Hope nobody shouts me down for not having too much of a "substantial" diary entry here. Really, I want comments from others. There is something on my mind. I have felt a growing sense of confliction about the war in Iraq, and am interested in seeing where others stand on this.
I, like most people on dailykos, I imagine, was an early and ardent opponent of the neocons' war on Iraq. I can go to my grave knowing I was on the right side of the issue since the war drums began beating in earnest in 2001/2002.
I knew it was a horrible idea. It was unnecessary, wasteful, hateful, spiteful and just plain wrong from the get go, and I saw through Bush/Cheney's lies and hypocrisy all along. I was horrified to see how many of my fellow citizens, the media, and congressional Democrats — our guys! The good guys! — went right along with it.
However, in recent years, a feeling of deep moral responsibility has left me unsure whether a speedy withdrawal from the country is the best thing we could do.
Good parents teach their kids to fix what they've broken. Like even Colin Powell said, "you break it, you've bought it."
I don't buy all that mindless rhetoric about how "we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here." Terrorists aren't that dumb. If they felt it was in their interest to take the battle to us, again, right here in our home country, then that's what they would be doing. Eventually, they will do that. They are not fighting us over there only because that is where we are.
As much as the neocons try to pretend otherwise, terrorism is a fact — albeit a rare one — of life and war. You can't make an "-ism" go away simply by declaring war on it. So far, most "conservative" arguments for staying in Iraq have been based on deceit and fearmongering.
But, and this is a big but, we screwed the pooch for the citizens of a country that did not do us any harm. Don't we have a moral responsibility to help right those wrongs, and ultimately to help those poor, innocent people escape from a life of fear in a country that has fallen to a gaggle of medieval warlords with bombs and automatic weapons?
I am glad to see the Democrats now embracing an Iraq policy that does not leave open the possibility of permanent bases and 100 years of war. At the same time, I worry that withdrawing too fast is morally wrong. I am still a peacenik, and I believe war should always be a nation's last resort.
I think we need to fix the mess we created, though I am not an expert on war or foreign policy, and I have no specific ideas on how to do that. The "surge" of 2007 was an example of Bush defying the will of the people, and was the wrong thing to do.
Does anyone else feel this sense of conflict? Do we have a responsibility to use our military, economic and diplomatic powers to set things right in Iraq? If so, is it even possible to provide security with military force?