"It would be "immoral" to leave Iraq now" ?

[kentuck]

We hear this argument frequently - from Republicans and Democrats alike.
But if it would be "immoral" to leave the country in a mess, would it not have been "immoral" to make the mess in the first place? If it would be immoral to leave, then it would have been immoral to enter.

If we leave now, things will deteriorate into civil war, we are told. So, we created a mess and we have to stay until it is cleaned up? But, there is no reason to believe things will get better if we stay. So, why not admit the mistake and leave now? Would one action be more immoral than the other? Sounds like a moral dilemma, don't it?

[PDJane]

1. Civil war.......

was an inevitability from the first. It's a bit late to worry about "morality".

[Yupster]

14. If we do leave, I hope we at least bring

the Iraqis who have worked with us back with us.

It was discraceful the way we left Vietnam and Cambodia and left the people who worked with to fend for themselves.

The members of the government top to bottom who worked with us in Cambodia were largely murdered.

I have a customer who ran a small camp in the Mekong Delta. We got on the subject of floods recently, and he mentioned that the handful Vietnamese women secretaries who worked in his office he found out later were all killed after Saigon fell.

I think if we pull up and leave we owe better to the Iraqis who've worked with us so we don't have videos everyday for months about collaberators getting their heads sawed off on the command of the new Caliphate Government.

[occuserpens]

2. Is it moral or immoral to bury the dead dog?

Removal of Saddam was like chopping off the dog's head. Now it is dead. What else do they want? Keep the corpse in the basement waiting for resurrection?

[murray hill farm]

3. caca de torro!

We leave..pull all of our troops..and leave halliburton there..to rebuild what we destroyed...let them clean it up.

[YDogg]

4. Halliburton and Blackwater. The oil will pay for it.

[murray hill farm]

6. Yeah...

Exactly!!!

[catmother]

5. i saw something about iraq on 60 minutes not too long ago.

the people have to wait on gas lines for 7 to 8 hours. there is crime. innocent people are being blown up by suicide bombers. one woman said. we're glad you removed saddam, but please leave now and let us fight our own battles.

we created one f****** mess over there.

[WildClarySage]

7. If morality were our concern, we would not have employed white phospherous

in Iraq.

BZZZTT Wrong answer. Thanks for playing, Conservative Contestant, and we have some lovely parting gifts for you.

[opihimoimoi]

9. Nor TORTURE....oops, wrong answer

[liberal N proud]

8. Can it be any more immoral than the original attack? n/t

[marbuc]

10. The morality card is being played a lot these days

I don't think it would be immoral to leave Iraq now, but I do think it is wrong to make a mess and not clean it up. That being said, we are not doing a good job, and our presence, especially that of contractors that supplant fully capable Iraqis, is making things worse. I think we should move our military and contactors out, and hand this over to someone who can actually do the job.

[acmavm]

11. Since when did 'morality' have a damn thing to do with the policies of

the bush** administration?

[many a good man]

12. It would "probably" be illegal

under international law. Loosely paraphrasing international law: its one crime to invade a foreign country without UN support. Its another crime to leave the country in worse shape than it was before you invaded.

I'm not so sure two wrongs make a right. We have a moral obligation to make our best effort to stabilize the situation, even if that means withdrawal. But no country would offer their people to go in as Peacekeepers in the midst of a hot civil war so internationalization is not an answer. If we withdraw and do nothing else, the confilict may enflame the entire region. This is the real dilemma.

It was immoral and illegal to enter in the first place, and it would be immoral and illegal to leave it now in a state of utter chaos.

I think if we consign ourselves to the fact of an Iraqi civil war, we should think of how best to contain the damage that follows. American presence inside Iraq only prolongs and worsens the civil war. Its a lose-lose situation but we cannot take the worst available option.

I would propose a multinational border patrol that seals off the borders from the foreign flow of cash, arms, and fighters. That way the civil war should be shorter in duration, less deadly, and less likely to spread. The UN should be front and center in peace negotiations and the rebuilding effort. The US would withdraw all troops and foot the bill for reconstruction, giving up all contracts in the process.

The US should then, in a gesture of good will and apology, turn the following people over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague for trial on charges of Crimes Against Humanity:
George Bush
Dick Cheney
Condoleeza Rice
Donald Rumsfeld
Colin Powell
et. al.

