Oh Leslie

If you weren't so clearly ignorant of the situation in Iraq I'd suspect you'd sold out merely to be anti-Labor.

You know there is little opportunity for Western aid workers in Iraq to do any rebuilding. Its too dangerous. The few aid people there need to sleep in bunkers in the Green Zone (fortress) of Bagdhad and have armed escorts whenever they travel out of it.

Most Iraqis dislike/hate Westerners - for good reason. The longer Coalition troops are there the longer they will have to fight (and be fought by) Iraqi insurgents supported by Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The country is in a perpetual state of counterinsurgency. Fighting, guns, no hearts and minds or rebuilding for years.

Cornflower

I agree that the parallels with Vietnam are clear.

As in Vietnam - we had to bomb villages to liberate it - hey Leslie?

Leslie's primitive logic "you break it - you own it" forgets that the Coalition has no God given right (sorry Boazy) to own Iraq.

There has been no discernable progress (in terms of lower civilian casualties) from the current troop levels in Iraq.

So how can a continued presence improve the situation? Would Leslie want to increase the numbers of Coalition (including Australian) troop levels - in line with Mr Howard's policy?

Pete

Could Leslie please tell us where there is a higher authority to carry out what she suggests in poor bloody torn-up Iraq?

With the United Nations having proven pretty well useless, and the Christian God which George Dubya so much relies on has apparently failed, what are we left with?

Well, once again we are left with dear old Socrates, whom history books say did really say something like - Out with the Gods and in with the Good.

Please take note that the musings of the old feller, written by both Plato and Aristotle, did help Thomas Aquinas get Christians out of the dreaks of the Dark Ages and later into the Ages of Reason and Enlightenment. Thus it was again later the German philosopher Immanuel Kant took it up, and did warn us about letting one personage take charge of the world like George W' sits on the unipolar throne right now.

Reckon the above says it all - and it is gratifying to note that our OlO's are now showing much more than a mite of common sense.

Bushbread,
I agree with you, Islam is not conducive to democracy anyway, the longer we stay in Iraq, the more innocent civilians are killed. A pity the coalition of the willing didn't find any WMD's at least they then could have had some justification for the invasion, except oil.

Australia needs to become more independent and not be grasping on the coattails of the U.S of A. I express it this way because many people say "the Americans" which is made up of 2 continents, and many nations.

We should do what PM Curtain did, bring our troops home to protect our own country, after all the ADF, is the Australian Defence Force.

BOAZ_David

You recommend a partition yet you cannot see any parallels with Vietnam?

Then you say that the Vietnam War was lost because of democracy and the media? Do you honestly believe the crazy spin that the war could have been won if only the voters had been kept out of it?

Quite clearly you (and Bush) have learned nothing from Vietnam and it follows that neither you nor he and his advisers understand, for example, that an occupying force, especially one that cannot engage successfully with the community, will always be seen as the enemy, even by its apparent supporters.

Boaz, I have just joined that long list of people who have come forth to respond to you while shaking their heads in disbelief at your very odd world view and strange twist on things. However it will be my first and only reply to you. You see, what most people use OLO for is to venture an opinion and they hope to learn something from the responses of others.

But obviously from your insulting pun on my name and the tone of your comments that is not what you are about, is it? So have a good day and in future (at least insofar as I am concerned) you can keep your games to yourself.

I don’t care about Iraq, the conflict there, or Iraqis themselves.

What concerns me is that, as it was with the unnecessary US/Australia involvement in Vietnam, there could be flotillas of boats bringing bogus refugees to Australia after a pullout.

As it was with the Fraser government, these bogus refugees would be allowed in – because of some weak-kneed sense of shame – by an equally weak Howard government.

This would further accelerate the slide to an even more mongrel Australian society, and the death of Western culture in the southern hemisphere

David: I can’t see how partitioning is an answer. It has never worked- Cypress, Northern Ireland, Korea, Vietnam, Palestine aren’t exactly poster-boys for the success of partitioning. And I can’t see it working here. How do you divide the nation’s resources- oil, water, arable land? How do you give equal access to seaports and roads? What happens if immediately afterwards Saudi annexes the Sunni areas and Iran annexes the Shiite areas? What do we do if instead they degenerate into anarchic states that are sitting on top of a significant chunk of our remaining oil supplies- invade again?

I agree with Leslie in as much as 'you break it, you bought it'. However, continued presence of the Coalition of the Willing is not the right answer. We need a better authority and, here, I agree with FrankGol- the UN is the only answer. Only through active involvement of an extra-territorial authority can any progress in the reconstruction of Iraq progress.

Bushbred- the UN is no more or less the sum of us as world players. If it doesn’t work then the fault resides with us. It was the US who unilaterally decided that its own interests were more important than the rest of the world and plunged us into this mess, not the weakness of the UN. In many areas the UN functions extremely well- it is now time to expand those successes.

What we need is an authority in Iraq that can command some respect from the majority of the population. We also need to have external parties such as US, Iran, Saudi and others back away while the reconstruction is progressing. Making the area a protectorate of the UN would eliminate the impression that one country is building the Iraqi government as its own stooge. This is a bold move but the only way to restore some legitimacy to the reconstruction efforts.

If we just pull out now then we will be forced back in later simply by virtue of our dependence on the region’s oil reserves. And it will be much bloodier the next time.