[richlevy]

Originally Posted by iamthewalrus109

One frigtening factor to add to all this is that, we are the only ones really putting in the time and money here. While we fight this war, China and the EU are exploding on to the global trade scene. Inflation is on the rise and the cost of living increases. To pull out on Iraq and just try to play nice and play catch up with our competiors is not going to do it, we need leverage now, and a win in Iraq, and some diplomacy in the wake of Yasser Arafat's death will help. We need to secure the region, get energy costs down, stabalize then try to find our way out of dependency on foriegn nations for anything, period. Will any of this happen, most likely not, but its really the direction we should be going in.

-Walrus

What? I'm sure that I heard our leader in the debates stress that we are part of a coalition, and that it is disrespectful to our allies to denigrate their contribution.

But seriously, I sort of agree that we need to come up with a graceful exit strategy. The problem is that noone has defined the term 'win' in terms of Iraq. Is it just getting the elections through? What if the Shi'ite majority elect a primarily or exclusively Shi'ite government? It's a lot harder to play Red State - Blue State when both sides have guns and will not meekly become the minority party. Even if we get a stable Iraq, we have lost our credibility with many Arab nations. They know we want oil. They know that the Bush administration got away with invading Iraq on a technicality and that the UN was unable to stop it or even condemn it.

In terms of economic power, China and the oil states have all of the power. If they wanted to, they could start selling dollars and take a hammer to the US economy.

We have placed a large burden on our military. If we decided to invade another country, the draft would be a necessity. Saddam isolated himself by invading Kuwait, but the other Arab states are more connected. It's possible that a US invasion of another country in the Mideast might draw in other countries who would interpret it as the US trying to establish a hegemony in the Middle East.