When placing a type of governmental system into effect over any given people it is important for that people to have the knowledge and ability to operate under that given system. To take nomadic sheep herders and attempt to place them under Jeffersonian Democracy would be fallacious because they cannot afford such a governmental system nor would they have the common knowledge and educational level among their people to support it. We are talking about a people who have been under a barberic form of oppressive law due to theological powers in their region for CENTURIES. The idea that we can come in and overnight change an entire people into something that can run a form of govenment totally different from their world view and theological world view is delusional.
This is exactly what we have attempted to do. We have used our military might to take over a countries armies and suppress their peoples into a form of controlled anarchy / civil war while not maintaining public systems such as police, water, power, and basic safety of the citizenry. What the news media and/or American government label as "terrorists" and/or "insurgents" are merely those that are a part of a world view which cannot grasp nor be expected to grasp the benefits of a democracy when they look at our own form of existence as herasy to their respective theological viewpoint. We are asking them to change their entire belief structure in order to operate under a new system which they did not (and do not) approve of.
The American Indians were predominantly nomads. For this reason personal property had not taken hold as a concept in their civilization for the most part (except perhaps in the Aztec regions but that is for another discussion perhaps AND that isn't North America for the most part). So when the "white" men attempted to purchase their property it was an idea souly foreign (for lack of a better term) to them. They did not understand that "these cows" and "this piece of land" weren't "everyone's." Because they had a tribal-view system, their personal wealth was meaningless. If the tribe was hungry so were they, if the tribe was at war so were they, if the tribe was well fed, so were they. We are trying to impose our democractic ownership capitalistic system upon a people who for the greater part of a few thousand years have lived under theological/theocratical tribal rule. It can not work, it will not work. It will...stay a quagmire.
Solution? Leave. Iraq will decend into a greater civil war than is currently taking place now and do not be disillusioned it is CURRENTLY having a civil war it is just that it is a coward's civil war and not a frontal civil war like America's was. Car bombs, IED's and the like are the way of the present war and our soldiers are dying as literal collateral damage to another country's civil war. As one soldier said, "one of these groups will become the victor and wipe the others out." That sounds so hopeless and yet we have yet to take a page from history and see that the predominant belief systems and majority rule have done this at every turn. To delay this course of action is costing lives, hunreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and thousands of our soldiers lives. All in some wet-dream stale-mate to the destiny of any country which has lost the primary stablizing governmental system of that time. It is an almost natural process and that we are present there is doing nothing but extending the violence and keeping the fictional Iraqi government in place instead of the one which should form after the smoke clears. It is time to realize the inevitable end and leave.
About now I would hear some moron say that we should stay to "honor those men who have died for this cause." There are few statements more stupid to say than that one. It means this: because a moron of a leader walked us into this quagmire, and because said leader was a moron with no plan of leaving it, EVER, and because said leader-moron has failed repeatedly to bring about even a glimmer of hope due to his lack of understanding anything about foriegn policy including country-building policies, we should have more men die to in some way make this lack of meaning have more meaning." It is like "yeah, see, three thousand+ men's deaths have taken place and because they died for this cause (which is in fact a form of civil war) we should allow even more to die and in the end although we will not bring about a single good end, it will mean more to us because the death toll was higher for us." Freaking morons.
The solution is to get out now. Pack up the troops, the equipment, and pull back to Kuiwait. Sit there and watch. When an Iraqi leader steps forward (a true one that will of course have military might and have his people in a form of control) we then deal with him to stabilize the region even more through helping with basic infrastructure: power, water, sewage, etc. This will cost lives. Thousands will likely die in the few months after the pull-out. But you know what, thousands are going to die anyways and there is no end in sight. At least if we play the "historical card" and do WHAT WE ARE GOING TO DO GIVEN ENOUGH TIME ANWAYS then perhaps the deaths will not be our own men but only those involved in their own civil war.
And that is perhaps the only answer that would work with a Quagmire...set it on fire and burn it down and when the smoke clears those left alive can work toward rebuilding. As of right now there is nothing that can be done to bring Iraq under control through the pseudo-government that America is protecting. The only control to ever be found in such a region is through a form of government that is either truly enforcing their control on the populace and/or is holding it under a totalitarian control group. To think that our form of government would work for such a primitive-minded people is not only delusional, it is just plain dumb. And it is such ignorance that is costing us lives.
J. B. A.
McGyver
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