Summing up my opinion on the Iraq war is not an easy task. I'll start by giving a little background into myself because without that you, the reader, have no idea why my opinions are the way they are. First let me start off by saying that I'm a very liberal individual, I have no faith in our government and was stationed in Baghdad for the first two years of the war. I currently have one year remaining on my military contract, which I'm serving in the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR). I wanted you all to know these things about me when agreeing or disagreeing with my stance on the war.
Let my start out by saying that this war is wrong, plain and simple. We invaded a country that was not involved with 9/11 and didn't possess any of the weapons of mass destruction our President kept going on and on about. What we ultimately did was kill alot of people that had nothing to do with the current state of terrorism in the world. We effectively gave extreme Muslim groups a steady supply of new volunteers who now truly believe that we are the cause for all the wrong in the world. Our government from the start has mismanaged this war to the point that its criminal. When you have a president who's military experience is flying planes in the Texas Air Army Reserve and a Secretary of Defense who was in the Navy should they be the ones dictating what the armed forces should be doing in a combat situation? The only thing this president is good at is spreading propaganda. I read in USA today about four months ago that 23% of Americans believed that we had found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I don't know what scares me more, terrorism or that 23%.
I could go on and on about how screwed up things are and how inept our government is but the bottom line to this entire equation is do we or don't we pull troops out of Iraq. This is where I surprise even myself by saying no. As much as I hate everything about this war I believe that we ultimately owe the people of Iraq a few more years before we remove our armed forces. Believe me when I say that it pains me to say this especially considering that I could be called back at any time. The reason I'm saying stay for two more is this: the idiots in Washington have finally figured out that if we stop munitions from coming in that the terrorist in Iraq will eventually run out of ammo. This is evident in the decrease of fatalities by half both civilian and military since we diverted more forces to safeguarding Iraq's borders. I'm not stating that we can ever stop terrorism I'm only saying if we help secure Iraq it may have one less place to go to ground. I also believe that we owe the Iraqi people that much, we did pretty much level half their country in the last 5 years. I also believe that the majority of the Iraqi people oppose terrorism. I do believe that the majority of them hate us but hating us is a far cry from strapping a bomb on oneself and trying to blow us up. If we abandon them and let terrorism take a strong hold in Iraq those people who hated us before but didn't support terrorism will be much more likely to support it after we have abandon them to it.
I'm going to end this blog by saying in Iraq we are dammed if we do and dammed if we don't. I hold our current government in contempt for this. There never is an easy answer to any problem when the stakes are the loss of human life. I can only hope for peace but I have a feeling that it's a long ways off.
