“Germany was under military occupation during the Marshall Plan. Same thing is true for Japan and Korea”.
Yea, and the people of those countries weren’t still fighting us then. There were a few Nazi insurgents but the German people didn’t like them. They blamed them for the war and didn’t identify with them. The Iraqi people identify more with the insurgents in their country than they identify with us because of Islam. That is more powerful to far too many of them than anything else is. Yea, some of them are helping us but that has to do more with a power grab after we leave than any loyalties on a large scale.
Am I saying there are no Iraqis that identify more with us than Islamic tribes, sects, and insurgents? No. But not enough of them do. There is a tipping point in every type of situation where stability breaks down. It’s like a classroom of kids where the teacher can control the kids if it’s only one or two trouble makers. Once it’s five, six, or seven, the whole class breaks down because the tipping point has been reached. It’s like my gangs in America analogy I gave earlier. As long as those in gangs make up a small percentage of people, law and order on a large scale does not break down. What if they represented half of our population though? How brutal do you think our govt and law enforcement would have to be to put them down? Our military in this day and age can never use the type of violence necessary to stabilize Iraq in the long term. Only another strong central govt in Iraq that puts down all insurgencies with an iron fist can do that. Sadly, Sadam was a byproduct of his environment just like so many dictators are. Whoever is the most brutal rises to power because they are the only ones that can achieve stability. As sad as that is, it does nobody any good to pretend things are otherwise.
We did not radically alter the societies of those countries. The Germans and Japanese, for all their other faults, have always been a productive people rather than a self-destructive one. The Germans and Japanese saw a benefit to working with those that defeated them in order to forge a better future for their countries. Islam is at odds with that. Like a said, it doesn’t take 100% of a population to make law and order impossible. It only takes enough to cause a tipping point.
Sadly, I had these exact same debates five years ago on a liberal forum discussing Iraq. And here I thought I stubbled upon a bastion of conservatism. HA.....we’re all liberals now aren’t we. From the comments you’ve been making and suggesting that I am in favor of oblliterating an entire country, I think you might want to brush up on WWll history.
We fire-bombed the hell out of Japan and Germany and Britain fire-bombed the hell out of German cities and nobody went around crying that entire populations were being obliterated. What will it take??????????????????? to get through????????????