Ouch My Head Hurts!

What do you do when all the options suck?

The war in Iraq seems to have devolved into two camps "Stay" and "Leave". I'm in the "Leave" camp, but in all honesty I'm not really comfortable there. I want a third option!

It's not that I think abandoning the Iraqis to their own devices is a good idea. It's just that I don't think decades of American occupation will chance the end result. IMHO if we leave today there will be a civil war, but if we leave in ten years their will still be a civil war. Sometimes you just have to let people resolve their own conflicts.

I would love another option, but I just can't think of one. The thought of the genocide, rape and brutality that will result in our leaving picks at my conscious. Unfortunately, this is the way humans resolve cultural conflict. Democracy is a nice idea, but if you're the hated minority it's not really that appealing a concept. If you happen to be a nasty and brutal minority, with an over inflated feeling of superiority, and have ruled for decades through torture and murder, it must seem like a horrible idea. The though of being tortured in a prison you used to run has to be particularly unappealing.

Now I'm sure one of the first words out of everyone's mouth is going to be Al Qaeda.

Well Al Qaeda is going to be a problem in a lot of places for a real long time. It's best to accept the fact that we are in a new cold war and just get on with it. We need to organize covert ops, recruit proxies and hunker down for a really long-term financial drain. It took a long time for the Europeans to get over the whole protestant/catholic think. Don't expect the jihadist to get tired anytime this century. And don't think that we have infinite recourses to invade every country were they exist. They are in Britain, Spain, Afghanistan and a dozen other countries, we can't invade them all. (And I think the British would put up a heck of a fight)


PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE RIPPING INTO MY GROIN WITH GIANT NASTY TEETH: If you are in the "Stay" camp there is no points posting a 2 page titrate about how wrong I am! Yelling at me will not convince me to chance my mind.

You have to make an argument that I find acceptable. Not one YOU find acceptable! If that concept make your head hurt, then please leave this thread.

Every day the war drags on the "Leave" camp wins another convert, whether you like it or not, the burden of proof is on you to convince people to keep fighting. That's just the nature of war. As a war drags on, and that first flush of patriotism wears off, bodies start to pile up, and people start to question the venture.

I can give you some hints about how to approach the other side but I can't do your work for you.

For starters, W is your leader, if you don't change his behavior you're sunk.
That whole strategy for victory thing was D.O.A. It may have made the pro-war camp flush with pride but nobody else seemed impressed.

Some good suggestions for W would be:
Fire Rumsfeld and get Cheney to resign. It is long since time for the chicken hawks and neo-cons to get dumped into the trash bin.

Stop calling the "Leave" people cowards. It's not a good way to make friends!

A sincere apology for making a mess would be nice. (The apology doesn't count if you smirk during the speech)

And most importantly start talking, appointing and doing things like a centrist! Most of the "Leave" crowd don't trust Bush. Successfully guiding a bunch (not just one or two) of centrist causes through congress would really improve his credibility. (How about fixing the whole electronic voting machine mess? Or getting the coastal cities ready for more hurricanes.)

Trust is not easy to regain once lost, but if W came out and said "I am going to do the following things to regain your trust." It would make him a more credible leader.