Salvaging the Iraq War

Submitted by Philip Snyder (United States), Jul 24, 2007 at 22:50

Daniel Pipes writes, in part:

The troops should remain in Iraq for another reason too: Iraq offers an unrivaled base from which to influence developments in the world's most volatile theater. Coalition governments can use them to:

• Contain or rollback the Iranian and Syrian governments.
• Assure the free flow of oil and gas.
• Fight Al-Qaeda and other international terrorist organizations.
• Provide a benign presence in Iraq.
• -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Dr. Pipes:

My comment is - that each of the above reasons for keeping troops in that area may also have dire consequences. Each of them could easily result in other rounds of active war. Acting as a "base to influence developments" is no guarantee that they would not be called on to resume active fighting. That's why I believe its a QUAGMIRE.

My opinion is that we have to overcome the early mistake of trying to achieve our goals on the cheap. Bring about 150-200 thousand additional troops from other less threatening areas such as Germany, etc. and saturate Iraq with them, and let them do their thing - victory. Then, while maintaining "martial law" send our most expert (strong) diplomats to organize a realistic government (as we did in Japan after WW-II) and continue training the Iraqi armed forces. This plan would also require "banging the heads together" of the various factions to agree on necessary compromises as the best option for all of them. During this process we must arrange for alternate energy sources, to cause the price of middle eastern oil to go down, and reduce their capacity to finance terrorism. If this plan fails, to hell with all of them - leave.

Regards,

Philip Snyder

Mt. Laurel, NJ

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".