I guess technically it was "stable" but it was fucked up bro. Whatever it was it was far from correct.
They have no purpose. Those who would defend the citizenry are cowards....just like the cockroaches who want to be in charge. Put a gun to their head and they piss their pants like a little baby.
Do what? The Iraqis asked us to leave. We left. This country is sick of fighting for people that are unwilling to fight for themselves. Nobody loves us there. They have to fight this out and select a new strongman who will restore order. Only this time instead of a secular dictator like Saddam, it will be a religious dictator like the ayatollah if we are lucky and like bin Ladin if we are not.
For you folks that are old enuf to remember Viet Nam. No surprise here. We wanted freedom and democracy more than the natives. Same outcome. And the same result is gonna occur in Afghanistan. Identical. When will we learn? We die for democracy and freedom, those assholes run away from it. I am all for taking the oil in IRAQ and turning it into the 51st state. No problem with that at all, but to "nation build" or whatever the term du jour is, is worthless. I support greatly the folks that served there, I deeply grieve the folks that were wounded and killed there, but at no point, not one, did I not KNOW the outcome. Years in advance. Rep or Dem it did not and never will matter. I have said this forever, in the future, if we are going in, it must be to take ground, riches, and resources and expand the US of A. We will be friendlies, they will be hostiles. No ambiguity. Kill the hostiles, take their riches, put up McDonalds. It is so simple.
This was always the case. Barring an complete takeover of the country by multiple countries (a la Germany, post WWII) this was always going to happen. Maliki made it worse by further dividing the country. It is inevitable that the country will split. Three factions of people there are severely divided. There is more concern for their religious beliefs than a love of country. The sooner the Shi'ites and Sunni's grow tired of killing each other and split the country the sooner we will all have peace. This is the lesson that Vietnam taught us: Don't meddle in a country's civil war. I don't have any issues with supporting one group with air power, but I don't want to see any boots on the ground. Honestly, I'd just as soon stay out of it unless we start seeing genocide.
In my opinion, it's the fallacy of this idea of limited warfare. Can't have a culture shift if the people don't believe they've been defeated, especially in that culture. They will follow the ones with the most money and the most power or strength. That's why there's so much corruption. COIN is stupid and utterly worthless in the manner we've tried to adopt. Warfighters fight. Other governmental agencies should do the administrative functions. Two administrations have failed to implement a national strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. We don't possess national will or resolve to change anything. We want immediate results. Culture shifts take more than 10 years. But Americans don't have the stomach for it.
Pretty accurate here. I'd say it is really only two with that being the sunni and the shia. The kurds are pretty much left to their own except for that time that saddam dropped gas on them because they didn't want to share the oil (the Kurds have most of it). They are also the most hard assed of all the camel fuckers there. They are tougher and really don't give a crap about kicking either of the other two's asses. They really just want to be left alone up there in the north and are willing to let the other two fight it out over whatever they want to fight about. I would also be opposed to boots on the ground there. Nothing really to gain and so much to loose.
The Kurds are more concerned with the Turks than the Muslims to the South. I'm sorry, why is Iraq's culture shift a cause worthy of American lives? I think enough American lives have been sacrificed. Time for some Iraqi lives to be sacrificed for Iraqi freedoms.