Four more years in Iraq?

[illusionofjoy]

According to an Associated Press story posted less than an hour ago, the army is planning on occupying Iraq for four more years at current troop levels. Since we're currently nearing the 2,000 mark of number of Americans killed in the sandtrap, I imagine that by 2009, the insurgents will have handily knocked off a total of 10,000 Americans (to put that in perspective, that's one-fifth the number who died needlessly in Vietnam, or the entire population of the town I used to live in - think about that, a needless war could wipe a small town off of the map).

Hello America: get it right this time and say NO to four more years.

Comments

[trhodes.livejournal.com]

You're thinking about this all negatively. Think of it. America - 10,000 inhabitants == cheaper houses in nice areas!

--
Tom Rhodes

[xeyli.livejournal.com]

As much as I don't like Bush's methods... he's pissed off way too many people by starting this. If America pulls out now, we will definitely have a war on our hands because everyone will retaliate.

I could be wrong, though. I don't want to promote the occupation, but I also wouldn't want to have a full-blown war. Is there a right answer anymore? I think Bush fucked it up too much to have a right answer.

[illusion-of-joy.livejournal.com]

Progressive Democrats of America is currently circulating a petition for getting the troops out of Iraq in about a year's time (http://pdamerica.org/petition/iraq-withdraw-petition.php). I've signed it, namely because it seems like a workable plan which would ay least somewhat make up for the damage caused by the Bush administration's cowboy attitude in going into Iraq in the first place.

The fact is that "staying the course" at this point will only get more Americans needlessly killed. All Iraqis are worse off now than they were under Saddam and any reconstruction efforts of any type are hampered by the fact that Bush's war of [oil] liberation (or was it WMD's - I can't remember, that jerk keeps changing his story) is now a guerrilla war against an occupying power.

I agree that we can't up and leave without doing anything - that would plunge the nation straight into civil war and completely destabalise the Middle East. However, I don't that more American lives should be lost on a war and occupation built on lies. It's time to scale back our presence in Iraq, not plan for four more years.