, Bush said no only 150,000 and that we would quickly pull out. Now we are paying over ten fold that because there is no security. People don't even feel safe in their own homes, industrial areas are constantly getting attacked if they are seen in "Collaboration with the Americans" especially when it comes to oil, the troops are getting picked off one by one, and someone is running around the country attacking Mosques trying to instigate both sides.
Had we had the proper force in the first place, even with such a shaky basis for invasion of Iraq, things would NOT be in the situation that we are currently in. I still think we can salvage the situation by pumping another 500k troops in there and see improvment over the next two to three years...but the hard part is getting the American Public (and even the people on this board!) to beleive that it will help. The difference is I'm not going to lie and say it won't hurt, because I am almost sure that we will see a spike of violence in the short term due to "the increase in prescense of the Americans"

Anyways my whole point for this: I can't beleive you are blaming the Iraqis for what is going on.

 

[Orignal Earl]

Originally posted by: palehorse74

Ok, that said, what would YOU propose that we do NOW instead? (not 3 years ago!! I want to hear any/all of your ideas as to what we need to do TODAY and TOMORROW. Let's try not to BLAME people here, and for once, just this once, let's try to brainstorm ideas and solutions for the FUTURE in Iraq. got it?)

GL!

Lol, what's up with the yelling all the time, you related to DragonMasterAlex?

Originally posted by: DragonMasterAlex
Even if they WERE serious, who cares? Al Jazeera is CLEARLY the mouthpiece of Al Quaeda. I'd HAPPILY support bombing their offices to oblivion and throwing all their journalists in Guantanimo Bay until they reveal their Al Quaeda sources.

Jason

Let's try not to BLAME people here

There were alot of people at Nuremburg saying that same thing

I have no solution, but I do believe the U.S. should stick it out and pay for it all


edit- stick it out as in- give all the soldiers the *choice* to be there or not, make sure they all know all the sides to the story and let them choose

 

[jimkyser]

Originally posted by: dullard
The easy short-term solution would be to split Iraq up into smaller chunks, where each one is a state with their own control. Sunnis get their control, Kurds get their control, etc. This can be done relatively peacefully now. Unfortunately, we know the long term results - it'll be just like Israel is now. Forced land separation always results in endless bickering and fighting. We will always need a presence to keep the relative peace.

The biggest issue with this (and this is pretty much what the current Iraqi constitution lays out, with it's loose federation verbiage) is that it locks the Sunnis out of the oil revenues. There isn't much if any oil in the areas dominated by Sunnis. They will not sit an watch access to all of that oil money be taken away from them. You're pretty much guaranteeing a guerrilla war by the Sunnis against the Kurds and the Shiites. Then remember that only Iraq and Iran are majority Shiite. So would the neighboring Sunni dominated countries then set in to help their Iraqi brotheren. That would escalate what is happening on a small scale in Iraq to a regional war between the Sunnis and the Shiites. I worry less about the Kurds since Turkey wouldn't help them and they'd be on their own pretty much, thought with outside help, the Sunnis may be able to overrun them.

 

[conjur]

Implement the Murtha Resolution and let the Iraqi government solidify but remain on the outskirts of Iraq in case genocidal bloodshed results (I know it's a bit hypocritical to ignore the Sudan bloodshed but Iraq is a focal point right now.)

 

[homercles337]

Originally posted by: Aimster
The U.S had a civil war.

Let Iraq have their civil war.

We ended up just fine. They will too.

We had an established representative republic in place before the civil war though. What does iraq have ATM? There is no cleaning up this mess. Bush I had it right:

Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different ? and perhaps barren ? outcome.

 

[gilligans]

Only way is to make a deal with the devil himself Saddam Hussein. make him a puppet of the CIA and have him rule over iraq like he did before, but with americas agenda in mine. Thats the only way, and it will only work if he does it his way. kill, rap & plunder! sad but true.

 

[Pens1566]

Install another Saddam-like strongman, or separate it into 3 new states for Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis. Then time travel back and kneecap everyone that voted for Shrub in Florida in 2000.

 

[DotheDamnTHing]

Originally posted by: Pens1566
Install another Saddam-like strongman, or separate it into 3 new states for Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis. Then time travel back and kneecap everyone that voted for Shrub in Florida in 2000.

:thumbsup:

 

[Slick50]

How about we leave it up the the government instead of all of this speculation and theorizing that nobody can prove.

 

[EatSpam]

Originally posted by: DotheDamnTHing

Originally posted by: Pens1566
Install another Saddam-like strongman, or separate it into 3 new states for Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis. Then time travel back and kneecap everyone that voted for Shrub in Florida in 2000.

:thumbsup: