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Originally Posted by Mazer
Please stop comparing Iraq to Vietnam, there's no way 58,000 American soldiers are going to die there. There's no draft. There's no Ho Chi Minh trail. The comparison is not only futile, it's tiresome.
Shiites and Sunnis aren't as despairate to kill each other as you think. A civil war might be inevitable if we left them alone now, but the longer we engage them politically the more they learn and more preventable civil war becomes. Besides, if the Shiites decide to slaughter Sunnis then Saudi Arabia will close its borders to all Shiites, not just Iraqis. Without access to Mecca an international war might begin, and nobody in the middle east wants that to happen. So if a couple thousand soldiers dying will save the lives of millions of Muslims then it's something we must do.
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i'm not sure if we stayed long enough we wouldn't see those same casualties, but there isn't any way you can dismiss it out of hand, any more than than those who disregarded history and insisted we'd be out in weeks had any standing in truth. i would hope we don’t rack up 58,000, but hell, it could be more. the possibility exists. we won’t see those numbers if we leave beforehand tho. that’s about the only certainty. at this point in the conflicts
more americans have died in iraq than in vietnam, so going by reality, instead of say, talk radio mythology, it's worse.
as for your feelings, well now if it's so tiresome for you sitting at home, imagine what it's like for those young americans who have to somehow deal with this neverending mistake on the ground. that they traveled there on intelligence manipulations is bad enough, that they stay to die is untenable. with or without us the ancient middle eastern tribes will do what they've always done, but it's past time our people returned.
- js.