The current deabte between Democrats and Republicans in Washington seems to be limited to two options (briefly summarized):1. We need to stay and support the Iraqis. If we leave, there will be genocide. We have to win.2. Iraq is already in a civil war. We should set a date for withdrawl and put pressure on the Iraqi parliment.Opinion #1 is mostly favored by Repuiblicans and #2 mostly by Democrats. If these were factual, I would definitely support the Republican option because I would feel that since we invaded, it is our responsibility to secure the country. There are other proposals, including ones that are thoughtful, make sense, and will benefit the Iraq. I am talking about the proposals of Presidential candidates Joe Biden (D) and Sam Brownback (R). Their two plans are roughly the same: we should propose a federalized state to Iraq. There would be three major political and geographical regions. One would be majority Sunni, one majority Shiite and the third majority Kurdish. The different ethnicities would be somewhat divided and this would reduce violence. Each state would have local control of it's police force and things of that nature, sort of like each state in the USA. Baghdad would be a central federal city. This would be the plan to stabilize the country as and after American forces leave. I believe this plan is the best out there right now, along with the plan of former presidential candidate and governor of Wisconsin Tommy Thompson, a Republican. Thompson's plan divides Iraq into 18 provinces. This would be relatively easy to implement because the 18 provinces already exist within Iraq. It would also be a federal system. What would probably happen is that the Sunnis would elect Sunnis, the Shiites would elect Shiites and the Kurds would elect Kurds. Oil revenue of the country would be divided. One third would go to the federal government, one third to the 18 states, and one third to every man woman and child. Thompson then proposes another idea. It seems so obvious and yet it has not been done yet. This grand idea is to let the parliment of Iraq vote on US withdrawl. If they want us to leave, we do; if they don't we don't.Let me get back to my fundamental point. I sort of got off-track in explaining these plans of various candidates. My point is that the Republicans are wrong when we say we must stay there and help the Iraqis so there is no genocide or power vaccum. Everytime they say this I become extremely frustrated because no one on either side of the aisle ever mentions a very important fact. This important fact should change to debate. It is so important that I will write it in large bold letters.80% of Iraqi civilians want American troops out of their country.There have been many scientific surveys and polls which have shown this. (To be fair, some of them showed that only 76% percent of Iraqis want troops out)So, in review, the American people want troops home. The Iraqi people want troops home. Most of the Congress even wants troops home. The only people opposed seems to be the neoconservatives, Dick Cheney leading the way. Another major fact overlooked is also quite important. Once again, we are saying the wrong things. Whenever a war opponent wants to point out how many people are killed, they always say the number of American (or coalition) forces that have died. In the media, there is always new talking points when a new milestone of deaths is reached. People always say "God Bless the Troops" or "Our Hearts are With Their Families". Michael Moore dedicated his People's Choice Award to the families of soldiers. This is probably is good thing, but there is something wrong with it. This is a volounteer army. The soldiers choose to join the military and ultimately choose to go over there and fight. They are brave and chose to risk their lives. So it is not like these are just innocent American boys being savagely killed for no reason. However, that is not the core of my argument. Once again, bold is needed.More than 600,000 innocent Iraqi civilians have died since the start of the occupation. That is a lot of people. 600,000 is a conservative estimate. Some experts put the number closer to a million. I feel like a civilian death is a greater tragedy than a military death. Military service members know what they are getting into, civilians do not. Civilians do not have weapns and cannot defend themselves. Also, the number of civilians dead is far greater than the number of military dead, which is at about 3,000. Don't misunderstand this. I am not bashing the troops. They are courageous and should be honored. I'm just saying that most people in the United States probably don't know that this many civilians had been killed. I could go on about why these people died and about other things significant to this for pages and pages but this blog entry is already very long. I'll talk about other issues concerning Iraq in a later post.I think we should withdrawl troops from Iraq as soon as possible. We should implement a combination of the plans of Joe Biden, Sam Brownback, and Tommy Thompson. Of course, we should only do this if the people and parliment of Iraq want it because it is their country and we should not boss them around. We should not put pressure or enforce benchmarks on the Iraqi parliment. It is not their responsibility because it is the United States that started this mess. We should not get mad when the Iraqi parliment takes vacation. The responsibility of securing the country does not rest on their shoulders. We are the ones who made it unsecure initiallyThat said, I am not too happy with what most of the Democrats are saying or doing right now. They are elongating the war by agreeing to funding. We should not fund the war. There is enough money already "in the pipeline" to bring the troops home (no oil pun intended). The Democrats also do not challenge the two misperceptions which I have talked about. They need to cite that most Iraqis want us out and they need to cite the sheer amount of casualties which have already occured.
I am The Sirob. On my blog (this one), I will discuss numerous issues including but not limited to politics, international affairs, technology, and sports. I will accept all comments and opposing views and you may post comments anonymously. However, I will delete your comment if it is spam. I will respond to most comments. I will eventually have other pages on my website. I will include very funny pictures, articles, jokes, and lists. Hopefully, most of these will cause you to laugh out loud. I certainly did. I may seem like a weird online identity if you only read this entry, but please come back and maybe even subscribe to the RSS feed of this blog. Get to know me and get to know how I think.
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