Quote:
Originally posted by marichiko
We needn't shiver in the dark, but we certainly could improve our sytems of mass transit, and it might not be a bad idea to encourage folks to set their themostats to 65 and put on a sweator. 
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a la Carter?
Weaning ourselves of our dependence upon (foriegn) oil is probably the best long-term solution (and it would also mean that we stop funding the region and it's wacky governments).
tw - if you say that the UN will not come back to Iraq, how are we going to rotate them into Iraq (while rotating ourselves out)? Furthermore, how will giving control to the UN help? The fighting
might decline, but I don't think that the UN is a panacea and I think that the US will remain a strong force in Iraq even if we give control to the UN. And I do not see the connection between brigands hitting supply convoys and Dien Bien Phu.
Undertoad: We are fighting a scattered group of guerrilla fighters. Defeating guerillas who are fighting for a Cause, with the support of the civilians, is something that has only been done once in the past century (as far as I know of); and that was done by undermining public support for the guerrillas by
addresssing the people's grievances and giving them an alternative method of getting what they wanted. Supposedly, standard military forces are able to defeat guerrillas at a cost of ten soldiers to a guerilla, but I haven't been able to find the source for that.
In a guerrilla war against standard military forces, the result is almost always a long-standing deadlock until the standard military withdraws. We will not be able to pacify the resistance with soldiers. I do not have confidence in our government's capability to undermine public Iraqi support for the guerrillas. To the contrary, I fear that we will continue to
fuel the
fires.
Quote:
Originally posted by Undertoad
Because for the UN, it doesn't really matter whether they wind up a democracy, a theocracy (which the majority of Iraqis do not want) or under the control of 2 madman sons, as long as we get the diplomacy right.
Does it matter to you?
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No. It does not.
What would an Iraqi democracy be like? Saddam Hussein has already eliminated almost everybody would could claim to be a secular Iraqi authority. If we want to establish an American-style representative democracy, we might have to rely on the Islamic clerics to be (or nominate) the representatives. An Iraqi democracy might not be far removed from a theocracy.
[edit: sm]