SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - Iraq wants timetable for withdrawal of US forces

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- - Iraq wants timetable for withdrawal of US forces (https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=139214)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Enigma

There's also a pretty big difference between calling for negotions for a timetable and "We will not set a time table". Which brings us right back to the same point.

funny how that works....

Real funny, except you fail to distinguish who is doing the talking. I have bolded the key word for you. If the Iraqis set a timetable then we will honor it, but we are not going to be the ones to unilaterally set it. See the difference?

a time table for a war that is fought generally by guerrilla warfare will not work...anything can happen in a war...**** happens, thats just war- a black hawk down quote, but it does prove a point...when the three major groups in Iraq finally start getting along and not blowing each other to ****, then we'll leave.

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Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

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Originally Posted by PeriscopeDepth

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Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

Here's a timetable for them;

We'll leave when you quit blowing each other up and learn how to run a country without genocide and oppression.

It's a different society with a different historical context. Genocide and oppression is something as regular to them as elections to us Americans. I don't approve of it, but we're not going to be the ones to fix it. We have pissed away whatever good will we had in the Middle East, and for a long time whatever we do over there will be tainted in the eyes of its peoples.

PD

I completely agree. But try explaining that to poorly educated Americans who expect to see some kind of result from this fiasco. Not that a stable and democratic Iraq would be a bad thing, far from it.
At this point I really can't form a solid opinion. On the one hand, try meeting those people and sharing their hope of building a country like the ones we enjoy in the western world. To them it's a whole new frontier, a future they could never have hoped for.
On the other hand, this war is terribly mismanaged. Coalition troops get killed for one primary reason. Idiot officers fighting the last war.
Speaking from the perspective of a U.S. Marine, I don't know wtf they were thinking. Perhaps some of our British friends or our other allies have troops that are well-versed in garrison operations and civil pacification. That sure as hell is not us. I would love to meet the *&$^*&($ that decided "Hey let's send naval assault infantry into an ideologically-motivated warzone. After all, if a Marine isn't sensitive, who is?"
I'm going to go out on a limb here. Flame me if you please I will not complain.
Many of our troops are not heroes. I'm not. Many of them are a$$holes that make people suffer or die for no reason. During my tours I had the misfortune of seeing 3 innocent, completely harmless people killed for very little reason because of overzealous Marines. In my cowardice I did not request mast to report them as they, however wrong they were, meant more to me than any friends I have ever had.
On the part of the troops this is understandable. From day 1 in boot camp we are told to kill. We are told it is right. We are told that duty exonerates us from responsibility. That is good training if you are being prepared to die on a beach somewhere. But it is poor training for someone who is expected to act as a stabilizing force in a foreign region beset by ideological conflict.
Do I believe Iraq had WMD's? Undoubtedly.
Do I believe they were a threat to us? No.
Do I believe this war had hidden economic and political motivations? Of course. Virtually all wars do. Remember that before you volunteer to fight because someone else tells you someone is evil.
Nonetheless, now that we are in Iraq and Afghanistan, I think it is our responsibility to help rebuild, although a great deal more public oversight is required. Who are we to invade a country, destroy its infrastructure, and then just leave it like that?

In my view the first step is admitting we made a mistake. I hope our British friends will acknowledge they did as well. Not by following us into this war, which I admire them for, but for creating this blasted country to begin with. Iraq is not a nation. It was created by Winston Churchill. If you wish to learn the source of my opinion you can find it in a book called "Churchill's Folly". The author's name escpaes me but I'm sure it would be easy to find on amazon.

All that being said I am just as much at fault as anyone for the current situation. I was one of those Americans who subscribed to the "kick their a$$ and take their gas!" philosophy. I am older and somewhat less stupid now and I see that was wrong.

The entire Middle East and even Islamic culture as a whole has been a thorn in the side of the West for over a thousand years (not counting classical civilizations). Despite this, militant address of the situation will result only in two possible outcomes; subjugation or genocide. Perhaps we should be relying on the resourcefulness of our own Iraqi immigrants and knowledge of Middle Eastern culture to quell this problem.

