Anger is a gift (Happy 3rd Anniversary!)

[The Shadoe]

I hope that no one here honestly thinks that Iraqis are better off under a dictator? I hear a lot of that. Take a glance at history. You can find newspaper articles criticizing the United States for getting involved in Germany and Japan, that nation-building in those areas would never work, that those people couldn't function under anything but a dictatorship. If you blanked out the names of the countries, you'd think the articles were about Iraq.

And take a look at Germany and Japan now... among the world's strongest economies.

People complain about freedom not coming to the Iraqis without taking a look at the United States history. It took 14 YEARS after we gained independance from the British to get things going. It wasn't just like "The British are gone, now everything is hunky-dory." To boot, we had a civil war as well! It took a Civil War to even attempt to correct the problems in society. President Lincoln SUSPENDED civil liberties during that period of time!! There wasn't a Patriot Act which pretty much only detains people, liberties were outright SUSPENDED during those times! Lincoln had people who acted like Cindy Sheehan hauled off. Why? He felt that there was too much at stake.

I'm not going to get into a debate about whether we should've gone to war in Iraq or not, but we are there now, and it would be disastrous if we pulled out of Iraq now. Nation building is a long process. Iraq is into it 3 years. The United States took 14.

Nation building isn't like constructing a shed, which is a day's work. It's more like building a skyscraper. And it doesn't go perfectly all of the time. We simply can't pull out of Iraq now. It would be a disaster. This is a long process, and for our sake, the citizens of Iraq's sake, and the Middle East's sake, it is vitally important that this works.

Imagine if the people who talk about all the negativity in Iraq were alive when the United States was in the process of building itself up. Using their logic, they'd have thrown in the towel and surrendered to the British.