Our own government routinely fails to make any progress on even simple issues, let alone complex issues. By Kaplan's standard's, our government would largely be seen as a failure (frankly, I would agree).

During our nation's beginning, it took years - and two constitutions - to resolve the myriad issues in our country. And, even then they still festered for decades until our own Civil War.

Let's face it folks, if you thought we could be out of Iraq in anything less than 15 years, you were kidding yourself. You better hitch 'em up for the long haul - think Japan and Germany.

lightray9a:

Our own government routinely fails to make any progress on even simple issues, let alone complex issues. By Kaplan's standard's, our government would largely be seen as a failure (frankly, I would agree).

During our nation's beginning, it took years - and two constitutions - to resolve the myriad issues in our country. And, even then they still festered for decades until our own Civil War.

The difference is, we sorted it out. An outside party didn't spend billions of trillions of dollars, and thousands of lives sorting it out for us.

lightray9a:

Let's face it folks, if you thought we could be out of Iraq in anything less than 15 years, you were kidding yourself. You better hitch 'em up for the long haul - think Japan and Germany.

Again, the difference is, we were attacked by Japan, and Germany declared war on us. In addition, these were world powers in whose reconstruction we had more than a vested interest. Iraq is a neocon sideshow wetdream, or was until Bush et al screwed it up so royally.

This is dumb. Say what you will about our government, but it collects taxes, enforces order, has a monopoly on political violence, and is not strictly mired in a zero sum game involving extraction resources. I.e., it is a coherent state. The very fact that it is crapping up simple issues as oppossed to complex that speaks of its success.

It's simple, moron. Yes, its hard to fix Iraq, but that doesn't mean we should use that difficulty as an excuse to waste billions in an attempt to salvage it as oppossed to simply cutting out losses. It's the very existense of these complex issues that make out engagement perhaps not worth pursuing.

Yes, we had complex issues going issues going into our state formation (though without the crossborder loyalties, and widespread political violence of Iraq), but our political elites had a vested interest in resolving those. The Iraqis obviously don't have the same interest in making our policy work. We can try to save it, but at this point the prospects aren't looking good.

You need to put your brains and eyeballs back in your head as you missed my point entirely. I'll put it more simply so that you can understand it.

The point is that the Iraqi government has some very heavy lifting to do. Our government, very much the coherent state you say it is, could not achieve those objectives in the given timeframe. Those who think the fledgling, strugging government of Iraq can achieve those objectives in the targeted timeframe are kidding themselves.

You can be a proponent of pulling out and giving up in defeat if you wish. But, anyone who wants to achieve the military and political objectives we've defined for Iraq had better be prepared for a long-term investment. Of course, I can see you're not one of those people.

Pardon me but what objectives are you talking about??

Simply put, Maliki whom you BUSH droolers back, is a staunch member of the DAAWA party. A virulent ANTI-AMERICAN party founded and funded by IRAN. It's people like you who continue to support BUSH simply on blind allegiance with no thought AS TO WHAT the current government in IRAQ is made up of.

The Kurds are communists. The Shia are aligned with IRAN. The Sunni's are the insurgents. Now tell us SHERLOCK, who are we supposed to back and support? What gain do we get in supporting any of these misfits?

<link>

Your leaders seem to be aware of the objectives in Iraq....go to the above site and catch up on your argument.

You can be a proponent of pulling out and giving up in defeat if you wish. But, anyone who wants to achieve the military and political objectives we've defined for Iraq had better be prepared for a long-term investment.

Could you please articulate those objectives for me? And while you are at it, a nice flow chart to show me what they were when we started the war and how they got to where they are now would be helpful? Because you also say:

if you thought we could be out of Iraq in anything less than 15 years, you were kidding yourself.

Well, those of us who believed we could be out in 15 years are also the ones who believed the rationale that put us there--namely that we were taking down Saddam because he had weapons...and btw, "Mission Accomplished" after what, less than 90 days?

Please don't try to suggest that "we should have known better" given what we were told at the beginning.