Finally, I would like to say that I can sympathize with those who are furious at Islamic extremists (fundamentalists, whatever. The people who blow stuff up)
Despite how tolerant some of us may want to be there will always be some A-hole who just doesn't care and wants to mess stuff up. Generally these people are just stupid, and it is not always their fault. Even those who lead them may be fools. But the key to being a fool is to not realize that you are one. Every effort should be made to reach these people and begin a dialogue (once again, only because we are there already) failing that, proper, well planned military action may be our only recourse.

All this blab for a non-answer:roll: My solution would be to divide Iraq into three parts. One for the Kurds, one for the Sunnis and one for the Shiites (sp?)
A minimal multinational force would provide border security until more stabiity has been realized.
PD I totally agree wit your view that we are dealing with a different culture here and our methods of dealing with them may be ineffective because we are not taking into account thousands of years of culture and history. My previous post was a bit of a jest, but now you have lured me in to a full-fledged lecture.
Once again this is only my opinion and I would welcome any dissent, no matter how brusque. It's the only way I'll learn.

That was a very good post, Undersea. I will respond to it when I am a little more sober, though. :)

PD

Quote:

Originally Posted by PeriscopeDepth

That was a very good post, Undersea. I will respond to it when I am a little more sober, though. :)

PD

Thank you. Try to reply when I am sober too. :D

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Originally Posted by U-84

Better start ********ng like rabbits then, you gonna run out of soldiers eventually. :roll:

I see this different than the rest of you I think. The Prime Minister is actually calling for a readyness of his own troops and police by a set time table instead of asking for the US to leave. He wants to put a deadline on his own people for getting their act together.

Rght now, I bet his tropps are all lounging around saying we have all the time in the world to come up to speed. This is what the Prime Minister is getting at.

-S

Golden opportunity for USA to get out and try to repair its lost image in civilians' heart which had been damaged due to the war

However, I don't think Bush, or MCain will do that since they place focus on peace keeping in Iraq. Without any peace keeping force, such objective can't be accomplished.

Quote:

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

I think you've hit one of the big problems right off the bat. Americans just don't understand why a nation that has used its military to "fight for freedom" with such results in the past can't do it now in a third world nation.

Quote:

At this point I really can't form a solid opinion. On the one hand, try meeting those people and sharing their hope of building a country like the ones we enjoy in the western world. To them it's a whole new frontier, a future they could never have hoped for. On the other hand, this war is terribly mismanaged. Coalition troops get killed for one primary reason. Idiot officers fighting the last war.

I really don't know what to say to this. You've been there and done that. I have to say, I feel like what is being put out is on the optimistic side. But I dunno.

Quote:

Speaking from the perspective of a U.S. Marine, I don't know wtf they were thinking. Perhaps some of our British friends or our other allies have troops that are well-versed in garrison operations and civil pacification. That sure as hell is not us. I would love to meet the *&$^*&($ that decided "Hey let's send naval assault infantry into an ideologically-motivated warzone. After all, if a Marine isn't sensitive, who is?"

Another problem you've hit on. The military, to put it crudely, are butchers. Their job is to kill people. They are not cops, their job is to control. We really are trying to put a square peg in a round hole here. We can't conquer, as that's not politically acceptable, so we are bleeding to "control, but not own". Which is dumb, IMO.

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I'm going to go out on a limb here. Flame me if you please I will not complain.
Many of our troops are not heroes. I'm not. Many of them are a$$holes that make people suffer or die for no reason. During my tours I had the misfortune of seeing 3 innocent, completely harmless people killed for very little reason because of overzealous Marines. In my cowardice I did not request mast to report them as they, however wrong they were, meant more to me than any friends I have ever had.
On the part of the troops this is understandable. From day 1 in boot camp we are told to kill. We are told it is right. We are told that duty exonerates us from responsibility. That is good training if you are being prepared to die on a beach somewhere. But it is poor training for someone who is expected to act as a stabilizing force in a foreign region beset by ideological conflict.

You're assuming the people who are giving the orders really do believe "stabilizing" the country is possible.

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Do I believe Iraq had WMD's? Undoubtedly.

