US Military "Might"

Let's face it folks - the world has changed from 100 years ago. Back then the international struggles were won and lost by military might. What we have today is a demonstration of the impotence of military might. No one cares that we can destroy the world hundreds of times over. There are plenty of other nations with the same capabilities. Wars will be won or lost from now on through political power.

Take the war against terrorism or the war against drugs for example. These are wars that America is losing because we do not have the political power necessary to win them. It's difficult to justify saving people who are not all that interested in being saved! And this is what both wars have degenerated into. People are dying and things are not getting better.

We need to get buy in from the people we are trying to save that they in fact do want us to save them. For the war on drugs, we need people to stop buying the drugs, this alone would be sufficient to eliminate the problem. This is a minimum requirement! People who are addicted cannot help themselves, no can they really allow us to help them (because they support the organizations that we are trying to stop)

I'm not trying to really compare Iraqis to people with addiction. I don't think Iraqis are addicted to terrorism. But I do think that they are not really helping us out in our efforts to give them democracy. They need to acknowledge our help, or we need to go away.

As far as democracy goes, they can take or leave it as far as I am concerned. I want them to be happy either way. But you cannot "liberate" the unwilling! It is really as simple as that. I don't really want to walk out of Iraq and leave it in a mess, so I think that this means that we need to come to better agreements about what they want from us - and we should not try to dictate what form of government they need.

Certainly, the news organizations and the political propaganda is attempting to say that this is indeed occurring. But I have no proof. The media talk about the June 30th handoff in positive language. "We are giving Iraq a gift" they say.

I do not buy this prediction. It is way too simple minded. My gut tells me that Iraq does not want democracy, and they will collapse catastrophically in the future near or far. And when this collapse occurs, the US will be blamed without exception. I do not believe the UN will take any responsibility - why should they? They did not want us to invade in the first place. We have the responsibility to make Iraq suceed, and in order to face up to that responsibility we should allow them to have what they want.

Of course, I make blanket statements and it is difficult to determine how to put this into practice. Some will think that the current US policy is the best way to achieving Iraq future success. But be that as it may, we do not have consensus because we have not discussed these issues. For example, the Shiites and the Kurds and the Sunnis are not exactly the type of bunch that gets along with each other nicely. Why should we expect that they would get along in a democracy? A monarchy maybe, but why would they put aside their differences to work together in a democratic fashion. This is too optimistic.

One possibile solution is to split Iraq into smaller nations. With smaller nations, there can be more hegemony and harmony among the people. I suspect that his solution would have a better opportunity for success. But certainly, this is not the only way nor is it a simple solution. There may be problems in splitting the resources fairly among the smaller nations.

What other ways can we create this nation(s) so that the Iraqi people have future success? Certainly the possibilities are not exhausted by suggesting we create one democractic government or many. There must be other ways!