"We could take him out with an airstrike if we don't like him. Better than a muslim theocracy! Or maybe that's what you want."
There is no theocracy in Iraq. Go read their constitution. There is no shria in the constitution. Women are afforded full rights and the government are by elected representatives, not religious clerics. The constitution is by far the most liberal of any Islamic country.
And easy for you to say "Okay with me to have another Baathist take over!" You weren't ever oppressed by one, tortured by one, had a nail driven in your skull by one, had your body put into a plastic shredder by one, was made to watch your wife and daughters raped by one to exact a confession out of you nor was your village ever wiped off the face of the map by one using chemical weapons. It's easy to sit in the tranquility American affords and wish oppression to return upon the heads of others when you are free of it.
And how easy was it to dislodge Saddam exactly with bombing since you say if we don't like the next rogue regime that takes over we can just bomb it out of power?? That's a real simple-minded take on things, especially when you provide no answers for what fills the vacuum after we cut and run or just launch some bombing campaign to change the government there. How long will our foreign and military policy have to deal with the rogue state we leave in our wake there by not finishing the job now? How many more Americans will have to die and how many more billions spent to put some stop-gap hurt on a succession of Iraqi tyrannts that take over because of our ADD foreign and military policy which tells our friends "Don't count on us in the war on terror! We have no staying power!" Who the hell in Iraq or outside of Iraq is going to step up to the plate to help a foreign power that refuses to finish the job its starts? Why would anyone look to us for leadership in those circumstances? We'd be the laughing stock of the world and Al Qaeda would be declaring victory all over the place.
Why not get this right, train the Iraqis in running a democracy and their own security so we don't have to be over there again?
As Schmidt said, COWARDS cut and run. Perhaps you're a coward. Personally I'm not willing to gamble the future of the region and the future of the nation by leaving chaos at the heard of the Middle East. Don't be so short-sighted. THINK!
There isn't a theocracy yet. There will be. Just like there will be in Syria after the Baathists are gone from there, too.
And as far as how bad the Baathists were, we knew that stuff a long time ago. Is our mission now to invade places where people are being mistreated? And yeah, its easy for me to say that, because wise American leaders have known better than to get us entangled in places we don't belong. It used to be an American ideal.
And as faras our future military options, you think they already haven't been curtailed? Think again. Don't worry about a future loss of ability to project power, its already happened.
And think there won't be a coup within 5 years? Under your logic, we will have to re-invade all over again. We should have just kept the fly-over zones that were extremely effective in the first place.
And as far as being a "coward" is concerned, I had thought the definition of that is someone who won't put their body where there mouth is.