Well, they certainly did at one point. At the time of the invasion, who knows?

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Do I believe they were a threat to us? No.

Agreed.

Quote:

Do I believe this war had hidden economic and political motivations? Of course. Virtually all wars do. Remember that before you volunteer to fight because someone else tells you someone is evil.

Hidden motivations tend not to be their primary reasons, although.

Quote:

Nonetheless, now that we are in Iraq and Afghanistan, I think it is our responsibility to help rebuild, although a great deal more public oversight is required. Who are we to invade a country, destroy its infrastructure, and then just leave it like that?

We are oh so kind enough to "stay" as long as the public opinion will let us after destabilizing a country.

Quote:

In my view the first step is admitting we made a mistake. I hope our British friends will acknowledge they did as well. Not by following us into this war, which I admire them for, but for creating this blasted country to begin with. Iraq is not a nation. It was created by Winston Churchill. If you wish to learn the source of my opinion you can find it in a book called "Churchill's Folly". The author's name escpaes me but I'm sure it would be easy to find on amazon.

Truely, what Arab "nation" is? A bunch of tribes that happened to be inside the map lines that were drawn by European powers.

Quote:

All that being said I am just as much at fault as anyone for the current situation. I was one of those Americans who subscribed to the "kick their a$$ and take their gas!" philosophy. I am older and somewhat less stupid now and I see that was wrong.

While very humble of you, I don't think this can be blamed on the military. Their job is to follow orders. They did.

PD

Dear PeriscopeDepth,
OMFG. I am about to start writing all my posts in notepad and copy/pasting them. I Just spent 30 minutes replying to your post and when I hit the "post reply" button
I got the "page cannot be diplayed blah blah blah" message.
I don't feel like writing the whole thing again but essentially I disagreed with a few of your points but I generally found the message well-written.
I'll re-write the thing after I have a few choice words with my cable provider.
Good responses anyhow, and thanks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

Feeling with you. We all have been there. You either should use notepad for long texts indeed, or mark the text and right-click and choose "paste" before hitting the button. But I still sometimes forget to do like this, too. Always great fun when the surprise shows up on screen.

The back button always works for me... :yep:

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Originally Posted by August

The back button always works for me... :yep:

Yup, same here. The text is still there. :up:

Ok extra super duper brief attempt to reply after three failed, longer posts.

Very good post I disagree with the following

1)You're assuming the people who are giving the orders really do believe "stabilizing" the country is possible.

they do believe it. it would take quite a monster to start an unwinnable war knowingly for personal gain or profit. most likely a case of believing what you want to believe. Also, how could you gain more from an unwinnable war than from a winnable one?

Do I believe Iraq had WMD's? Undoubtedly. Well, they certainly did at one point. At the time of the invasion, who knows?

True, we can't really know, but they did. They had munitions factories and warhead factories and insurgents kept planting nerve- gas or other chemical warhead IEDs. We were fortunate that they know nothing about nerve gas and stuff so the bombs didn't work. In the last war they had the same facilites,. They had plenty of time to hide them or move them. They have hidden bigger things than a warhead.

Hidden motivations tend not to be their primary reasons, although.

I shouldn't have said "hidden", I should have said " people believe what they want to, which is naturally what is most inclined to their own benefit". The people who profit from this war aren't evil, just stupid.

We are oh so kind enough to "stay" as long as the public opinion will let us after destabilizing a country.

Didn't really understand this. Could be straightforward, sarcastic, or any number of other things. The word stay in quotes really throws me off. Please elaborate.

I don't think this can be blamed on the military. Their job is to follow orders. They did.
Bull. Military people are people too. They have the same obligation to make sound judgements as anyone else. Problem is that making those judgements may not be popular. Politicians are elected by being popular. Therefore their generals must be popular. Popular does not translate into "militarily effective" so people die.
Ask any vet about "rules of engagement"

I am almost ashamed of this post but my very bad internets seems to be making a full reply impossible. In fact, it seems rude. I can assure you that this is not intentional, just a consequence of making it so short.

I would love to continue the discussion in pm where my brief, crude reply cannot clutter the forum.

Thanks 4 understanding
-The Lance