Is it time to change direction or stay the course?

Answer 1

Not sure, just go with the wind!

Answer 2

Stay the course, change the tactics on the ground and in the air as so eloquently stated by our President and the Secretary of Defense.

Answer 3

When the "course" is based on scores of lies, so illogical and so hard on the a_s (to the tune of 2800+ ??) of everyone EXCEPT those who are trying to con everyone else into "stay"ing it, all I can say is I report... you decide.

Answer 4

Dear Rob,

I assume you're talking about Iraq. I have always thought this was a ruinous, ill-considered and deeply irrational war, but now that the US is in, I believe they should stay in. After all, no one put a gun to Bush's head and forced him to invade Iraq (the link to Al Qaeda was nonsense and the WMD non-existent), so now that he did, the least he can do is fulfill his responsibilities. One cannot just invade a country, forcibly remove its government, cause a massive breakdown in law and order leading to anywhere between 300 and 650 thousand deaths, and then simply leave.

It is a tragedy that Bush involved American credibility in this costly and bitter venture, but unfortunately it is American credibility which is at stake here. The ironic thing is that the invasion of Iraq itself has placed the country in the frontline of the war on terror. Pulling out before Iraq achieves at least a modicum of peace and stability will therefore have the following consequences: first, Iraq will turn into a breeding ground for Al Qaeda and become intensely vulnerable to the nefarious influence of rogue neighbouring states, most notably Iran and Syria. As a result, the threat level to the US and the West in general will become far higher than anything we've experienced so far, a truly frightening prospect. The terrorists will gain enormous moral ground.

And secondly, most of the world (which opposed this war from the beginning) will be vindicated in thinking this was just a cynical war for selfish American interests, most notably oil, ideology and petty personal grudges. US moral authority in the world, which makes all the difference between a benign superpower and an imperialist bully, will take a huge blow which could quite possibly never be repaired. At the very least, the monumental diplomatic damage thus caused would affect the international balance of power for years, and not in a good way. China and Russia in particular will achieve a much greater clout in international affairs than they probably should, at this point in their development.

This is why, as much as I disapprove of the entire Bush administration, the temptation to vote for them in November exists nonetheless. The Democrats are milking the Iraq setbacks for all they are worth after years of ineffectual struggle, and in a way being just as unreasonable as the Republicans - so the risk is very real that they might simply take their partisan crusade too far and impede any further progress on the commitment to Iraq. This would be a huge disaster: the US should stay in, simply because any other choice would invite even more death and suffering. I think strategy can and should be debated, of course, just as long as this basic principle is agreed upon. The ideal would be to justly punish the Bush administration in the mid-terms for its criminally inept conduct of international affairs, but firmly insist that the Democrats discard any plans to get out of Iraq.

My personal view is that US commitment should actually increase. No one should ever go to war lightly (much less on the basis of faulty, politicised intelligence and dollops of partisan wishful thinking), the war in Iraq was certainly a stupid idea, but once you've made your bed you should lie in it and try to make a short night of it. So raise the troop levels to 500,000, allow more defence appropriation bills and do whatever else is necessary to quell the insurgency and batter the rabble-rousers into the ground as quickly and efficiently as possible. For all its gung-ho talk about being tough on terror, the Bush administration has actually only made a half-hearted contribution to Iraq so far. If it had been truly secure about its rationale on the war, it would have gone all the way. Indeed these incompetent half-measures are part of the reason why things have degenerated so tragically in the first place.

Anxious comparisons about Vietnam are bound to reach a fever-pitch, of course, but they will not be completely accurate. Iraq is indeed going to be a long and bitter struggle - an artificial state which in the first place was never meant to harbour as many divided ethnic and religious groups as it does, Iraq will take years, if not generations, to become a healthy and stable society. It will take countless rounds of skilled policy-making to promote a just settlement between the contending populations of Iraq, and even after a normalised security situation is achieved, violent setbacks will most probably remain a possibility for decades to come.

But this is where reasonable analogies must stop. Unlike Vietnam, the insurgents in Iraq have no legitimacy and no overwhelming popular support. The Vietcong were patriots who fought with full justification to rid their country of a long history of foreign control, in a strongly unified land with a homogeneous population. This is why most Vietnamese supported them, and why the South Vietnamese government was ultimately an unviable sham. The insurgents in Iraq, on the other hand, represent violent fundamentalist groups with barbaric and near-sighted agendas which the average Iraqi fears and resents. After decades of a brutal dictatorship, a devastating war with Iran and two Gulf wars, most Iraqis aspire to peace and security. None of the groups currently involved in killing and slaying innocents, whether they are of Sunni or Shia extraction, can ever claim to represent the aspirations of the Iraqi people in general.

In that sense, the US is truly fighting for the people now, and this is a noble mission. It should do everything in its power to bring it to fruition. The supreme irony of Bush's tragic ineptitude, indeed, is that he has left America no other choice.

Hope this helped,

Answer 5

the direction on what war? or living in general?

Answer 6

If you find yourself in a hole, first stop digging.

Answer 7

In what regards?