Did we withdraw from Iraq too soon?

[LSN80]

I'm not sure, but the recent waves of violence aren't a good sign that civil unrest is ending anytime soon.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/01/27/car-bombing-kills-26-in-baghdad/?test=latestnews

Around 11am this morning, a suicide bomber killed at least 32 people at a funeral procession in Baghdad. Half of the deaths were policemen, who were guarding the event. Right after the event,m two more policemen were gunned down as well. The funeral procession was for 17 people who had been killed just the day before in two seperate bombings in Baghdad. Without confirmation, there are beliefs that Shiite militants, a renegade branch of the government, were behind it. The fear is that the Shite-lead government is retaliating against Al-Queda. 42 year old Convenience Store owner Salam Hussein, who was watching the processions and had his window blown out, injuring a worker of his, said the following:

"It was a huge explosion. Cars were engulfed in flames, human flesh was scattered around and several mutilated bodies in a pool of blood".

I can't imagine the horror of witnessing the event, let alone having someone you care about injured in the blast. As much as those of us who are Americans complain about the bickering and in-fghting between the Rebublicans and the Democrats, it's times like these where I consider myself darn lucky to live in a country where the worst type of assaults amongst branches are mostly of a verbal nature, not physical.

With that being said, the United States completed its withdrawl of troops from Iraq on December 18th. Since that times, it's been estimated that over 200 perople have been killed in a wave of bombings and other militia lead attacks. Most of it has been attributed to Al Queda, in what is believed to be an attempt to undermine confidence in the newly installed Shite Government. Furthermore, this escalating political crisis and obvious increases in violence are raising concerns that the country may explode into full-fledged civil war. What seemd to have begun with so much promise, the withdrawal of U.S. troops, now has Iraq in a complete state of unrest, it's citizens living in fear, and the country on the verge of Civil War.

Did the United States withdraw from Iraq too early? Would a United States presence possibly have presented these attacks?

Should the United States consider sending troops back to Iraq to prevent the possibility of a Civil War?

Any other thoughts here are welcome.

 

[SavageTaker]

Did the United States withdraw from Iraq too early? Would a United States presence possibly have presented these attacks?

Absolutely not, we should’ve been withdrawn from that country a long time ago. We already accomplished what we had to do in that country and we overstayed our welcome in Iraq. I’m glad our troops are where they belong, home.

As far as these attacks happening with US presence available, I think they would’ve still happened. The Iraqi people have had attacks with us there and without us there. So I don’t think American boots still being on the ground would’ve made that much of a difference. People need to understand that Al-Qaeda is filled with extremist terrorists. They are bad people with not so good intentions. If they want to plan out an attack they’ll do just that regardless of who has presence in whatever area they’re in.

Should the United States consider sending troops back to Iraq to prevent the possibility of a Civil War?

No. If we for a second ignore the further economic strain this would put on us and the amount of money that would be spent on this again, we would need to come to the realization that going back in there is a terrible idea.

Iraq is not America. We don’t own that country and therefore we shouldn’t go back in there and try to push our beliefs onto those people. We are not the policemen of the world and our ways are not the only correct ways. We need to let them figure things out for themselves and if them having a civil war is what’s needed, then so be it. I know it sounds harsh, but it’s about time the Iraqi government started taking their own actions in order to protect their people instead of waiting for America to make the next move for them.

 

[Peoples_Champ]

The US should wipe its hands of the Iraq situation. It was a mistake to go there in the first place, but going back? No way.

This region is filled with instability for a variety of reasons. Going back in to fix it is not the solution - trying to manage it covertly is a better tactic.

I can only imagine how Americans can tolerate being in massive debt while sending troops to distant countries under questionable pretenses. I support the US in a lot of their policies, but the whole Iraq situation was like Vietnam 2.0

 

[Harthan]

The question that has to be answered is this - what is the goal of the United States? Is the goal to protect United States interests? If the answer to that question is yes, then there is no reason to continue occupying Iraq or to prevent further sectarian violence there. You might want to get into the oil debate, but simple economics demand that no matter who is in control of Iraq or how much violence there is, it will never lead to a situation that will stop the United States or the world from obtaining oil at a relatively reasonable price from Iraq. There are subtleties and complications, to be sure, but none that justify the return of an occupying force.

