Let’s say that all of our troops are home in, say, oh, five years. Let’s just say. Let’s pretend (excuse me) that Iraq will be genuinely sovereign again in five years. I don’t believe it will happen, but let’s pretend (hope, okay.)
Will the government in Baghdad be friendly to the United States? Will they not be a threat to Israel? Will terrorism be expunged from Iraq and remain so under the law enforcement and military of the Iraqis themselves? This is very hard to believe.
I believe the policy in Washington (not just the Bush administration) is to remain in Iraq indefinitely.
I believe that an ever-improving intelligence network, air and sea forces with high-tech weaponry, and sparing use of special forces would have been the answer from the time of 9/11 to the present. This is the answer to the nukes as well — hightail weaponry.
If we were not afraid to invade a nation using our hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground, then we should not have been afraid AT THAT TIME to take out anything we wanted to take out from the air, INCLUDING Iran’s nuke research and bomb-making facilities.
From 2001 to the present, we should have continued a high-tech missile and bombing campaign on any target suspected of being a terrorist training camp or hole-up. I believe that continued bombing and missile attacks(not indiscriminately, but with an ever-bettering intelligence program, expecting mistakes, but going forward) would have made the common population turn against the terrorists faster than anything else.
I firmly believe we could have been making major bullseye attacks on terrorist targets from the air and sea, from where the terrorists themselves could not have touched us. And keep it going — and keep it going — and keep it going!
To make this work, however, we needed a president who did not feel that the news media, in time of war, needed any information whatsoever, until, say, 30 days minimum after an attack was completed and the results properly analyzed for intelligence purposes. All operational news would have been 30 days old, and this to keep our enemies from getting anything at all before hand.
If we are at war, I don't believe that the American people truly understand that. I am not convinced FIGHTING and WINNING and ENDING a WAR is the priority of the Bush administration. I'd be more comfortable to see us FIGHTING, WINNING and getting the job DONE. NOT nation-building. At present we are looking for ways to let the One-World Government have more power in Iraq, according to recent news reports. A hand-picked corp of journalists and historians could be bunkered at the Pentagon, under a gag order, the schedule of news releases provided by our military planners, to assure nothing in the news compromises the success of the next mission. Any unauthorized release of news would mean PRISON time for that journalist or historian.
Nation-building? I’m against it. The Iraqi government we leave when we pull out will support and fund and train our enemies, or they will turn a blind eye to those within their borders who do.