Voters unhappy with Bush; Congress

[queequeger]

The question of 'is it still possible' is a difficult one, tw. And I certainly agree with your revue of the Kurds. But any withdrawal is, in my dearest opinion, a horrible moral mistake.

And now, this is bound to upset most of the left wing in these here forums (the left of which I consider myself a part), I look at this as a simple question of cause and effect. What will happen if we withdraw? Chaos and destruction, plain and simple. Anyone argues otherwise out of their hat. I look at the American military, still (although it's getting close) the only military superpower, and I look at the mess we've made. The horrible, appalling, murderous, teeter totter that we've made. I look and worry about the families and children that I've seen and never met.

I was against this war from the start, and although the disastrous mistakes have all but ruined our chances, we can still effectively win this counter insurgency and insure a safer Iraqi people. But not with this paltry force and underfunded reconstruction we're doing now. There is so much disgust for the up-til-now handling of this war.

Problem is, this will never happen. The american voter will never stand behind the 350,000+ troops that would be needed, nor the multi-billion that we'd need to spend on reconstructing that which has rotted away (the electricity, water, business, schools and even military). America is weary of the lies and the coffins.

Counter insurgency campaigns can be won, and there are dozens of historical manuals from French, British, and even American CI wars fought. Up til now, we've broken every rule of the CI handbook with our ham fisted, short sighted tactics. We'd have to test new ground to regain lost trust, but I really do believe that if the american people stood up and said "fuck all, let's do this," we would see a thriving Iraq in about 9 years (the almost universal timespan CI campaign lasts).

And yes, before you ask, I absolutely believe that the thousands of men and women who signed up to fight in wars that would die (and have already died) would do so willingly to save the lives of the hundreds of thousands who will die if we don't.