I think Japan chilled out because we dropped nukes on Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and they didn't want to see any more mushroom clouds, so they chilled out.

Plus they surrendered, unconditionally.

Almost all their able bodied men were dead at the end of the war, and to fight on woudl only secure a body bag for their future- so, with odds like that- they quit.

The same thing happened with Germany, same scenario, same situation. Germany was so low on troops, they had teenage boys and old men forming divisions, who were also beginning to get killed off. Those were exhaustive wars that left little for the enemy to fight with.

Iraq was a surgical war. We hit key facilities, and we've cut off their ability to wage large scale war. (Tanks, Artillery, Airplanes, etc..) But, nearly 1,000,000 Iraqi soldiers hid among the population, armed with their AK-47's.

How do you surgically remove them? You can't, unless you find a way to draw them into the open. This war, like Vietnam, involves too many rules. It's only when you take the gloves off do you get tangible results.

Those Muslim factions have been at each others throats for hundreds of years. You cannot expect to go over there with a democracy playbook, and in 4 years, expect to have an American-like, Muslim society, unless the people want it. They don't want it. Who are we to force our lifestyle upon them? As you see, it's not working. It took almost 200 years and a Civil War for America to get itself where it is today. How can we expect Iraq to get right in 4-5 when it took us 50 times longer than that to get it right ourselves?

Pulling out may cost Iraqi lives, but that will be a Civil War, and not our fight. However, any blood shed will be on our hands, because we had no business there in the first place... In 1991 we had cause, in 2003 we didn't- and we stil don't, and that's why things are the way they are over there.

 

Agreed...

People don't care what's going on there, and what's going on there is FAR more atrocious as anything happening in the middle east. Those jokers are cutting the hands off kids, so they can't hold pistols and guns when they are old enough to fight...

There is no oil in Darfur. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands die, and continue to die there.

Although it had been going on three years, I didn't even know about Darfur until November last year (2006), when a girl from Sudan in my media appreciation class, responding the teacher's question regarding mainstream issues in the news, mentioned the conflict in Darfur, Sudan. Everyone looked at her like, 'What the hell are you talking about?"

Little did we know the war had been going on three years to that date, with estimates between 200,000 - 400,000 dead.

Nothing on CNN, FOX, CBS, NBC, ABD, etc... But, BBC had it. Why? Because it's an internal matter, and America doesn't care about those people.

We swept in to save Kuwaitt, but Sudan? Nah, that's an internal matter.
iraq is an internal matter too, now. Since we stuck our nose in there. So, let's let them fix their own crap too.

Or, let's annex them, and Mexico, and add two more stars to the flag.

Anything to get these damn gas prices down! ($3.15 a gallon this morning)

 

You think once Iraq is up and running on it's own they will give us (the US) a break on oil prices?

.....nwah

"Department of Energy (DOE) Energy Information Administration (EIA) figures claiming that the territory of Iraq contains over 112 billion barrels (bbl) of proven reserves—oil that has been definitively discovered and is expected to be economically producible....The respected Petroleum Economist Magazine estimates that there may be as many as 200 bbl of oil in Iraq; the Federation of American Scientists estimates 215 bbl; a study by the Council on Foreign Relations and the James A. Baker III Institute at Rice University claimed that Iraq has 220 bbl of undiscovered oil; and another study by the Center for Global Energy Studies and Petrolog & Associates offered an even more optimistic estimate of 300 bbl—a number that would give Iraq reserves greater even than those of Saudi Arabia....If true, this would mean that Iraq has roughly a quarter of all of the world's oil."

 

We have plenty enough oil here, but those darn treehuggers................

 

First, I'd argue with the fact that we "have it right" even now. We're still making progress. Second, they do want a representative form of government. Their turnout at the most recent election was much higher than ours in the USA despite the violence. It only takes a small percentage of fanatics to destabilize the country. Imagine if 1% of the USA were suicidal fanatics. That's over 3 million potential bombers. Third, much of the carnage in Iraq is being caused by suicide bombers, the vast majority of which are foreigners.
You're OK with that kind of blood on our hands? I can understand why you didn't want to go into Iraq in the first place, but now that we're there, we have a responsibility to finish what we started.

The Wall Street Journal reported weeks ago that the Sunni tribesmen who had formerly acted as insurgents are now joining the police force in Anbar province. They've finally become tired of the random killings of AQ and are reluctantly joining coalition forces to fight back. This is a great advance that is just now being picked up by the TV media.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/...ift/index.html

Grim

 

The USA has been barking about helping Sudan for YEARS but we simply don't have the resources to fight in a third country.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/africa.../sudan.powell/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...072101385.html

We can go to Darfur and leave Iraqis to die, or we can stay in Iraq and leave the Sudanese to die. Unfortunately, the United Nations is leaving both groups to die. Even in the shadow of 800,000+ dead in Rwanda, the UN has done little more more than offer token threats. Without the USA to back them up, the UN has no spine.

Grim

 

LOL, Raoul and I agree on something. It doesn't how much oil is in Iraq, it is a commodity and it can't be pumped out fast enough to have an impact on global oil prices.

Grim

 

I agree, although I used those words, I know we don't have it "right" yet, but we're getting better...

No, I'm not. But our hands are already bloody. Saddam may have been an ***-hole, and a potential threat, but when he was in office, you didn't hear about this kind of stuff happening in Iraq. Right or wrong, he had Iraq under control.

I could never trust them... These are people who will wear a bomb vest to kill others... I could never turn my back on a former enemy, until time and opportunity proved they were no longer a threat.