GOI: I must say that I have been impressed with the President of late as much as I disagree with his general politics and opposed his invasion of Iraq. He finally seems to be talking straight and honestly with the American people about Iraq. Being realistic and admitting errors but asking us for continued patience. I can work with that. I'm not a hard-core ideaologue who will disagree with a Republican President every step of the way just because he/she is Republican.
That being said, however, I am still a liberal so don't fear fellow libs. ;)
This comes at an exciting time in Iraq where we are on the verge of historical parlimentary elections. Progress (all be it slow) is occuring in Iraq and I am honestly starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel.
President Bush, delivering the last in a series of speeches about Iraq on the eve of that country's elections, said today he was encouraged by the prospect of broader political participation in Iraq, but he warned that successful voting will not make the insurgents "give up," and he urged continued "patience" by both Iraqis and Americans.
He asserted that U.S. forces in Iraq have made "real progress" in the 2 1/2 years since the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, and he vowed not to pull them out "until victory is achieved."
GOI: I am still not sure what he means by "victory" but I think I believe now that we have to stay as long as it takes. Even if that means a long-term presence such as in Germany, S. Korea and Japan. We can't afford to loose this war. We have to keep trying until we get it right and unfortunately that means more American casualties. He went on to say:
To set an "artificial deadline" for withdrawing U.S. troops would tell the comrades and the families of those who have already fallen that their sacrifice has been in vain, Bush said.
GOI: I'm starting to come around to this arguement. As I have said before I didn't agree with this invasion but we have created a terrorist state and we do owe the Iraqi's to make things right. This isn't an easy decision for me to make because I have a lot of disagreement with this President in general and in this war. However, I honestly believe it is indeed in our long term interests now that we are there.
I am still worried about the fledgling democracy in Iraq, however. Especially when I hear that these Iraqi candidates basically only "press the flesh" with people in their own ethnic group.
As well as the allowance of mosques doubling as political headquarters for religious candidates.
I am also still worried about the readiness of the Iraq army but they do seem to be doing much better then before.
So we shall see if the Iraqi's can iron out these problems over time.
I gotta give the man (Bush) some credit...at least he is finally leveling with us more about the realities of the war in Iraq.
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2 comments:
I think the Bushies and Rovians took a look at their polling data, and decided that there was simply no way up in continuing to stonewall and use newspeak 2.1 to get the public behind this effort.
I'll agree that to abandon the effort in 6 months is probably not the best route to go at this point, but nothing positive will result either without a real rapprochement with allies he'd snubbed previously and getting genuine international peacekeeping support to keep this clusterf*ck from getting any worse Monkeys are more likely to fly out of my butt than that is to happen. The world has pretty much had enough with this administration, even if Americans are slightly more forgiving.
I'm afraid this it's too little too late for all of this. We are stuck with this situation, like the Soviets were in Afghanistan, like the Czars were in WWI, until our national finances can no longer support our involvement there, military or otherwise. Then there really will be a need to pull out of Iraq precipitously. At that point, however, people will be too worried about losing their place in the bread lines to care.
Paolo: Yeah fiiiiiiinally we have some movement and semi-honesty from these guys.
I agree with you on the old allies...more attention should be given to them by Rice and Hughes in their visits. Plus, I think Georgie boy himself should be going over to old Europe a lot more to try and bring them more on board.
This has become a HUGE problem and we have to admit that we need more help then we are getting. At the very least let's allow more training of Iraqi soldiers in some of these countries.
I'm afraid this is all a little too late as well. We will be stuck their for years on end as I said in my post such as we were in Germany and Japan. However, in those too examples we never had the type of insurgency that we have today in Iraq.
We now are screwed and HAVE to stay for as long as we can or we will have blown up a country and then left them for the radicals to take over or worse, Iran. At least our presence there is keeping Iran from full scale invasion of Iraq...for now at least.
And you bring up a great point on the finances. At some point the money will have to dry up and then what? We certainly have bitten off more then we could chew on this one.
Ugh, the whole thing makes my head spin. And to think that all of this didn't have to happen. We should have supported the Iraqi's from the OUTSIDE in their OWN take over.
Grrr...damn neo-cons!!
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