If, however, the goal of the United States it to create a stable, peaceful Iraq, then we find ourselves in a somewhat different situation. The answer is still not a massive occupying force. Did a massive occupying force help? The answer is yes, but it had its limits. There was and is an upper limit to the efficacy of such a strategy, and the cost in dollars and life is steep. The strategy behind an occupying force isn't to try to resolve any of the underlying issues that cause the conflict - it's a brute force approach. Remove it, and violence returns. This isn't anything unpredictable. A return to an occupying force might help, but there are two barriers to it. One, the United States is having incredible difficulty justifying it at home, and two, the Iraqi government no longer wishes us there. What went on quietly that led to the withdrawal in large part was, essentially, the Iraqi government more or less kicking the United States out.

The smarter answer to resolving the sectarian violence and creating a stable Iraq is to remove the forces that are causing it. This could be accomplished, to my mind, in two ways - the first, by reasoning with those that can be reasoned with, and two, by eliminating those that cannot. The former goal would best be approached with the United Nations in a campaign of education, trying to bring together and resolve the differences of different religious groups that are the major motivator for violence. Working with the Iraqi government to try to encourage forward thinking and religious tolerance would go far. With regard to the latter goal, I suggest the strategy that ought to have been used to fight the War on Terror from the very beginning - covert ops. Use the resources of the CIA and the various elite black op military groups to hunt down and eliminate terrorists. They're guerrilla fighters - they thrive in the presence of occupying forces, rather than submit to them. Attack them covertly and you stand the best chance at eliminating them.

I'm not a military strategist, nor am I a master in cultural reform. But I know what hasn't worked. What hasn't worked is ignoring the underlying causes of violence and using a large occupying force. I can only suggest that we try that which has not been tried, and with my limited knowledge of the efficacy of these strategies, suggest that they might succeed where others have failed.

 

[George Steele's Barber]

Let me just premise this by stating that I am one of those millions of Americans that thought we should have never been there in the first place. Once we were in, after Bagdad was quickly toppled I thought we should have left immediately. Once we caught Saddam and determined this was not the level of WMDs I thought we really had absolutely no purpose being there anymore. So it pretty obvious that I am going to say the we did not pull out too soon. In fact, we may have waited so long to "pull out" that we created a baby that is going to suckle at our teat for generations to come.

The violence that we hear about today is sad but so was the violence of the past eight years. There is no question that our troops have in general done a noble job under difficult circumstances and it is time for the Iraqis to make their own peace.

 

[Mustang Sally]

We already accomplished what we had to do in that country and we overstayed our welcome in Iraq.

Yes. Whether we should have been there in the first place isn't the point anymore; the hard part will always be determining when it's time to leave.....and whenever we chose, some people will be unhappy about it. If the goal is to make sure that no more deaths occur in Iraq, then we're in there forever..... as its been stated, there will be killing whether we're there or not; if not in organized groups, then in small pockets of violence that bubble to the surface in unexpected places.

There are people in this world (and many, many of them seem to be in the Mideast) that look at killing as the answer for everything that ails them. Look at the Israelis and Palestinians. No matter that their government is telling them to cool it during peace talks; they're out there killing anyway.....it's all they know and understand. We blame their governments when a busload of students is bombed during a ceasefire, but it isn't the government authorizing it; it's people who simply want to kill.

The forms the killings take is incredible, but there's one that always stands out in my mind: a few years ago, the pilot of a commercial airline in Egypt decided it was time for him to die, and he chose to crash the plane to achieve his purpose. The problem is that 250 passengers were on board who all died, too. They had done nothing wrong and according to recordings made by the pilot on the black box which was recovered at the crash site, he was interested only in his own death. Yes, he could have just jumped off a building and killed only himself; the point is that 250 people were with him when he reached what he felt was his appointed time to sacrifice himself wasn't important. It didn't matter; he felt he was serving Allah and that's all he cared about. How do you combat that kind of thinking? How do you stop it? In fact, how do you even know it's coming?

So, now there are more deaths in Iraq by suicide bombers. There are incidents where a gunman opens fire on a group of children in a marketplace?......Yes, it's horrible, but I don't see how continuing a military presence in the country is going to stop it. When killing becomes a way of life, we can occupy the whole country again and still be unable to prevent it.

We did what we went there to do and got ourselves in deeper than anyone ever could have imagined.

Now, they have to police themselves.

 

[H33LTurn]

We spent enough time and money there and can return home safely. No one can force these people to stop living this way and it would be reckless to further intervene at the risk of worsening our economy and putting more soldiers' lives in danger. I know it isnt the right thing to do by leaving the Iraqis there to suffer but this is their lifestyle and its up to them to change things, we have our own problems.

 

[klunderbunker]

No I don't think we did. I think it was later than it should have been.

