After the ‘Surge’

In Africa they have to dig wells as well, without any war; isn't it even worst!
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The Surge seems to always get a lot of credit for the improved conditions in Iraq but I wonder how much would have been accomplished with just the turn around by the Iraqis themselves. We have recruited, paid for and extensively support local leaders and even warlords to stop fighting us and instead turn on the al Quaeda and foreign insurgents. This war has cost us considerably in American lives and dollars, in the process we have been lied to by our government, the Iraqi government has been irresponsible with their in-fighting and posturing for benefit and all while the real War on Terror has been significantly neglected. To compare this mess for political and Special Interests benefit to our civil war is ridiculous.

We took 11 years from the 1776 Declaration of Independence to the 1787 Constitution. We won our Revolutionary War only when France joined our side, much like we did for the Iraqi people. The way our Colonialists treated the Loyalists was about how the Iraqi factions are treating each other, sans high explosives. We had our Civil War in the 1860s and race riots in the 1960s. We went from mudslinging election tactics to Tammany Hall to the KKK to Chicago Mayor Daley's machine tactics and back to more mudslinging (which really never stopped) in our campaigns. It took us over 100 years to allow women to vote and drafted 18 year olds for war 3 years before they could vote. That picture looks better than Sherman left Atlanta. My area had 800 men in the Revolutionary War and lost 600 in a single day at Oriskany. We lost close to 9,000 soldiers dead and close to 23,000 total wounded in a single 12 hour day at Antietam. We survived, we rebuilt, we grew. I don't see how we can expect the Iraqi people to do in a few years what took us centuries.

The bombs are still going off, the bullets are still flying. As a nation near, but not yet at, the end of war it is barely to the triage stage of healing. As a nation they are probably better, certainly no worse, than we were after the surrender of Cornwallis. Their cities are better than Atlanta after Sherman, and Dresden and Tokyo after our firebombing. These and Hiroshima and Nagasaki are all rebuilt. I've played in the trenches that the British dug at the siege of Fort Stanwix. Children play around Hiroshima's ground zero.

At this stage living one day at a time, taking any small victory you can get is not politics, its the reality of how any nation recovers from a war. The US precisioin guided munitions have drastically reduced the damage that needed to be done. Our weapons and armor have saved countless American lives compared to past wars. Oil is flowing again, and the money is flowing into the country, even if corruption and graft is sapping it. Contracts to rebuild the oil fields are being let out. That will give Iraq the money to rebuild the rest.

The war and rebuilding of Iraq is going about as good, maybe better, than history shows it should.

i wonder if the above bomb crater the children are swimming in is radioactive from depleted uranium. It may not be all fun and games these days in Iraq.
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm
The discovery that bomb craters in Yugoslavia in 1999 were radioactive, and that an unexploded missile in 1999 contained a depleted uranium warhead, implies that the total amount of depleted uranium used since 1991 has been greatly underestimated.

Gee, sounds like what I remember of American history after our own revolution. Leaders are not used to having to answer to the people, and the people are not used to having a say in their government. 200 year after our freedom and we still have the NYC Police Knapp commission and Chicago machine politics. This is from a country founded by people looking for freedom. I see no reason why we should espect anything else from a society that has isolated the leaders from the people for centuries. As the military withdraws its time to do what we do best, let our economic system sink in. Vietnam is now a growing suucess because the Vietnamese came to the US, saw how to run businesses, build infrastructure, etc. then went home and did the same. The emerging nations without that economic contact with the US are not building as fast. They don't have the knowledge that the returning Vietnamese brought home from the US.

They'll catch on eventually.

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all of the others.

This,and ''The System','is always the problem,is it not?

''But until something better comes along,I'll stick with it''

Clint Eastwood,Inspector Harry Callahan,SFPD,''Magnum Force''.[1973],referring to the aforementioned,''system''.

Aw, conme on, Newsweek. haven't you been listening to President Bush and General Petraeus? They're telling us that the surge has "worked" and most violence is a thing of the past in Iraq. Who cares about the other little "problems" that the Iraqis have in their daily lives? That's not our concern.