Hamm Guitars said:
The US should not pull out of Iraq. They went in under false pretenses and they should not be allowed to cut and run.
Can you imagine what would happen to all of the people, families and children of those who have embraced the idea of democracy and freedom if they were abandoned and left to fend for themselves? They would be slaughtered by the thousands and their blood would be on the hands of the US Government.
They had no business going in in the first place, now they have to stay and clean up the mess that they have made. Nato and the UN should not help them, but should not allow them to pack up and leave either. They have created a civil war in that country which they may have to fight for decades, but if they were to leave it would all be over in a matter of days.
I doubt very much that if the US does cut and run that they will allow any of the Iraqi Refugees that they will have created into their country.
Gee, am I the only guy here with a memory?
I agree that Bush and Co. have made a horrible mess but the idea of Nato and the UN forcing the US to do anything is laughable.
With what, pop guns? If the USA decides to cut and run they're gone! No one 's gonna stop 'em!
For years Canada and the other Nato countries have cut back their military so far that they have little resources to contribute. 90% of the military resources (that's 90% of the money spent!) came from Uncle Sam. So like it or lump it, NATO and the UN are irrelevant.
Not meaning to defend the Bush fiasco but if you think back to those times leading up to invading Iraq you should recall that even the UN thought that Saddam had nasty stuff hidden. Why not, when Saddam told the world he did. He also had phony bunkers and supposed nuclear manufacturing plants. He played a game of refusing to let UN inspectors inside these phony plants and eventually kicked the UN inspectors out. That's when even the UN publicly stated that Saddam was hiding something "BAD"! Saddam thought he could use a bluff as a tool but it went too far.
So the UN is far from lily white. What's more, if the US pulled out the UN and the rest of NATO are too cheap and toothless to do anything to help the Iraqi people anyway.
The UN and NATO always want the US to lead chiefly because they want the US to pay for it! Planes and tanks cost money. Politicians would rather spend that money at home to attract votes with projects like daycare spaces or canoe museums in their home riding.
They forget that "he who pays the piper calls the tune." Didn't anyone notice that when the UN couldn't get the US to go into Darfur none of the other countries stepped up to the plate. So hundreds of thousands of men, women and children are slaughtered because the rest of the world is just too cheap.
We actually have half of our fleet docked because we don't have money in the budget to pay for the fuel for them to sail coastal patrols! We also don't have enough crew in the forces to man more than half of them anyway!
We can't continue to let the US do all the expensive defending and expect to call the shots. Canada is perhaps the worst offender. We take it for granted that America is forced by geography to defend North America so we can get by on the cheap. If it wasn't for Uncle Sam we simply don't have the capacity to defend PEI! You could put the entire Canadian armed forces including all the cooks, clerks and bottle washers inside Sky Dome. We have less than 3000 soldiers that would actually fire a gun.
Britain is somewhat better but the rest of NATO isn't much. France has better resources but always cheaps out so they're no help. Same for Italy.
If the rest of the world pulled their share an inept American president could never get away with a mess like Iraq.
If y'all wanna bash Bush I'll add a cheer or two of my own but it would have more impact if we stayed within the bounds of reality here.:2guns:
