Iraq - What Now?

Tending to personal and family commitments, Middle Class Warrior has been silent for several months. So much has happened since November 2006 that it was like a big meal that took a long time to digest.

The Democrats won the House and the Senate, repudiating not only the Bush administration’s handling of the war in Iraq but also, I believe, a rejection of their insensitivity to the plight of the Middle Class. If we can believe the Democratic Party leadership, they want to address our massive health care problem, move toward energy independence, and create more good paying jobs. Though I believe the House of Representatives will do all it can to move this agenda forward, it will be the Senate, where corporate campaign contributions is the blood on which the institution thrives, that will make or break these initiatives. Watch the Senate. These people don’t work for you, but for the corporations and lobbying groups that fund their campaigns.

But the biggest issue, the one that’s on the mind of almost every American, is Iraq. What do we do? Follow the President’s “new” course of surging a further troop buildup? Phase down our commitment by slowly bringing our troops home? Pull the plug as soon as possible?

That’s the debate and it will continue as long as Bush is in office. Let’s face it. We all know now that going into Iraq, as ignorant as we were, was a mistake. We had no idea what we were getting into. Most experts can’t even agree about that now. Are we fighting an insurgency? A counterterrorism operation? A civil war? It’s most likely a combination of all three. The question we have to ask ourselves is how do we handle it? Can we handle it? Should we handle it?

Like most Americans, I’m thoroughly disgusted with the Iraqis. We deposed a regime that had terrorized them for years. They were grateful—for a while. We had a small window of opportunity to transform their initial gratitude into a positive force. But we didn’t find ways to get these people quickly employed. We chased off the technocrats who could run the infrastructure because most of them were associated with Sadaam’s political party. We brought in American firms with Republican political connections to rake profits off of the “rebuilding” of Iraq. While we were fighting our “War on Terror”, the Iraqis were maneuvering behind the scenes to achieve the political agendas of their respective factions through violence and “ethnic cleansing.”

Now we’ve got what we’ve got; an insurgency, a counterterrorism operation, a civil war. A mess is the best description.

So what do we do now?

Here’s my recommendation. Give the President’s “troop surge” six months to work. If it doesn’t, pull all of our troops out of the center of the country. Mass them along Iraq’s borders with Syria and Iran. Seal off the borders from any outside infiltrators and foreign fighters. Let the Iraqis fight it out among themselves. Maybe without our troops in the middle, they’ll figure out a way to live peacefully. Once the Iraqis fill their power vacuum, we back the winner, declare victory, and come home.

But here’s the sad truth. We’re going to be in Middle East for a long, long time. Until we solve our debt problem to the Arab sheikdoms and end our dependence on their oil.

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