Unless your plan is to keep pissing in it. We have to let the people over there sort out their own problems.

And how are we supposed to "clean it up?" Their problems go a lot deeper than, say, infrastructure damaged in the attack. Nothing short of a dictator is going to keep all that wonderful religious hatred in check, and if we want to change that, we'll have to maintain a presence there for decades, minimum. If it's even possible. Meanwhile, all of the middle eastern countries grow to hate us even more because we continue to meddle in their affairs, and we flush our own economy down the shitter along with the lives of thousands of our soldiers. We can't save them from themselves.

I agree, let them deal with there own shit. And if they become a problem or a risk (which they will), get rid of them. Need to spend the money and resources on fixing this country anyways, as fucked up as it is.

they are apparently incapable of doing that, hence why we are still occupying Iraq. If they could sort shit out themselves, we would have been long gone years ago, but they're not. The uncivilized rule through fear, and the civilized are too chicken shit to do anything about it. None of the canidates have proposed a winning plan for Iraq. Hillary's is flawed because diplomacy has failed time and time again in the middle east. Obama's is flawed because he doesn't seem to have a clue how foreign affairs work. And McCain's is flawed because well... its just more of the same, the only difference is its alot more of the same, and the only real solution that's actually different from what's happening now.

Also fairly certain that the problems dating back to WWI would have, more or less, worked themselves out by now if not for constant interference from the west. You know, little things we’ve done, like I dunno – Israel – for starters. Never mind our undermining Iran’s government by supporting the Sha, and putting Saddam in power to begin with, throwing about 500 billion dollars worth of guns into their laps during the cold war (that we know of), plus the contra affair, creating Al Queda, funding supporting nasty evil people and terrorist organizations just because they happen to hate the same people we do at the time, over and over again, paying NO attention to well known history, and the fact that we’ve practically bought out entire economies over there, and forced absolutely insane levels of investments in our own…

Yeah, that’s not their mess, it’s ours.

I really doubt, somehow, that if the west and Soviets hadn’t fuxed with these folks so much over the past century (ie. if they had no warm water ports or oil) that there’d be nearly so much a mess there as there is. The fact that those same genes manage to maintain the Ottoman empire for three-quarters of a millennia is more or less proof of that.
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"The British invasion of Iraq in 1917: when the British commanders issued a document on the walls of Baghdad, saying, 'We come here, not as conquerors, but as liberators to free you from generations of tyranny.' And in 1920, when the insurgency, the Iraqi insurgency against British rule in Iraq, began, we shelled Fallujah, and we shelled Najaf. The British army, in 1920, the telegram written by British intelligence in Baghdad to the War Department in London said that terrorists were crossing the border, from…? Syria. And then Lloyd George, the British prime minister, stood up in the House of Commons and said, 'If British troops leave Iraq now, there will be…'? Civil war. Spot on. You read the Times parliamentary report in 1920, didn’t you? We don’t read history. Our journalists don't read history, and my goodness, me, nor do our leaders." - Robert Fisk
Thothie

So we have the doc with the "lets keep pissing strategy" and thoth with the "It's our fault but I have no suggestion as to how we should move forward" line. While I agree it may be our fault I think the best we can do is say sorry and let them deal with it themselfs. Perhaps help evacuate those that want out as repayment for 100 years of fucking them. Also as thoth brought up we need to treat all states in the area equally and not just hand out crap to Israel.

We hand out crap to Israel to keep them in our pocket. They are our last ditch ace in the hole over there, the local constable as it were, and the base through which most of our nastier political work in the region gets done through. This remains true even when it means Israel winds up funding their own enemies in the process (as during the cold war with Afghanistan), or “accidentallyâ€

It can't happen, Doc. The unit of measurement for social change is the generation. The adults are all already set in their ways, and while you might reach a handful, the vast majority won't listen to anything you say one way or the other. The only way to enact any such a change is by educating the children. Putting aside for a moment the problems of whether or not we have any right to do so, or whether they would thank us for it in the end, if you actually genuinely want to change things in Iraq you're looking at an absolute minimum of several generations. Further, this is assuming we take a direct hand in their education, and don't fuck that up horribly(And just try to imagine the backlash against that in the other middle eastern countries). While all this is going on, we would need to maintain a continual military presence to defend the innocents who would be our example to all the rest.

How many successive presidencies would have to remain resolute in their support of the war? How many decades would the American public have to tolerate the occupation of Iraq? How many trillions of dollars? How many lives, both American and Iraqi? There's no way we could maintain an occupation of that level for that period of time without reinstating the draft. Sheer practicality will kill it if nothing else does.

We may be to blame for most of their problems, but as Thoth said, that came about from long, long before we invaded. It just wasn't as obvious back then. You can argue that we have a moral obligation to fix what we broke, but that's just more of the same meddling that made things so bad in the first place. The best thing we could do for them is to pull out of the middle east entirely, and give them a chance to actually fix things for themselves. If you genuinely want to help the Iraqi people, I think the best thing we could do for them is to offer them a way to flee their country for something better. Lord knows we don't want any more immigrants taking our jobs over here, though.

