Maybe Cut and Run is the Only Option?

I never was an advocate for a quick exit from Iraq. My moral compass prohibits me from funding a mess created by my very own tax dollars in a country far away, without the clean-up I feel should take place before we leave. When I grew up, I was taught that you don't break something without replacing it, and you never leave your own mess for someone else to clean up. But what solution is plausible? The Democrats have no ideas about how to remedy the situation, because there is no solution. There is a civil war. The Iraqi government has voted to set up partitioning of the country, leaving the Shiites and Sunnis to slug it out for the prize of the oil fields in the south. Our 140,000 troops make no visible difference to the violence, and I am not willing to send more of your children there to die.

Are you?

If we leave, we will surely face the risk of leaving a rogue nation, a failed state, sitting on top of a large pot of gold, the oil fields. But what good is staying? And since we now of have a figure of 655,000 civilian deaths in Iraq since the beginning of the American occupation, do we really want to hang around to see the number climb to a million? If 100 Iraqis die every day, are you willing to live with the results until 2010? What might happen if our troops pull back to Kuwait? Why do we not consider trying something new when we can see the signs of failure in staying the course?

If there is a better idea out there for a solution, I would love to hear it. But the reality is that this can of worms is wide open, and there isn't any way to get the lid back on.

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