Ron Paul, does he stand a chance?

[Kugbok_Fennin]

Leave Iraq = 1 broken country
Stay in Iraq = Several broken countries including ours.
War /Iran = Pick a city (Mushroom cloud)

[sachemsiouxx]

Question is, if the US army leaves, does that mean more private contractors to protect the properties of US firms installed there ?(who most likely wont go away if the US military does).

[chaos]

Originally Posted by Kugbok_Fennin

Leave Iraq = 1 broken country
Stay in Iraq = Several broken countries including ours.
War /Iran = Pick a city (Mushroom cloud)

Yeah cute, but far to simplistic, and incorrect. It's simplistic thinking like this that will bring this Bonnie situation to a head, man.

[Astrocreep]

Originally Posted by Kugbok_Fennin

Leave Iraq = 1 broken country
Stay in Iraq = Several broken countries including ours.
War /Iran = Pick a city (Mushroom cloud)

If you think by staying in Iraq it affects the US its ridiculous to think leaving Iraq will have no affect on the US at all.

[chu]

Originally Posted by Astrocreep

If you think by staying in Iraq it affects the US its ridiculous to think leaving Iraq will have no affect on the US at all.

Yeah you'll have more money and less debt.

[Astrocreep]

Originally Posted by chu

Yeah you'll have more money and less debt.

so when oil goes to 200 dollars a barrel becuase Iran took over an unstable Iraq and our world reputation plummets through the floor how much extra money will i have? Not even mentioning the fallout(pun intended) we get from pissed off radicals.

[darksensei]

Originally Posted by Astrocreep

so when oil goes to 200 dollars a barrel becuase Iran took over an unstable Iraq and our world reputation plummets through the floor how much extra money will i have? Not even mentioning the fallout(pun intended) we get from pissed off radicals.

Yeah those radicals are sure going to be pissed off we left their lands. And how has the US being in Iraq affected oil prices? Surely by your logic they must have gone way down since we've been there.

[Astrocreep]

Originally Posted by darksensei

Yeah those radicals are sure going to be pissed off we left their lands. And how has the US being in Iraq affected oil prices? Surely by your logic they must have gone way down since we've been there.

dude, oil just jumped 30 dollars a barrel becuase of the Musharrref/Bhutto business. how much higher do you think it will go if chaos and mayhem break out in Iraq becuase we cut and ran?

[chaos]

Originally Posted by darksensei

Yeah those radicals are sure going to be pissed off we left their lands. And how has the US being in Iraq affected oil prices? Surely by your logic they must have gone way down since we've been there.

Which do you think pisses them off more, invading and trying to instill some stability and give them the ability to protect themselves, or invade and leave it a clusterfuck ripe for the coming regional war with Iran and Turkey?

[Astrocreep]

Originally Posted by chaos

Which do you think pisses them off more, invading and trying to instill some stability and give them the ability to protect themselves, or invade and leave it a clusterfuck ripe for the coming regional war with Iran and Turkey?

The point is not to leave it as a clusterfuck and we are coming along nicely though there are bumps along the way. if we left now before we were done it will destroy what good we accomplished and will piss people off worse than the initial liberation. people tend to live by their current situation. if things are bad now they blame the people who put them there at present over the people who fucked them over in the past. it probably goes doubly bad if all of their misery past and present come from the same people. 2 wrongs do not make a right.

[chaos]

Originally Posted by Astrocreep

The point is not to leave it as a clusterfuck and we are coming along nicely though there are bumps along the way. if we left now before we were done it will destroy what good we accomplished and will piss people off worse than the initial liberation. people tend to live by their current situation. if things are bad now they blame the people who put them there at present over the people who fucked them over in the past. it probably goes doubly bad if all of their misery past and present come from the same people. 2 wrongs do not make a right.

That's basically waht I'm saying. It's a very childish attitude to try and put the war off as a failure simply because Bush started it. We have to live in this world after Bush is gone. We are very easy targets because of our political involvement in the Middle East, and every positive action we take does some good. It would be a disaster to just write off Iraq because Bush is unpopular.

[darksensei]

Originally Posted by chaos

We are very easy targets because of our political involvement in the Middle East

Lol, hence RP's point.

[chaos]

Originally Posted by darksensei

Lol, hence RP's point.

I understand, and agree with, his point. But even he wouldn't be stupid enough to believe that we can pull out of Iraq tomorrow and not suffer greatly for it in international politics. We are already there, we don't get to just pretend it didn't happen, this is the big boy world where actions have consequences and we are responsible for what the do.

[Ancalagon]

Originally Posted by chaos

I understand, and agree with, his point. But even he wouldn't be stupid enough to believe that we can pull out of Iraq tomorrow and not suffer greatly for it in international politics. We are already there, we don't get to just pretend it didn't happen, this is the big boy world where actions have consequences and we are responsible for what the do.

Ron Paul has stressed one thing very emphatically in his pronouncements on foreign affairs: that changes need to be made not in the minutiae of foreign policy, but in policy itself. So to respond to your point, Ron Paul advocates a withdrawal as soon as possible; not immediately, not in a manner that puts our troops in danger, but as soon as is realistically possible. But with this withdrawal MUST, Ron would aver, come pronouncements by the President that this is indicative of a fundamental shift in American relations with the rest of the world. This is indicative of the end of American empire, of American intervention in so many countries. Would this be enough to assuage whatever hard feelings have been and will, because of the withdrawal, be created? I cannot say. But this is the only LONG-TERM solution. You simply have to cut your losses somewhere, and if we keep rolling over debt (proverviablly), it will mount that much higher and redound to our tremendous detriment down the road.

[Astrocreep]

The debt we got from the Iraq war is probably the most annoying thing and i still support our mission. i had wrongly assumed that once the turmoil in Iraq was neutralized the rebuild money would come from their oil assets and then we would be compensated over a number of years for liberating them via special discounts on the oil or outright payments. looks like we are going to eat the whole bill and that frankly sucks ass. The funniest thing is people still cry in their vaginas over the Iraq war becuase they claim it was all about oil. i fucking wish that was our main goal.