Iraq the 51st state.

Like the Pottery barn rule “You break it you buy it”, we have already broken Iraq and spent so much money trying to fix it, we might as well take ownership of it. At least this way the American public would not think that we are spending money and lives on a lost cause. It will become our own cause and all the lives lost and money wasted will be atleast worth something. Like any part of the world facing a viral outbreak we could just qurantine Iraq and wait till things get better. After reading the Petraeus report and testimony and hearing the options coming out from both the Democrats and the Republicans I don’t feel we have any good options going forward. I was against the war but I agree with the Bush’s surge, we need to fix the problem regardless of who screwed it up, it is the only humane thing to do. For all the people who are anti-war now but were for the war at it’s begining, you are as much responsible for this fiasco as the people to who still keep insisting that we are winning - they need to stand up and help find the solution. War is not child’s play where you can decide you want to sit out now becuase you are tired. I do believe their is no military solution alone to this problem. I don’t think the Iraqi government is up to the challenge of finding a political solution, they are too busy consolidating their regional power bases and getting rich from all th money being doled out by the US government in the form of aid and settling sectarian scores. 

So I ask what to we do? Should we just packup and leave and let them fight it out like the anti-war lobby and the Democrats are suggesting? I know the anti-war lobby uses the Vietam war as an example that despite the wide spread killing after the Americans left, Vietnamese settled things between themselves and 35 years later Vietnam is a free market society with some resemblence of a Democracy. While it is a good argument I don’t think this would be the case in Iraq. First if all I don’t believe the Vietnamese had any sectarian or tribal differences, their differences were mostly political unlike the Iraqi’s whose differences are religious, sectarian, tribal, political and can be traced back centuries.

Do we continue down the same path as the President has laid out and keep hitting our head against the wall? What is that oft used definition of insanity …expecting a different result?

Which brings me to my conclusion, lets make Iraq the 51st state, get rid of the Iraqi government, afterall we installed them (or was it Iran??). Lets bring back the Coalition Provisional Authority, only with smarter and more experienced people this time, lets make the General Petraeus incharge of security and Ryan Crocker the head of the new CPA. If the general needs more troops to provide security, lets send them more troops to provide security and engineers who can help build up the infrastructure and the economy both of which are in shambles. A recent Newsweek article mentioned that even when the electric generators were starting to produce more elecricity then pre-war levels, Iraqi’s working at these places or guarding them would sabotage the generators in order to deny other regions of elecricity on orders form their political masters. Do we really believe that leaders such as this would be able to come to a political understanding?? I do believe once people have security and their lives improve economically, they will give up violence and become politically active and maybe in a decade or so we could have real democratic elections not just elections as we did in 2005. Think what you will of Saddam he did provide security and jobs to the Iraqis as long as they kept their noses clean and kept out of politics. Only we may have better intentions.