I Support (Fixing) The War In Iraq

I know, that probably seems stupid, but it is true. Well... let me explain that.

I never supported invading Iraq. My personal opinion before the invasion was that whatever weapons of mass destruction Saddam did have would immediately be spirited out of Iraq to all points of the compass once America attacked him, and it was better to have those WMDs under the control of Saddam rather than out floating around on the open market.

Anyway... we know how that worked out.

So, we went ahead and invaded Iraq, and we fucked up an entire country. We killed bunches of people, inflamed old tribal and religious hatreds, and basically made a grade-A mess of things.

We broke Iraq. Now we own it.

It's our responsibility as Americans to not leave the people of Iraq in the mess that we have put them in. I support fixing our mistake... our war. I would much rather that we had never gone into Iraq in the first place, but now that we are there, it is our job to do our best to try to clean the place up.

When the Democrats take control of Congress next month, I sincerely hope that they understand that America has a responsibility to the people of Iraq to attempt to fix our mess before we leave; that we do our damnedest to leave some modicum of peace and sanity behind. The way to accomplish that peace and sanity may indeed be just picking up and leaving immediately... I don't really know. But if leaving immediately isn't determined to be the best thing to help the Iraqi people, I hope that America doesn't follow that route anyway because it is politically expedient back home.

(It's probably the best thing for our troops: The possibility of the Democrats taking away control of this war from the White House and that idiot Rumsfeld. Hopefully the Democrats are willing to hop in the driver's seat, and steer this p.o.s. clusterf**k that we've gotten ourselves (and the Iraqis) into back on course... and not hit the first available off-ramp instead.)

I'm not a strategist, a politician, or a mideast scholar. I have no idea what to recommend, or what would work. But, I do feel like 1/300 millionth (America's population) of a complete shit for what my country has done to Iraq, and if we do just "cut and run" (or a, ahem, scheduled withdrawal), it won't be the honorable thing to do to the Iraqi people whom we put in this situation.

Anyway, here is my message to the Democrats: The White House and the Republicans created this mess in Iraq by trying to play it safe with the constitutents. The troop levels, the "stay the course" line... this was supposed to be an easy war fought "on the cheap" on the mistaken assumption that that would keep Americans happy. Well, you're going to be stepping up to take charge soon, and I hope that you realize that maybe... just maybe, for a change... Americans are interested in doing the right thing by helping Iraq instead of the easy thing by leaving it in the lurch. Maybe that is why they are voting for you this time around. (And won't it just piss of the Republicans if you guys turn out to be the real geniuses at prosecuting the war on terror?)

Just a thought.