Should we be throwing away 100s of billions of our tax-payer dollars over the next decade or so...?

Question

Trying to establish a failed democratic state?

Is Iraq our Algeria as much as it is our Vietnam?

Answer 1

This is a pretty good example of a loaded question. I'll try to give you a straight answer, which may be difficult.

We shouldn't throw away hundreds of billions of money for anything, but if it is possible to establish a stable Iraqi government that is friendly to the west it would be not only to our benefit but to the benefit of the entire Middle East. I don't know if it's possible, but we have a problem that needs to be resolved at some point.

I am in favor of spending money killing our enemies and we are doing a fairly decent job of that, although one could argue that we are not getting a good dollar return for our investment. That would suggest we can do it better and hopefully that's what we are trying to do.

Comparisons between Iraq and Algeria don't work all that well, and we failed in Vietnam because we lost our stomach along with our hearts. We could very easily have won that conflict it we had a little resolve and had kept the politicians away from the issue.

I'd like to see us win in Iraq--I think if we fail we will see a lot of danger over the next few decades, and worse than what we have seen now.

There is no question that the war in Iraq has been badly managed, and that falls squarely on the Bush administration. The solution isn't to bail out. It's to do it right.

Nation-building is a nice idea if it can work, but killing our enemies is a terrific idea and it will work.

Answer 2

You're right.

We need to ditch the most liberal portions of California, New York, and New England and simply make them a new country to let fail on their own.

Then we also would have less of our hemorrhaging Welfare monies and every other kind of keep-them-poor-and-needy-support money.

Oh, wait... you meant IRAQ?!?!?