What SHOULD be done in Iraq now?

[martingale]

There is a world of difference between what I think SHOULD happen and what I think WILL happen.

SHOULD happen:

--- The US should immediately announce a timetable for withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq.

--- US should declare it will not seek any military bases in Iraq.

--- US should declare that it will not interfere politically and economically in the internal affairs of Iraq.

--- US should pay reparations for the incalculable damage it has caused Iraq by its aggression, both in the destruction of Iraqi lives and property.

The Iraqi resistance is caused by the US invasion and occupation. Americans themselves would also resist if the US was invaded by an aggressor nation.

WILL happen:

The oil resources and strategic location of Iraq is too important to the US for it to just leave. In fact, Iraq is of greater strategic value to the US than even Vietnam ever was, and it took 56,000 dead Americans and domestic social meltdown before it was forced to leave Vietnam.

The US is already constructing 14 PERMANENT military bases in Iraq, in order to keep an eye on the US client Iraqi government in Baghdad to make sure it does what the US wants. And what the US wants is to control the oil spigot - one of the few remaining weapons it can use to dominate its economic rivals in Europe and Asia. Henry Kissinger once said that "the control of Arab oil is too important to be left to the Arabs". Here, Kissinger reveals with breathtaking frankness the American ruling elite's true intentions in the MIddle East.

Check out the following article, which was published just days before the invasion:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0309-04.htm

Quote:
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This war, say analysts, is about power and oil. It's about control of the Gulf states by means of strategic Iraq and, by extension, a final post-Cold War shakeout to give the U.S. more economic clout over China and Russia by controlling the oil spigot.

This is the moment, Thomas Barnett, from the U.S. Naval War College, wrote recently in Esquire magazine, "when Washington takes real ownership of strategic security in the age of globalization.''

The Persian Gulf has the world's biggest oil reserves. After Saudi Arabia, Iraq has the second-largest proven reserves.

"The only precedent to what is shaping up now is the Roman Empire,'' says Michael Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College. "There is only one power. I don't think Britain, France or Spain even came close in other centuries to the United States today.

"If the United States controls Persian Gulf oil fields, it will have a stranglehold on the world economy,'' adds Klare.

Washington is betting, Klare believes, that "controlling Gulf oil, combined with being a decade ahead of everybody else in military technology, will guarantee American supremacy for the next 50 to 100 years.''

These ideas aren't new.

For years, a small and powerful group, with corporate and political links, pushed the idea of controlling Persian Gulf oil. They did it publicly, at think-tanks and in the media. Now, this coterie of like-minded strategists controls both the Pentagon and the strategic aims of President George W. Bush's White House.
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[Colombia]

Well you basically answered your own question Martingale.

[Severian]

Timetable? No, the U.S. should get out now. The only timetable should be the schedule of when the ships and planes arrive to take the troops home - as quickly as physically possible.....

Iraqis and U.S. soldiers are dying every day...once it's acknowledged this should end, how can you continue it one day longer? As a younger and politically different John Kerry once asked, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"


Washington is betting, Klare believes, that "controlling Gulf oil, combined with being a decade ahead of everybody else in military technology, will guarantee American supremacy for the next 50 to 100 years.''

That's a losing bet...Washington's far ahead of any competing imperial power, so far ahead that there's really no precedent at all....but in decline nevertheless. Heck, when Rome reached the peak of its expansion it was already beginning to disintegrate from within.

Its growing tendency to police every part of the world directly, with its own forces, is a product of its political weakness. It can no longer rely on national bourgeois regimes in the Third World, which are more and more weak, unstable, and/or disobedient. Nor can it count, as in the past, on deals with the USSR to coopt and contain nationalist and revolutionary movements influenced by that bureaucratic regime....

[El_Revolucionario]

This is what should happen:

1. Complete withdrawal of all troops in Iraq.
2. Another election should be held, monitored by the U.N.
3. UN and the rich countries pour aid into Iraq to rebuild.
4. US is forced to apologize to Iraq and is forced to give lots of money to Iraq.
5. A memorial is set up in Baghdad to remember those Iraqis killed in the war.

[Heil Hitler]

Destroy the rag heads and bring them back to the Mexican border!

[bolshevik butcher]

Not a bad plan, i think that if there was a withdrawl most of the insugents would pack up and go home by the looks of it. Especially if real elections were heald, and that way the army (the new iraqi one) would be justified in ifghting them.

[patria grande]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29 2005, 03:57 PM
This is what should happen:

1. Complete withdrawal of all troops in Iraq.
2. Another election should be held, monitored by the U.N.
3. UN and the rich countries pour aid into Iraq to rebuild.
4. US is forced to apologize to Iraq and is forced to give lots of money to Iraq.
5. A memorial is set up in Baghdad to remember those Iraqis killed in the war.
And this is what will happen:
They U.S will leave, but as they usually do, they will set up everything they need to
continue their control of Iraq´s internal affairs.
1. A Constitution written by occupation forces.
2. The creation of a National Guard to repress insurgency.
3. The construction of military bases to control the area and to indoctrinate Iraqi military.
In fact, the U.S will remain in control of the country, but the average U.S citizen will believe they help Iraq to become a democratic, free and sovereign country.