We were there for let's say 8 years. There comes a point where it's pouring money and more importantly lives down a hole. There probably was more than we could have done, but the question becomes at what cost? We've spent years and thousands of lives building up a country and if we didn't eventually make them stand on their own, why in the world would they ever want to try? Why would the Iraqi government even try to run the country if they knew that the USA would be there to hold them up? It's like keeping a kid on a bike with training wheels. He'll be safe if he never takes them off, but he's not going to be able to master it until he takes them off. The difference here is it cost billions and billions of dollars and thousands of lives to keep the wheels on. At some point, America had done enough over there and it was time to get out because it wasn't worth it anymore. Whether or not that's fair or right is debatable, but I have no problem with us leaving. It's not our responsibility anymore.

 

[Loveless]

If you go into someones house without being invited and then fuck it up, you don't get to just up and leave whenever the hell you want. You stay until you've fixed the problems you've caused.
The US should still be in Iraq until it's peaceful as punishment for wrongly invading in the first place. This kind of moral hypocrisy of saying "Oh it's cost us enough now" is disgraceful and shows the true motivation of the US army under Bush.

 

[SavageTaker]

We spent enough time and money there and can return home safely. No one can force these people to stop living this way and it would be reckless to further intervene at the risk of worsening our economy and putting more soldiers' lives in danger. I know it isnt the right thing to do by leaving the Iraqis there to suffer but this is their lifestyle and its up to them to change things, we have our own problems.

I agree with your overall sentiments but I think when you say “these people,” you’re speaking in too much of a general sense and that needs to be clarified. The Iraqi people aren’t asking to live that way. The want peace just as much as the rest of the world, they just can’t have it because of those extremist Islamic groups that are out to wreak havoc. So it needs to be pointed out that that the Iraqi’s aren’t living any sort of lifestyle. I find it ignorant that someone would even consider it that because not all of those people are terrorists and they aren’t all crazy suicide bombers. Not even the majority of them are that way in fact.

If you go into someones house without being invited and then fuck it up, you don't get to just up and leave whenever the hell you want. You stay until you've fixed the problems you've caused.
The US should still be in Iraq until it's peaceful as punishment for wrongly invading in the first place. This kind of moral hypocrisy of saying "Oh it's cost us enough now" is disgraceful and shows the true motivation of the US army under Bush.

So you’re basically saying we should just go ahead and colonize Iraq and make it our 51st state then because you do realize there will never be peace? The region is filled with violent and extremist people. If we go back and stay there until its peaceful then we’d just be wasting our time. You, me, our grandkids, and so and so forth will never see the day that peace takes over Iraq and the entire region. Whether it’s in the Middle East or anywhere else, violence, murder and a plethora of other issues are uncontrollable with or without us there. So there would be no point in going back.

Also, why punish the American people and make them continue suffering economically wise when we weren’t the ones seeking war. The majority of people are against the war, so why punish us too for our government’s decisions?

It’s extremely ridiculous that you would even suggest going back in there as a “punishment.” There really is no way to please the world and that’s just further reason on why we need to stay out of foreign affairs like this. If we’re there then people are angry in and outside of America and if we leave people want us to go back because they still aren’t peaceful and because we need to be “punished.” Get out of here with that crap.

 

[X]

I'm not sure, but the recent waves of violence aren't a good sign that civil unrest is ending anytime soon.

Dude...it's fucking IRAQ. Anyone expecting the violence to stop or even slow down is a moron, that's like going to the ghetto and busting up some street gang, throwing them all in jail, and then being shocked when a whole new gang has popped up in their absence two weeks later. It doesn't matter what we or anyone does, the violence will not stop in that area until the actual issues that lead these terrorists to violence in the first place are addressed and life in general improves. And you know what? That's fine. Because it's not our job to fix that country permanently, and that's not even a possibility. We did the best we could to clean up the mess we made in that country, and I have no qualms about the violence rising up since our departure. It's sad, sure, but it's a fact of life. This isn't an army that we can just go and take out the head of and dismantle like we did to Germany in WW2, we're fighting guerillas and street gangs man, you could destroy every insurgent in Iraq and within two months a whole new slew of them would pop up. Nothing can be done about that, atleast nothing that we can do as a military.

This thread is way, way, way too premature man. We've been gone for all of a month so far. Seeing as the country hasn't completely fallen to terrorists and isn't half on fire, no, I don't think we pulled out too soon. If anything we pulled out years later than we should have.

You can kill a man, but you can't kill his movement or ideology.

Oh and Loveless, if you think the Iraq War caused the Jihadist movement, you're completely wrong. This shit's been going on for decades and decades long before the Iraq War or Saddam Hussein. These people didn't rise up solely because the US government overthrew their dictatorship, these people saw chaos and a chance to take advantage of that chaos to further their own agendas. These people would still exist and would still be killing innocent people in the name of Jihad whether we ever invaded Iraq or not. The idea that we're solely responsible for ending their entire Jihadist ideological movement is asinine.

