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First off, I should tell you guys that I'm now home from College and living in my nice isolated house in the sticks with its shoddy dialup connection. We might be getting broadband soon, but we're not sure when. Good internet's just not available here atm. So I might be a rare sight around here until the broadband fairy comes around to bless us with her magic silicoid dust.
Anyway, this is not a continuation of my personal obsession with the origins of moral codes, so breathe easy. This is just a quandary brought on by an article on combat medicine in a recent issue of National Geographic. You don't really appreciate how nasty it is in Iraq until you read about people losing arms and legs and being counted among the lucky, or suffering brain injuries and going crazy. The way I put it sounds sane compared to the horrors seen in the article. And, of course, it occurred to me that this is what happens with top-notch medicine to troops with excellent armor and equipment.
So, what happens when/if we pull out of Iraq? The current choice being presented to us is "Go big, go long, or go home." Going long--maintaining our current level of troops for a long time--sounds utterly unproductive. 150K troops just aren't enough to stem the chaos in a country as big as Iraq. We're currently endangering troops to no real purpose.
Going home at this point means the country will transition from slowly unravelling to complete civil war, almost overnight. The Iraqi government will collapse without us holding it together, though it's coming apart already. And such a civil war could conceivably kill millions. Iran will obviously back the Shiites, and there's talk that Saudi Arabia sympathizes with the Sunnis and would support them. Meanwhile, the Turks are very nervous about the potential for an independent Kurdistan. If we pull out, this is going to turn into a full-blown puppet war between Iraq's neighbors.
Instead of the U.S. Army trying to stomp out a dozen insurgency brushfires, militias will roam Iraq at will, looting wherever they go. There will be no reliable infrastructure. The people who now get off "lucky" as amputees will die of shock and blood loss in the street, and those with more minor wounds will die slowly and painfully of sepsis. Meanwhile, plenty of good old fashioned rape and murder will be the order of the day, along with child soldiers, food shortages, hostage-taking, and people dying of exposure after their houses are blasted into rubble.
You can see where I'm going with this: it seems that reinstating the draft and "going big" is the only ethical choice remaining for America. Don't get me wrong--I think this war was an idiotic idea from the beginning, Saddam had nothing to do with Al Qaeda or other terrorists, and it was hopelessly bungled anyway. But it strikes me as downright shameful that we would support President Jackass as he goes off on a delusional crusade, then run home and let the people we were ostensibly bringing to freedom die by the hundreds of thousands at least. Probably we'll show our yellow bellies at the idea of a draft and pretend we're not responsible for the bloodshed somehow, but we *will* be responsible for it, and we shouldn't. Can anyone dispute that it is morally wrong to not do everything we can to hold Iraq in some semblance of order, now that we've made it all FUBAR?
Anyway, this is not a continuation of my personal obsession with the origins of moral codes, so breathe easy. This is just a quandary brought on by an article on combat medicine in a recent issue of National Geographic. You don't really appreciate how nasty it is in Iraq until you read about people losing arms and legs and being counted among the lucky, or suffering brain injuries and going crazy. The way I put it sounds sane compared to the horrors seen in the article. And, of course, it occurred to me that this is what happens with top-notch medicine to troops with excellent armor and equipment.
So, what happens when/if we pull out of Iraq? The current choice being presented to us is "Go big, go long, or go home." Going long--maintaining our current level of troops for a long time--sounds utterly unproductive. 150K troops just aren't enough to stem the chaos in a country as big as Iraq. We're currently endangering troops to no real purpose.
Going home at this point means the country will transition from slowly unravelling to complete civil war, almost overnight. The Iraqi government will collapse without us holding it together, though it's coming apart already. And such a civil war could conceivably kill millions. Iran will obviously back the Shiites, and there's talk that Saudi Arabia sympathizes with the Sunnis and would support them. Meanwhile, the Turks are very nervous about the potential for an independent Kurdistan. If we pull out, this is going to turn into a full-blown puppet war between Iraq's neighbors.
Instead of the U.S. Army trying to stomp out a dozen insurgency brushfires, militias will roam Iraq at will, looting wherever they go. There will be no reliable infrastructure. The people who now get off "lucky" as amputees will die of shock and blood loss in the street, and those with more minor wounds will die slowly and painfully of sepsis. Meanwhile, plenty of good old fashioned rape and murder will be the order of the day, along with child soldiers, food shortages, hostage-taking, and people dying of exposure after their houses are blasted into rubble.
You can see where I'm going with this: it seems that reinstating the draft and "going big" is the only ethical choice remaining for America. Don't get me wrong--I think this war was an idiotic idea from the beginning, Saddam had nothing to do with Al Qaeda or other terrorists, and it was hopelessly bungled anyway. But it strikes me as downright shameful that we would support President Jackass as he goes off on a delusional crusade, then run home and let the people we were ostensibly bringing to freedom die by the hundreds of thousands at least. Probably we'll show our yellow bellies at the idea of a draft and pretend we're not responsible for the bloodshed somehow, but we *will* be responsible for it, and we shouldn't. Can anyone dispute that it is morally wrong to not do everything we can to hold Iraq in some semblance of order, now that we've made it all FUBAR?
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