Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim in CT
How do you honor the troops, by relinquishing everytihng they fought for, at least during the Surge? Please explain how that's not dishonorong them?
Tell my company to take a hill, we'll take the hill. It's a spit in the face if, after Americans die taking that hill, we simply leave and allow the bad guys to immediately re-claim it. Is that really so hard to understand?
If we do this, what was the point of the Surge, exactly? Spence, can you explain that please?
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By that rationale shouldn't the very essence of the war be a great dishonor? I mean, the architects of the war policy were wrong about so much, and we learned that they really didn't even have a good reason to think they were going to be right.
For the US to have kept troops after 2011 we likely would have to made serious concessions (i.e. bribes) and for sure allowed US servicemen and women to be bound by Iraqi law.
A US troop presence would have also likely made the political situation worse and perhaps even accelerated a Sunni revolt pulling us back in even harder than today.
I'm not sure what we could have done to prevent this other than more pressure on the Maliki government to be inclusive and more pressure on Russia to abandon Syria, neither of which was very feasible.
Ultimately we can't stay there forever. The World needs to buck up and realize this isn't America's problem alone.
-spence
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