Yeah. Ok, I'm old enough to remember when people were making the same arguments about Germany and South Korea. We shed enough blood already, it was idealistic to think they wouldn't be the source of problems forever, on and on, and why the US should abandon them to their fate instead of keeping troops there. Hell, they rioted and bitched about the US all the time anyway.
But, we stayed.
We held the line, we paid the price in blood and treasure, no cut and run.
Now no one makes those same arguments about the South Koreans and Germans. Those two places had the time to raise an entire generation in peace seeing the benefits of peace and impartial law. They knew peace was better and a whole generation and the bow wave of the next was taught, by people who experienced both, they were better off than under totalitarianism. With less than a whole generation people learn, "we've always had a dictator, a ruling class of some sort, we fight, a foreign country takes over, dictators change, we fight, we repeat. That's life"
The problem is you can't save people from dictatorship and scumbags without being willing to stay and keep the peace for a whole generation after you do so. A whole, 40 year, generation. Otherwise, you get Iraq as it is at the moment.
When Colin Powell said, "you break it, you own it", truer words were never spoken. Once you own it, if you throw it in the trash when you're tired of it, claiming the people you were responsible for are worthless simpletons anyway is just an excuse to cut an run. Islam isn't even the excuse some make it out to be, look at Egypt and even Syria, a dictatorship, protecting Christians as well as Muzzies. The difference is those who cut them loose at some point had been there to veto excesses a generation or more. In Egypt and Syria, much more.
IMHO, history proves that's the case almost every time. The "one whole generation" rule of thumb has been successful since the age of "Pax Romana" and the exceptions have almost all been when people revolted and got help (before or after winning, macht nichts), not when someone took over by force then left in less than a generation.
JMHO
Well said.
I also have a very low opinion of Islam, which is utterly embedded in their every breath. But this is academic. We both agree that at least one of us is right: either they need us, or they are unsalvageable, but we both know they aren't going to pull it together on their own.