I have found that the biggest topic by far on most of the blogs I visit, including to a certain extent, this one, is how Bush and Co. have made a royal screw-up of the Iraq war and as a consequence have made a major mess of this country. I find I agree with most of the criticism leveled in all those posts, but what I am not finding is any well thought out suggestions as to how we might correct the situation, or at least minimize all the harm to ourselves and our Middle East friends that we are now perpetrating.
The topic I am proposing is one in which each contributer assumes he/she has been elected president, or appointed National Security Advisor or taken some such high level office and authority and now needs to propose a plan, with full rational for its selection, that will extricate us from this mess. Even though I say "us", all our foreign friends are particularly invited to participate, since I suspect they will have some very knowledgeable input, and the harm being done is having world wide impacts.
I am sure that this thread will at some point - hopefully not to soon - degenerate into just more repetition of all the accusations and back biting that is currently going on in all the other blogs, so I would really like all the participants to focus on finding or exploring positive solutions. In fact, I would suggest that, no matter how emotionally you are involved in this issue, you take a deep breath and detach yourself from the heated aspects of the controversy and approach the situation as an exercise in problem solving.
The way I have worded this PNT so far seems to be loaded on the side of the war's opponents and to be excluding supporters of the war. I don't mean to do this but I also don't want repeats of all the justifications for our actions to date since these are well covered elsewhere. I think most war supporters feel that the war could be going better and that some serious mistakes have been made that need to be corrected. I invite these people to also participate with any plans they would like to explore to improve the current situation and redress those past errors.
It might serve to keep the discussion focused on the objective if we categorize our inputs along the following lines (with variations in between):
1) Get out fast and don't look back.
2) Phased withdrawal with well defined 'mileposts' for each stage.
3) "Stay the course." Continue with our current approach.
4) Expand operations to increase pressure and confinement on the insurgents, and perhaps even expand the conflict into adjacent countries that are supporting the war.
It would be appropriate at this point to state my solution to the situation. I have none. I would almost consider voting
against my candidate of choice to avoid foisting this debacle on them. The reason I'm suggesting this topic on this forum is that many of the most intelligent people I know I have found posting here. (OK. So I don't know a whole lot of people.) Perhaps with some real effort and self control we can come up with some viable suggestions.
To Admin.: I have no idea where to place this PNT. Your call.
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