1 THE PLACE TO START IS TO GET THESE STRANGE PEOPLE TO DEFINE “WINNING”.  I am stunned that the blogosphere has been so easily duped by the MSM into framing Iraq within the context of “winning” and “losing”.  Let’s think for a minute.  The objectives of the Iraq war were to topple Saddam for good, and replace him with a form of democracy that most Iraqis wanted.  You’re done!  Not surprisingly, the Iraqis, after having lived for almost all of their more than 5000 year history under tyranny, are stumbling a bit, but not much, as democracies go.  It took the US about 200 years to truly free blacks (or perhaps, you’re not even done yet – where are the black-white love scenes in the popular media?).  Canada was not even remotely a democracy until the 1920's (Universal Suffrage – except for Indians, no Bill of Rights until 1950's-60's).  France returned to an Emperor in the 1880's, and democracy there still looks shaky to me.  Every democracy developed very slowly, but Iraq is rocket fast.  At this point, few Iraqi fighters are directly attacking the Allies – they have mainly accepted their presence, and are now attacking each other (a bit).  The way to know you have WON in Iraq is when the withdrawal is ragged, loose, and ad hoc.  Good parents withdraw from control of their growing children’s lives in a way that is quite ragged, loose, and ad hoc.  The parent encourages self-sufficiency and independence, but freely permits back-sliding if it seems appropriate.  Parents always worry about their kids, and they are always there to help until the end.  The US still has troops in Germany, Japan, and South Korea (why, by the way?). The US could probably achieve their goal of not being attacked at home by Iraq-based terrorists, if they withdrew tomorrow.  Iraq is not, and probably will not become a failed state.  If it did, re-intervention is completely possible, and history is full of such events.  Britain has re-stabilized Iraq before, and in Basra, in some cases they re-occupied buildings that they left from last time.  Strangely to me, the MSM has convinced even the blogosphere that the Iraq war has to be punctuated at the end by some type of “Clear Win”.  Why?  What, exactly would that be, anyway?

2 I hope Stein keeps up his campaign to expose this ignorance.
 
My fear is that these public officials will turn to 'moderates' such as CAIR to educate themselves.  They will go from being uninformed to being disinformed. 

3 I have a simple mnemonic for this - Arabs are sunny where the sun bakes the deserts of Saudi Arabia and  Persians are shitty, where the P in Perian goes with poop, linked to shitty. So there  you have it, Arabs are Sunni, Persians (Iranians) are Shia.
 
Having said that, these two groups have been happily killing each other and carrying a grudge for 1400 plus years, this keeps them occupied and basically backward, so we should simply destroy any sides ability to make or obtain nuclear weapons and leave the rest to Allah.
 
 

4 Democracy Fool:


Win what? America is not engaged in any war or competition with Iraq. What are you babbling about?


America and the world would be safe from Iraq based terrorists if Bush were to cut n' run tomorrow?


Are you stoned, or just stupid?

5 Terrapod : useful mnemonic. ..I, too,  had memorized Iran=shit=shia

So, al queda is Sunni because Osama Bin Lanin came from Saudi Arabia? And the Wahhabis - from Saudi Arabia - are Sunni? And what about the Muslim Botherhood, from Egypt?  And for that matter, the Nation of Islam in the United States?

And if the Kurds - a geographic distinction - are both Sunni and Shia - can it be said that the distinction is not really all that important? (the Kurds aren't fighting each other, despite their differences.)

And how is it that I - of lowly stature and influence - are more curious about all of this than our elected officials??

6 I would like to say you all that it is absolutely not good to insult Muslims because of Al Qaeda although are al Qaeda peoples are Muslims but all Muslims are not alqaeeda similarly like all those who crucified Jesus were Jews but all jews didn’t crucified jesus.
Whole world knows that al qaeda don’t even represent more than 1% of muslims and they also knows that they could never face if all muslims stands in the wake of their current insult. If Muslims are not responding towards any provoking insult it id only because they love peace.
Other wise history reveals that truth is with muslim and muslims are with truth and the truth is a power could not be denyied by any other power.

PEACE

7 or start memorizing the Shahada. If the people running our nation can't be bothered to learn the most basic facts about the Middle East, you'll likely be needing to recite it soon enough.

A botched war in Iraq is bad, and if the incoming leaders are no better than the outgoing leaders at understanding the underlying causes of tensions in the region then that's even worse.

But if you seriously think there is a future scenario in which islamic terrorists take over out country and force Americans to convert to Islam, you have a very low opinion of Americans.

8 http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2006/12/13/opinion/16975.shtml for more