 

[Police Penis Sucking Goat Fucker]

That’s the last thing we need. The only reason why we invaded there country was to take there oil. Why would you want to bring back the troops when thousands of soldiers who fought in Iraq killed themselves? All war does is put us in debt and makes a small group of a people a lot of money. Then when our soldiers return home our government doesn't treat them with the respect that they deserve. They don’t care they breed these soldiers into brainwashed clones that have to follow all orders them when they make them there money after putting their life on the line the solider to them is nothing. During the 9/11 memorial ceremony when they name all the people who died in the attacks why don't they name the 100 thousand innocent civilians who live in Iraq that died because America wanted oil. We already spend so much of tax payer dollars on military spending


http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2011/05/civilian-casualties-in-iraq-afghanistan.html

http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.ph...90958092.80205.279628222055096&type=3&theater

I provided to two links to help support my message and proof how terrible war really is

One is a graph comparing the deaths of Iraqi civilian who have died since we been in Iraq compared to the deaths on 9/11 and the other graph is show how much of tax paying money goes to military and how little goes into houseing,schools,and health care.

Do you think we should go back to Iraq still?

 

[J.J.]

I like the "we" part in the topic title. There was never a time of civil unrest over there. It's funny how Fox News has picked up on these stories a lot more since the occupational leave. Occupation is over there, but theres still a post of soldiers from here over there. I spent multiple stunts in Iraq, even in 2008 while all those snotty nosed soldiers fresh out of bootcamp were watching "Tribute To The Troops" there were 3 similar explosions just 20 miles north in a hole in the wall unincorporated town. Many that cause these uproars are those that are against any type of government control. You'd be surprised how frequently these bombings happened. To answer your question they had to pull out - you don't begin to know the cost of not just the war but how much just being on occupation cost this nation over a 7 1/2 year period. Unfortunately it was more of a political propaganda move to pull us out than mama wanting her son and daughter home.

 

[Mighty NorCal]

Dude...it's fucking IRAQ. Anyone expecting the violence to stop or even slow down is a moron,

This thread is way, way, way too premature man. We've been gone for all of a month so far. Seeing as the country hasn't completely fallen to terrorists and isn't half on fire, no, I don't think we pulled out too soon.

Exactly this. This was gonna go this way wether we stayed there ten years or one hundred years. The place and the tribes have been at war and killing each other since fucking antiquity. Our concern was that the guy running shit wasnt a guy who wanted to fuck with US. We could have left 19 days after Sadaam was killed, and not a bit of fucking difference would have been made. A noble pursuit, trying to set them up a soveirgn police and National Guard force, but the culture there just doesnt work like that. The majority of them could give two motherfucks about "the country of Iraq" and care only about their sect of religion or political position.

It is what it is. Always would have been, always will be.

 

[SalvIsWin]

I don't think you say too soon, or too late because the USA shouldn't have been there in the first place. The second the USA decided to invade Iraq they were fucked, no matter what. If they stay, they're fucked because it's a war that shouldn't be fought and can't be won. If you leave right away, you're fucked because you just invaded a country on false premises, turned it on its head, and then walked away - you would be further motivating the exact people you're trying to stop.

The best that can come from this situation is a lesson, and it seems to be working that way because whenever there's talk of Iran, people are hesitant to say going to war is a good idea because look what happened with Iraq.

 

[Uproar]

Ok, i'm going to be perfectly honest and maybe even very narrow minded in many cases, and if anyone is offended i apologise in advance.

This is not anyone's war apart from there own. All we are doing (US and UK) is adding more fuel to the fire, i find it's there problem to sort out, allow them to kill each other and do it there way, what we are doing is causing one or both sides to actually start to dislike us for interference. Yes, a lot of people are in danger of being killed, raped, mutilated, lose their homes, and the list goes on. Whats the difference between that and Africa right now? More adverts seem to be about africa and joining the army then anything else right now, but what about our people, the ones who are homeless, jobless, on the verge of losing everything to them. Where is there help that is needed. Forget saving a village from being pillaged, save our people, the ones who matter more, the ones who actually are the base of our civilization that need it. I could be in the wrong here in many ways, but we need to save our own country before saving a country which will always be in a war with itself.

So in conclusion and to answer the topics question, we could not of pulled out soon enough from Iraq. We should not even be there. Survey the landscape, keep an eye on them with drones, but don't send a husband/wife, a father/mother, a son/daughter in to a warzone to die for something which isnt our fight, to go and die for nothing in the end.