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Our involvement in the region goes back as far as oil consumption goes. Iraq was never a nation that was natural in its construction, but when they attempted to establish a form of a capitalist democracy over 50 years ago, our CIA became involved with making sure a dictator was in power who would be somewhat friendly to the U.S.
Why wouldn't we want a true democracy based on capitalism to be prominent in the middle east? The price of oil.
Why else through the years would we take on any person seen as on an endangered species list of Saddam's? Sure, it looks humanitarian in nature, but people are slaughtered in other nations and we barely blink. If we had done nothing and left them be, some may have risen up and started a revolution or something, and any new government resulting may have not been as U.S. friendly as Hussein's was at the time.
We now are over there and I believe Bush actually thought that any mess over there would have been cleaned up internally. Instead our very presence us an extremely effective recruiting tool for groups like Al Qaeda. It isn't very difficult when you have an occupying force and an uneducated populace to take rhetoric such as "You're either for us or against us" and turn it around. The problem is, of course, how do you eliminate the threat and get out without the threat spreading? It would be helpful if greater numbers of Iraqis were joining the military and police, but many who would are frightened off through scare tactics and others who would if necessary simply allow American blood to be spilled instead of their own.
I find it ironic that the one guy I know who is completely gung-ho on what Bush is doing in Iraq is a guy who has a felony conviction for draft evasion involving Vietnam, where he simply stated that he would not go and was given probation. He wasn't willing to place his own ass in harms way, but says that 3000+ American lives and how many others injured is a small price to pay if we can make it work. He believes we should have built up the military and rolled in with two million troops and destroyed anybody who objected.
That may have worked short-term, but what would have happened when we pulled out?
Iraq is a mess that I don't know if there is a solution to. It is worse than Vietnam, because 'Nam was isolated and didn't matter for shit in the world. It can be argued that Iraq must be won due to the oil that it has, but why should we continue to allow ourselves to be so damned dependent on oil that we need to sacrifice lives for it?
American blood should only be shed when American lives are at risk. Taking over Iraq likely saved fewer lives than we have lost in the process of doing so, but in the long-term has created a situation where instead of 100 guys sitting around in caves trying to figure out how to take us down we now have thousands mixed in the population and the number is increasing.
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