angus
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Posts: 17,424
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« on: March 30, 2007, 11:07:40 AM » |
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1. Withdraw immediately. Money saved and lives saved. On the down side we look like jerks in the international community. The international community only likes jerks if they still have lots of money to spend on oil. Also, the history books eventually make comparisons to the early stages of the Fall of the empire at some future point when they start to have titles like "The rise and fall of the United States of America" Some egghead somewhere in some classroom someday says that the people simply lost their stomachs for imperialism, but by then the republic had already transitioned to empire, so the whole system fell apart.
2. Maintain the Status Quo: As you point out, it makes for stability in congress, since no one looks too bold or too weak. We like our congressmen and congresswomen to be seen and not heard. Like children. On the other hand, "maintaining the status quo" is a game only for the rich. We're up to about 4100 dollars per taxpayer, and if we start to have to tax ourselves so heavily in order to "maintain the status quo" then our economy suffers. Economic historians will no doubt prefer this angle when they discuss The Fall.
3. Escalate within Iraq: It's a gamble. I kind of like it, since we're at least changing something. (it's insane to keep doing the same thing and expect different results.) And it's a nice gesture of trust to make to the president. On the other hand, it's like saying we need to fight fire with fire. That only really works when you're trying to stop forest wildfires from spreading so you burn the surrounding deadwood. Also, escalation of violence is hard to justify to your potential allies. We couldn't scratch up much of a coalition outside the anglophone world even with Powell going around with his slideshow. If the slideshow includes escalation you won't even get the imperialistic English (and their minions in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada) on our side. So we're on our own.
4. Escalate beyond Iraq (possible Iranian invasion): This would give Dick Morris a hard-on, no doubt, and the neoconservative think tanks would love it. Also, it weakens Opec alliance, perhaps to our advantage, perhaps not. But don't kid yourself about the nukes. As we learned over the past couple of decades, a large state enemy is a more responsible enemy than bands of disorganized rogues. I'd rather have states with mutually assured destruction on their minds playing headgames with nukes than unemployed atomic physicists roaming the west asian countryside tinkering for the highest bidder.
I think that the guy in "The Blair Witch Project" who threw away the map is sort of like George Bush. And the film student in that movie is like the Democrats crying and whining but offering no real solution. And the other guy is the American People who (by his own choices) ended up being led by such inept clowns. We're at the part where we're crossing that little stream for the third time and just starting to realize that we're walking in circles. At least we realize that. But the analogy ends there, because apparently we caught the blair witch, tried him, and executed him. Yet, somehow we're still seeing those scary figures hanging in the trees and we're still not out of the woods.
Oops, you said you wanted a "no BS" discussion. okay, really, I'm against timetables, since they just give the enemy an advantage. We either surprise them by evacuating now, or we surprise them by ratcheting it up. I prefer the less expensive option, obviously. But sometimes it's worth betting even if all you have is a pair of jacks. But don't bet more than you can afford to lose. As far as invading Iran, dude that's a real country. It's not just a piece of the West Asian map that was left over after France and England got finished carving up the countryside a hundred years ago. Iran is not Iraq. It's an ancient, proud nation with a history longer than ours. It has a reasonably intelligent president and a well-educated public. They have not threatened us, except the obligatory backslapping remarks leaders always make when they're having tea with the Venezuelan president. Bravado and such. The environmental and economic destruction of war is great, and responsible empires need to figure out new ways to control the world. We can't use a 19th century model of subjugation if we want to control a 21st century world.
But whether we stay the course or bring them home, mostly we just need to let our armies do their jobs. Stop worrying about how many whores they're screwing and how many imams they're urinating on. In any scenario, we need to let our efficient killing machine kill, unfettered by the rules of nice behavior that we impose on ourselves here in the real world.
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