I said the Iraqis don't, not the Kurds. The Kurds are not Arabs, and, as I stated before, don't really see themselves as Iraqis. One can refer to them as such, just as a Korean man could be called Chinese, by someone who couldn't understand the idea of Asians not being Chinese. Just don't ask the Korean to accept it.
The Sunnis definitely don't see us as an improvement, on any level. They'd be happy if we left tonight.
The Shi'ites were of mixed opinion, but our failure to provide security or services has driven them against us and into the arms of the Iranians. The Iranians are normally competitors to the Iraqi Shi'ites, but in this case they're willing to work together to drive us out.
Pretty damn well I'd say. Abu Abbas? DEAD. Abu Nidal? DEAD. Zarqawi? DEAD. Usay? DEAD. Qusay? DEAD. The old man? A laughing stock. Terrorist training bases? DEAD.
There's a lot more DEAD than you mentioned, but unfortunately we CREATE them at a rate faster than we kill them. There's more terrorist training bases in Iraq now than there were before, and far more terrorists. Many of them have gone home and set up shop there, as well. I was all for the 'drain the swamp' idea, but it pretty much backfired on us.
Not to mention lots and lost of deadenders who are attracted to Iraq and sent to their maker by our brothers in the Army and Marine Corps.
Yeah, they're dead, but not deadenders. Their deaths, and their victims, are propaganda sets that encourage thousands more to take their place. We're not hitting the root causes of the problem, just whacking away at the individuals who show up to fight. And every year there's more of them.
And with these words of dubious wisdom we'll part company. Your mindset is such that we really have no chance of reaching common ground. The notion that we create Islamofascists was one I thought was confined to left wing loons. Evidently I was wrong.
LOL! Just how is that you address the root cause in a short five years. We cannot fix this. We can only kill it.
Considering that the world has collectively ignored this festering crap hole for decades, simply because of the cost, has allowed it to develop into the proverbial snake that is, and has been striking at everything it can reach since the 70s...
The root cause is a people, a religion and a culture that is designed to be what it is............A warring religious based society that believes it has a destiny to rule the entire world.
It is a danger to the rest of the planet, a festering cancer, a predicable disease, and a candidate for reeducation or genocide by Nuclear Antibiotics.....(Which is their choice, not ours)
Since they do not fear death, then the eventual graduation to a global search and destroy mission is a foregone conclusion in my humble opinion. So how do you concieve of killing over a Billion people? I don't have a clue....
We are not there yet, but we will be soon enough. It is only a matter of time and there is no point in forcing the issue, as it must mature in it's own time.
Bush understands this, and is engaging them as fully as he can with little public support, while at the same time, hoping that it will not become the eventual "kill or be killed" mission that I have predicted here.
He has done all that he can in this time frame, and the rest will come after they hit us again, and perhaps again and again before the greatest nation that has ever been will stop pretending that we don't have a problem and finally define it for what it really is.
The Last Crusade.......