Monday Morning Quarter

Original Post Date:
Friday, August 24, 2007

I saw problems happening when the US gave governmental control back to the Iraqis. The last 30 years the Iraqis only knew Saddam and his sadistic polices. It was a horrible move to give the country back to sovereignty, after less than a year of occupation. I understand the US wanted the Iraqis not to think the US was there to occupy their country. However, if you look at our past wars like WW2 and the American Civil War. The US continue the military and government occupation of the defeated countries for many years. We have a direct military government in Germany from May 1945 to May 1949 and assisted them until 1952. In Japan we occupied from 1946-1952. Those two countries had no significant insurgency. If we compare the situation we were are facing in Iraq to post-World War 2. We should have kept a direct military government in Iraq for at least 5 years until we crushed any insurgency.

We should have kept the Iraqi conscripted military to assist in the occupation, specially in the cities and kept our military focused on the borders. So we keep the funding and supplies from coming from Iran, Saudi, and other countries. Iraq was used to a socialized government for the last 30 years. We shouldn't have tried to turn into a capitalist government. We shouldn't rid Iraq of all Baath party members in the government. Since they actually knew how to run the country. Some of them really weren't evil people and were only Baath party members out of fear of Saddam.

I am just being a Monday morning quarterback. However after being in this country for two deployments and the second one being close to the current Iraqi Government, this is what I have concluded for my opinion of this situation. The biggest reason the US gave the country back so soon because the US population could not have supported that long of a occupation. The US citizen isn't the same type of person from the 1940's and 1950's. The US citizen of today doesn't like to wait for anything. We live in a fast food, Starbucks, microwavable, want it now lifestyle. I don't completely blame the US citizen, this administration should have been more detailed on how long it might take in Iraq.