[Ready4Change]

13. It is also immoral to STAY.

Staying or leaving is a lose/lose choice for the US. If we leave, Iraq will fall into turmoil, and likely emerge with a highly radical leadership.

Staying is only likely to delay the same result, plus add many of our own troops to the death toll.

[renie408]

15. What leads you to believe that things will be better if we leave?For us

or for them? Everybody screams "VIETNAM!!". And while their are many similarities between the Iraq sitution and Vietnam, there are some pretty BIG differences. Oil, Al Quaeda, Iran, Israel....I don't think it is as simple as "Stay or leave". It is more about staying intelligently and leaving equally intelligently as soon as we feasibly can.

[DearAbby]

16. The solution should have been and will again be left to the UN to help the

Iraq people to rebuild their country. The US moral obligation would be to pay for it and abide by the decisions of the Iraqi people and the UN.

We need to get out. The "Civil War" is already a reality. It was a reality when we removed Saddam.

[renie408]

17. I agree

Back when he was running for the nomination, Edwards said that we need to take the "American face" off of the rebuilding of Iraq. He thought we needed to get a REAL multinational coalition to police and rebuild. But I do think that America should be involved in the reconstruction, somehow, in what it has so badly damaged. Our troops and our money should be available if needed. And I think we should stay until whatever organization that is coming in behind us is in place.

[Yupster]

19. And maybe after the multi-national coalition

gets done solving Iraq for us, then they'd be so kind as to pay off our national debt for us too. If it isn't too much trouble that is.

So like France and other countries in Europe are going to get involved in an Arab nation? Yeah that's real likely. it's not like they have restive Muslim minorities or anything.

Arab countries don't want any part in it either. The last thing the Sheikhs and kings want is a functioning democracy in their backyard.

So it's a nice thought to say others need to take it over from us. The problem comes when you ask who?

[DearAbby]

22. I honestly had not thought of that.

You have a point, something to think about. All I know is that our presence there is a cause of a lot of the problem. But leaving the country without any support...An un holy mess!

[occuserpens]

18. UN is out of Iraqi picture

[rfkrfk]

25. Kofi Annan visited Baghdad, two days ago

try this link, to the UN website

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=16544&Cr=Iraq&Cr1=

[SONUVABUSH]

20. immoral?

It would be no more immoral to leave now than to stay for 10 more years and have thousands more dead a a result. This war is not going to be won I'm afraid. It will be just as chaotic 10 years from now.

[PurityOfEssence]

21. Yes, it would be immoral to leave now.

With our egotistical self-proclaimed right to fuck and destroy as we please, we entered a country that had never done us any harm and was depleted and beset by a decade of crippling sanctions. These sanctions were gleefully imposed by us with the foreknowledge of the advantages we would have.

We fucked up everything. We destroyed their infrastructure, we killed their people, and we have hamstrung their attempts at self determination. There is no viable government there now. The naked reality is that the civil war is only kept at a low boil because of our presence.

To leave now is supreme selfishness. Those who advocate it are either extremely naive or intrinsically selfish. We fucked that country, and to leave now would plunge it into even worse throes of internecine warfare.

It's a silly question anyway: the assholes who forced us into going into there have NO desire to leave; we're there for regional control, OIL, and the securing of Israel. It simply won't happen.

To advocate leaving is, on a deeply moral level, a dismissal of the people there as inferior. We fucked them, and for us to bellyache about how we're hurting ourselves is supremely ugly. Somehow this country allowed itself to invade a sovereign nation, and for us to now decide that it's too messy is to absolve ourselves of responsibility. We are responsible. We are responsible to the world. Even in the most liberal, tolerant and empathetic evocations from this country, we don't seem to give a fuck about the tens of thousands of deaths inflicted on the innocents of that land. The numbers are staggering, and they don't reflect the extreme disruption to the crying children and other survivors.

Somehow, our supreme selfishness as a culture is so ingrained in us that many decent people can only see the ramifications that affect us personally: the American lives and American costs. This is deeply disgusting.

We owe it to those poor people to stay there until some version of stability can be had.

Even so, this is all a ridiculous exercise in rhetoric: our government wants control of that region, safety for Israel and the OIL. More than anything, we want the oil, and we're not going to leave. Period.