I'm not going to wade in on Iraq, as Canada hasn't committed anything there and I'm not going to talk out of my ass about something in which we have no stake. Afghanistan, however...

Basically, what Thoth said about the West meddling about in the Middle East applies no differently to Afghanistan than it does to Iraq. The US pumped millions into Afghanistan to fight the Soviets, and after they left, we lost interest and the country collapsed into civil war.

I'm personally w/ Doc. We made this mess, and I believe we have a responsibility to clean it up. I think Black Sun is also right in saying that this is not something that will be fixed in five, ten, or even twenty years. I think we have to see this one through if for no other reason than because the credibility of the US, and indeed every NATO nation in Afghanistan is at stake.

Meh, I don’t want to discourage any sort of conviction that helps keep your morale up there, but we’re already getting blowback for Afghanistan on multiple fronts.

Sadly, we need Afghanistan for the pipeline, and as a base of operations in case, for one reason or another, things do not go our way in Iraq. Some of our shadier and more useful friends also need it for the drug trade, and the strife itself as a political tool. So we’re not leaving there either. We’ve much less incentive to, as its upkeep is much lower, both monetarily and politically.

Under the Taliban, about a year before we invaded going up until the time we did, growing opium brought with it the death penalty. This was partly due to bribery from China and France (coupled with threats from the UN), partly because they felt they had flooded the market, partly because stopping production hurt the few real enemies the Taliban had in the area, and lastly, due to religious reasons. When we invaded Afghanistan, opium production there was at an all time low. As a result, everyone in the rural areas was down right destitute (even by Afghani standards), as opium production was and is pretty much the only way to make a living there. Thus, the popularity of the Taliban was, likewise, at an all time low, as the central government was the only one profiting from this act.

So, unlike Iraq, which we bombed into the stone age a decade before, a lot of people in Afghanistan were actually happy to have us come in there and kick out the Taliban (also, some were probably still happy with us for giving them hundreds of billions in guns to fight the Soviets ages back, even if most of them were the Taliban, and they had to turn a blind eye to the fact that we pulled the rug out from under them straight afterwards.). So, sure enough, within the year after our arrival, Afghanistan was producing 50% of the world’s opium. More recent estimates now put that number at 75%. That’s a whole lot of money changing hands, world-wide, that we don’t have much control over, and for the most part, goes to very shady folk who also feel the need to arm themselves heavily.

The other major blow back is, of course, Pakistan. We’ve got a fresh new dictator there using, in effect, our war in Afghanistan, pushing the Taliban into his tribal lands, as an excuse to consolidate his power and depose (/knock off) his political opponents. All the while we throw more money into his lap to help him, simply because, once again, he hates the same people we do. Surely a man who's willing to do anything to stay in power, who also has nukes, is no potential problem.

He’s also using the same excuses we are for atrocious acts against his people and government, so it maybe our motivation for backing him is, in part, that we want to make sure we have a precedent when we have a popular war-time president, and decide to consolidate power the exact same way he did, except legally, through the Emergency Powers Act.

So yeah, anything we do over there is, one way or the other, going to make things worse – no matter how benign our intentions maybe (and they aren’t really all that benign). However, once again, not doing anything at all makes things worse for us as well, so, economically speaking, we’re better off causing strife in the area, than we are taking up non-interference policy, that would be the only thing that would ever allow the region to stabilize. There’s also no guarantee if we stop fuxing with them, that someone else won’t start - nor that if we officially stop fuxing with them, that factions of the government and industry wont start fuxing with them under the table. I also would guess that we figure, better to be damned for the thing you did, than the thing you didn’t do.

As for Canada having no stake in Iraq, believe me, if we go down, we're taking you with us.
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"Ah, finally. Karma time." - Shioji
Thothie

Also Obama wins Hawaii. News just showed a 15 to 1 lead favoring him over clinton.
15,000 obama
1,000 clinton

A lot more results yet to come in but, I live in one of the most conservative areas of the island.

It's his state of origin; he'd better win there.

I think he beat Hillary in her home town, so... >_> (Granted, Illinois might be bitter about being abandoned for New York, and he's their rep. to boot.)
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"People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Thothie

Shhhhh people outside Hawaii don't know that :p
...
do they?

Meh, I wish she'd give up already. We've moved gramps out of Long Beach, and everyone else I know who lives anywhere near a bad area can drive, so I don’t much care about the riots anymore.

I’m a little worried the super-delegates will actually override the popular vote and elect her. I suspect that’ll spark off some mini-riots. They probably won’t be as bad as if Obama was shot in office, however, at the rate things are going, that’ll be awfully close to election day, and national riots may give Bush an excuse to exercise the emergency powers act, and rob us of an election altogether.

Still… I wish Obama was riding on something other than his charisma and Hillary’s lack thereof. McCain would eat him alive if not for being tainted so badly by Bush Jr, and may yet find a way to do so, depending on the level of voter fraud this time around.
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"They call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it." - George Carlin
Thothie