If we'd pulled totally out of Iraq on 1/20/09, would ANYTHING be worse?

[Ken Burch]

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the present nightmare was caused by the "phased withdrawal" and the continuing "Coalition" presence in Afghanistan.

In staying in, in creating the possibility that our troops might not leave at all, our "liberal hawks" may have condemned us to a conflict from which we will never emerge. If nothing else, they may have created the opportunity for Cheney and his remaining contacts in the region to create false flag operations that have now kept us IN a war the American people made it clear they wanted out of.

We should have just admitted the whole thing was a dead loss and that there was nothing Western force could ever do to fix it.

THIS is what comes from obsessing about "strength" and "credibility" and all the other words this nation should never have uttered again after Vietnam.

Will we EVER learn to leave the world alone? That we HAVE no "civilizing mission"? That OUR wars have no greater morality or nobility than anybody else's?

And if we don't learn that, can we ever be a nation that is a force for life, rather than death, in this broken world?

[leftstreet]

1. How would military contractors put food on their families?

DURec

[Turbineguy]

2. I think ISIS would have happened anyway.

There are forces at work in the Islamic world that create this.

Everything happening out there is not always the fault of the U.S.

[FSogol]

4. Agreed. n/t

[VanillaRhapsody]

3. not according to all the countries now agreeing

That ISIL has got to go!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. Take up the White Man's burden

Hey, it worked ever so well for the Brits, French, Italians, Spanish, Portuguese. Now, it's our turn to go broke defending our empire.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden

It was originally published in the popular Dowling Gazzett in 1899, with the subtitle The United States and the Philippine Islands.

Although Kipling's poem mixed exhortation to empire with somber warnings of the costs involved, imperialists within the United States of America understood the phrase "white man's burden" as a characterization for imperialism that justified the policy as a noble enterprise.[3][4][5][6][7] Because of its theme and title, it has become emblematic both of Eurocentric racism and of Western aspirations to dominate the developing world.[8][9][10] A century after its publication, the poem still rouses strong emotions, and can be analyzed from a variety of perspectives.


The White Man's Burden Rudyard Kipling

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain,
To seek another's profit
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine,
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
(The end for others sought)
Watch sloth and heathen folly
Bring all your hope to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No iron rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go, make them with your living
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden,
And reap his old reward--
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness.
By all ye will or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent sullen peoples
Shall weigh your God and you.

Take up the White Man's burden!
Have done with childish days--
The lightly-proffered laurel,
The easy ungrudged praise:
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers.