George Bush’s Iraq
The Saddest Year End Round Up You’ll See
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The UN has to open a special branch just to keep track of the chaos and bloodshed, UNAMI.
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Abovementioned branch cannot be run from your country.
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The politicians who worked to put your country in this sorry state can no longer be found inside of, or anywhere near, its borders.
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The only thing the US and Iran can agree about is the deteriorating state of your nation.
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An 8-year war and 13-year blockade are looking like the country’s ‘Golden Years’.
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Your country is purportedly ‘selling’ 2 million barrels of oil a day, but you are standing in line for 4 hours for black market gasoline for the generator.
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For every 5 hours of no electricity, you get one hour of public electricity and then the government announces it’s going to cut back on providing that hour.
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Politicians who supported the war spend tv time debating whether it is ‘sectarian bloodshed’ or ‘civil war’.
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People consider themselves lucky if they can actually identify the corpse of the relative that’s been missing for two weeks.
December 30th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
It is so easy for me to forget this when I think about Iraq. God love our troops. I cannot stand to hear or read about another soldier’s death. But what is so fucked up is how many Iraqi civilians are dying a day and just how broken that land is. This is why I am opposed to a troop withdrawl. We need to find a way to get an international movement to build this country again. Until this happens we need a military presence or somethine in Iraq to help either clean up the mess we made or reduce the depths to which Iraq is going to sink. It is our responsibility.
By the way, thanks for the two depressing posts. Where is the talk about pizza and beer?
December 31st, 2006 at 12:04 am
I don’t think it would be hard to get the international community involved in Iraq if a justifiable case could be made. Something like, “could you take a turn getting shot at?” probably won’t cut it.
Why would a country send troops in now? Does Iraq pose a threat to Japan? To Canada? If not, where’s the justification? And, for that matter, what’s the justification for us?
How about pulling ground troops out of Iraq, thus forcing the Iraq’s to figure out a way to get along. There’s one less group to shoot then. Maybe they’ll decide to form three separate countries where they can live in peace?
For less than $1 billion / week, we could patrol the country from the air, protect Gulf oil shipments, increase diplomatic efforts with bordering countries, and save around a dozen US soldier’s lives a week. That frees up something like $1 billion / week for all kinds of more valuable stuff that doesn’t involve Halliburton.
Things may get worse before they get better in Iraq until this scenario, but we haven’t proven that we can make things better under the current scenario, so is there really that much of a downside?
December 31st, 2006 at 9:22 am
If we pull out now, Iraq won’t figure out how to govern itself, it will turn into Somalia. But I am not suggesting we “stay the course” or whatthefuckever Bush vaguely wants us to do. What I mean by getting international support is more along the lines of what you suggest. I’m not saying we ask Canada (“don’t forget Poland”) to put troops down in Iraqw. I’m thinking more of diplomatic pressure and coordination. Is there a way we can get what allies we have left, and the other counties in the region, to find diplomatic incentives and tools for Iraq to begin to self-govern? And while we are doing this, I think we do still have to keep some of our military on the ground.