In a more moral world, the argument to suck up our selfishness and suffer more losses because of our pre-emptive aggression would still be laughed off by the basic American characteristic of dismissing "others", but this is just coffee house musing: it's not going to happen.

I am deeply dismayed by those who advocate walking away at this point. IT'S OUR FAULT, AND THE VACUUM WE'D CREATE BY LEAVING WOULD BE A PYRE OF HUMAN BEINGS. I'm also deeply disgusted by the silly fantasies of those who think we'd even do such a thing: we're there to save Israel, suck the oil dry, be a hedge against the disintegration of Saudi Arabia and generally plant a series of bases that will help us in our quest for world dominance.

This is revolting from every direction.

[kentuck]

23. We screwed it up royally and you still cling to the belief that...

we can fix it? I'm not so sure about that...

[PurityOfEssence]

26. I don't necessarily think we can, and I don't have a quick remedy

We never should have gone in. We had no right to invade a sovereign nation, period. The whole thing was ugly and disgusting on our part, and driven by greed, pomposity and numerous other factors that were all morally reprehensible.

Still, to leave now would be an act of selfishness on our part, and virtually all justifications for such an act seem to be to save our people and our money.

The place will literally blow up if we leave abruptly. Beyond that, the conversation is silly: we're not leaving; we're there to suck oil, have a base in the region and buttress Israel.

I see no good solution, but I certainly think that it would be deeply immoral to smash, kill and light bonfires and then leave the poor blighters to fend for themselves. The only solution is to try to engage the rest of the world in some kind of dialogue and phase ourselves out as some version of local entities can coalesce to create and maintain some kind of civil order.

Unlike many, I do not claim to have the answer, but I do take responsibility to not just cut our losses, save our own asses and get out. I have always been against this aggression, and I've been very vocal that we intended to do it all along. It's disgusting. Still, whether I stood against it or not, we did it, and we owe it to the locals to try to make good.

Once again, though, this is all academic: our government has no intention of leaving, nor does it have any intention of steering the locals toward anything but a government we control. Pathetically, though, it's so far out of our control right now that we'd settle for any form of stability. Dialogue from the constitutional maneuverings make it quite plain that we'll tolerate an ugly and primitive theocracy just to give it some stamp of legitimacy and hope for stability.

This is a deeply dark chapter in our history, and it's only going to get worse. Still, withdrawal right now would be an act of selfishness.

I hate every facet of this disaster, but we have moral obligations.

We are now the villains of the world; to leave abruptly would just make it worse. And just to further beat it into the ground: our feudal lords have no intention of leaving.

[ProudDad]

28. You neglect the fact

that the Iraqi people contain many adults who are more than capable of running their own country once our occupying force leaves.

It's a bit of amazing, patronizing bs to think that only the U.S. can fix what they've broken. In fact, it was the U.S. support of Saddam that got them into this pickle in the first place.

We owe them restitution for the damage we've caused but we have to get our asses out of there!

Leave NOW!

[PurityOfEssence]

29. You're absolutely sure of that?

You don't think that the Sunnis and Shiites will break open into a total bloodbath of a civil war upon our exit? You're sure that Iran will stay out and there won't be a serious influx of foreign Sunnis to sway the tide? You're positive that the Kurds won't take the opportunity to declare a separate state, which would almost definitely cause Turkey to invade, not to mention some muscling by Syria and Iran?

I see no evidence that these things won't happen.

What makes you so sure? You characterize me as some kind of racist elitist, but I say up front that I don't have the answer. You are somehow completely sure that your simple answer is the undeniable solution to a complex problem. This mess isn't as thorny a problem as the Israel/Palestine one, but it doesn't seem particularly easy either.

Sorry if it sounds like it's patronizing from this vantage point, but most of the scenarios I see are horrendous, and once done, they're off and running.

In a more perfect world, I'd like to do precisely what you say; we owe them far more than that, and we owe the entire world in a similar way. I don't think it'll hold together if we do, and the children, old and weak will suffer even more.

