Dianne- with all respect, this is crazy. Democrats specifically anticipated this. Take Jim Webb for instance in 2002:

The issue before us is not simply whether the United States should end the regime of Saddam Hussein, but whether we as a nation are prepared to physically occupy territory in the Middle East for the next 30 to 50 years. Those who are pushing for a unilateral war in Iraq know full well that there is no exit strategy if we invade and stay.

In Japan, American occupation forces quickly became 50,000 friends. In Iraq, they would quickly become 50,000 terrorist targets.

Dianne- recall that we defeated the Soviet Union without invading them. There is a time for military muscle and there’s a time to use your damn head; one without the other will lead to disaster.

Nobody anticipated the level of extremism within the country and continuously supplied from Iran and other outside sources or if they did, they didn’t do anything about it.

well yes, those that thought we would be greeted with flowers didn’t anticipate this, but the problem is that they were not the experts on the middle east, they were just the people in power making decisions, without the willingness to make informed decisions because somehow it has become ideologically incorrect for republicans to ask experts for their real, unbiased opinion before making decisions. the first Bush listened to these experts and didn’t invade Baghdad because these experts feared that that would lead to a civil war … well i guess they were right.

The plan is to kill all those who would try to destablize it (let’s call them “the bad guys”, or jihadists for short.) In the meantime, we continue to build up and train the local forces (we’ll call them “the good guys”) to take control of the security of their own country.

oh great, what a wonderful plan. problem though is that the more of them we kill the more of them will turn against us. terrorism is really hard to fight with force … just take a look at European countries that had to deal with it. the problem with terrorism is that it has a cause, in this case it is about assuring that western forces leave iraq and the muslim/islam world (if you do some research you will find out that one of the reasons for Bin Laden to start fighting America was the stationing of US forces on Arab/holy land. so what do we do? we put more forces there. what do you think is going to be the outcome of that?

With this plan you will have to be prepared to kill pretty much the whole middle east, and honestly i doubt that the US is going to be prepared to accept not so much the number of dead muslims, but the number of dead american soldiers that will come with that.

The democrats give us this bullcrap about we need to TALK to everybody, reason with them, get help from the UN partners, etc. That’s so much bullshit I can’t believe it. You can’t TALK the clerics into calling off jihad. Furthermore, millions of muslims have bought into this crap all over the muslim world. Millions of them. The French and English and Germans are scared to death of offending the muslims residing in their countries for fear of violence. Do you really think they’re going to help us any more in Iraq … hell no. It doesn’t matter who is in charge of our government. Clinton himself couldn’t talk them into it.

The Republicans are pathetic as well. If Rumsfeld worked for a corporation and delivered the kind of results he’s delivered in Iraq, he would have been fired long ago. But Bush is so damn stubborn, he won’t do it. Instead, we languish on and on.

I no longer believe that Islam is a religion of peace. It is a religion of hate, fear and intimidation and we must be prepared to defend ourselves against it, and if they want to kill each other off in the name of whatever religious islamic sect they belong to, then they can go ahead and do it without my tax dollar supporting it.

I believe most Americans agree that the strategy of the last three years has been a failure, based on any criteria: numbers of terrorist attacks, levels of services to the Iraqi people (2 Hours of electricity a day!), the capacity of the Iraqi government, etc. Being a pragmatic sort, we’re willing to try a different course.

We are still a long ways off from completing either mission. But our military is making significant progress on both fronts, and neither can be accomplished without the other.