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In case anyone hasn't already figured it out, I'm a supporter of a 100% troop pull out from Iraq. I'm tired of all this "we can't leave now, everyone will be angry at us" and "we'll leave a vacuum" bull. Listen, our presence in Iraq is the main reason why there is fighting. It is not because the majority of insurgents don't want democracy. It is not because we don't have enough troops.
Democracy means that these people should be given a complete choice over what happens to their country. Anyone who would say otherwise would give you some crap argument such as "but they don't know what's best for them; they've never had a democracy." Well, tough. They're human beings. There are many very intelligent people there. We're not helping things.
We should pull out, give them all the financial aid and manpower we can, and let the U.N. take over with our complete backing. I understand that pulling our guys out right away would cause some problems... and perhaps we should do it slowly. Or, maybe we should let alot of them stay in with U.N. uniforms. However, being that I don't really do well with authority, I obviously think the people should ultimately decide.
We created this mess, liberation or no, and now it's time to admit we fucked up and let the Iraqis decide what's best for Iraq. Of course, the corporate interests we've installed there are far from allowing such a thing, but in the true interest of democracy, that's what would be done. Conduct a nation-wide poll and ask the people what they think. If they want us out, great. If they want us to stay, great. If they want us to bring in an international force, wonderful. But right now, 71% of Iraqi respondents see us as occupiers, and they're really pissed off.
As Howard Zinn said in a recent article, the last time we had this sort of situation was Vietnam. He and many others tried to convince the U.S. to pull out and they did not. 58,000 more people died because of that decision.
So, if you're really interested in democracy in Iraq, what needs to happen is that the Iraqis need to be liberated from us now that we've liberated them from Saddam, and they should have the world's support in constructing a free nation. It's not going to be easy, and it may be impossible. They may end up with yet another Islamic theocracy or dictatorship, but it's worth a try. However, we're not going to do any good with "boots on the ground." The question now is how to convince John Kerry of that.
By the way, Human Rights Watch says that approximately 290,000 Iraqis were killed under Saddam's rule. Well, over the ten year period during which we carried out sanctions on Iraq, 1.4 million Iraqis died as a result of lack of food and medical treatment. That's out of a 22 million person population. 500,000 of them are estimated to be children. Between 8,900 and 10,800 civilians have died in the current Iraq conflict. Thousands more Iraqi fighters have died. 724 coalition soldiers are dead.
Congrats! Who's the monster?
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