I'm aware that the Iraqi people are a very educated and sophisticated people, but this is a society that has been systematically brought to its knees for 15 years now; it's literally running on empty. Desperate times bring forth all sorts of horrors, and when religion is added into the mix, they're truly horrible horrors. To create a power vacuum sounds incredibly dangerous. A phased withdrawal, bloody though it will be, sounds like a possible solution; at least there would be some transition as opposed to a sudden jolt.

Once again, though, I feel it's academic: the assholes running our country are NOT going to leave.

[Douglas Carpenter]

30. at what point can we leave? and what do the Iraqi's want?

The very nature of occupation is self-perpetuating. I doubt that you would disagree. If for instance we were to pull back our forces to the compounds and allow the U.S. backed Iraqi Army to perform all the functions, what do we do when they can't do it? Does anyone believe that the U.S. backed Iraqi Army is strongly motivated and would not have to call for help?

In the Arab and Islamic world especially, any outside presence will be viewed as a repeat of the crusades and also as a return to their more recent colonial past. This will not change with time.
This will be the same whether it is one year from now, ten years from now or one hundred years from now. And willingness to accept the occupation is decreasing every day we stay.

Also, given the reality of America's power, influence and most importantly its military fire-power in the region, would it not be a bit innocent to imagine that U.S. power even under a Democratic Administration will be benign tutelage? Even if it was, would the Iraqi's ever believe that? What are the possibilities that they would see things differently in five years, ten years or one hundred years? I don't think that there is any doubt that the hostility would increase sharply the longer we stay.


And then there is the matter of Iraqi opinion. Does anyone seriously imagine that we are there at the pleasure of the Iraqi people?

Here is links to info on independent polls of Iraqi opinion:

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m17469&date=05-nov-2005_03:0

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/23/wirq23.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/10/23/ixportaltop.html

http://www.comw.org/pda/0501br17append.html


What is most disturbing is that here is far, far more support for those who want to kill us than there is for the continued presence of American and British forces. They simply do not want us there one more day.

[Jai4WKC08]

24. False dichotomy

It is certainly possible that is was immoral to "make the mess in the first place" and just as immoral to leave without cleaning it up, or at the very least attempting to. Actually, this is precisely the position that most of the Democratic leadership is currently taking, whether you like it or not.

Another problem with your argument: Even if it is true that "there is no reason to believe things will get better if we stay," it does not follow that there is NO reason to believe things could get a lot worse if/when we leave.

I'll admit, I don't know how much "cleaning up" is feasible in Iraq at this point. Probably nothing with the current gang of crooks and incompetents in the White House and Pentagon. And I think it's quite likely that the time will come--soon if it isn't already here--when there is nothing anyone can do either to make it better or to forestall something worse. And I also admit that eventually, the Iraqis will ask us to leave, which will leave the question moot. It is their country, afterall.

But that said, I do believe the potential for civil war and genocide, possibly expanding to engulf the region, is very real indeed. And as someone who believes there is a moral imperative to intervene to stop genocide when possible (yes, I think we should be in Darfur, for example), I have a hard time accepting that we can just walk away from the fact that we have created the very conditions which may spawn it.

[Douglas Carpenter]

27. polls of Iraqi opinion on the whole matter...

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m17469&date=05-nov-2005_03:0

"Some polls have asked Iraqis specifically about the presence of U.S. troops, and guess what: they want us to leave. A February poll by the U.S. military, cited by the Brookings Institution, found that 71 percent of Iraqis "oppose the presence of Coalition Forces in Iraq." This poll was taken only in urban areas, but others have found much the same sentiment. According to a January 2005 poll by Abu Dhabi TV/Zogby International, 82 percent of Sunni Arabs and 69 percent of Shiite Arabs favor the withdrawal of U.S. troops either immediately or after an elected government is in place."

and this one is a from the British Ministry of Defense

link

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/23/wirq23.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/10/23/ixportaltop.html

"Forty-five per cent of Iraqis believe attacks against British and American troops are justified - rising to 65 per cent in the British-controlled Maysan province;

• 82 per cent are "strongly opposed" to the presence of coalition troops;

• less than one per cent of the population believes coalition forces are responsible for any improvement in security;

• 67 per cent of Iraqis feel less secure because of the occupation;

• 43 per cent of Iraqis believe conditions for peace and stability have worsened;

• 72 per cent do not have confidence in the multi-national forces."