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Do you think the "Surge" will help Iraq? Or do you think any such efforts should are destined for disaster?

In case you don't know yet, in Bush's recent SotU he proposed a surge of over 20,000 more troops in the Middle East to help end the war.

http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/1/9/11610/40869
Cool bill ^

since Bush is playing the "if i don't get what i want then we stay in Iraq forever" routine, then i say give him what he wants
also, i think more troops would help since with that many soldiers, they could probably stand in a line and sweep the nation. no terrorist can hide from that!

But... Thats not the best way to stop terrorism. They blow themselves up so we get out. Thats what they want, they want the US out. How will adding so many more innocent lives into the equation possibly help? I can see death toll going up, bombings up and we are gonna dig that poor country into a bigger hole. Iraq has been destroyed. Imagine shells falling in your houses and businesses and gunshots going on all day.. How can anyone in the right mind condone such violence and destruction?

that sort of violence would continue if we don't finish this ASAP
the terrorists can not be left alone or else they will continue killing until every last one of us is dead

Choose:
Stop terrorism in one fell swoop
OR
Pull out and let the cycle continue, making everything that we have done pointless

Do you thruly think that Iraq is the only place with terrorists? Even if you kill all the terrorists that are in Iraq at the moment, the hate for the US will raise new ones, and already existing terrorists will come from other countries.

And "sweeping" out a nation is a awful idea. The terrorists look just like normal citizens when they're not attacking. And with their developed web, I'm sure they can get false passports and other documents to look innocent when the soldiers start checking ID's.

They are fighting over the U.S. being also out. But with Saddam's religious group control destroyed, the Sunni and Shiite are free to blow each other up. Along side with the U.S. troops that get in their way of their 'Holy War'.
The terrorists are not the biggest problem. The uncontrollable disastrous breakouts of the chaos between the two religious factions are more problematic for the U.S. And the U.S. cannot pull out unless Iraq stabilizes somehow in a satisfying way.
This isn't a war against terror. This is a clean-up job for the mess Bush has caused.

The problem here is that the second condition is essentially inevitable. Being that occupation has proved disastorous and ineffective, the United States' presence in Iraq is just delaying the situation from total civil war, though its still relatively close to that even with the US troops there. The civil war would probably result in a Shi'ite government and it is unlikely that that government would be an "ideal," at least from the american perspective, democracy, it may even produce a similar dictatorship as there was previously. Adding additional troops is just a further effort to delay said inevitable action. So the US plunges deeper into debt hoping for a miraculous outcome. There actually are a few possible miracles which could occur. The main one is that a military leader who is extremely proficient at both the military art and the diplomatic art arises from the US in Iraq. Granted our military doesn't produce great minds in either field, and never has, but its still possible. This leader, if given a free hand from his irritating government, could presumably stabilize the position and produce an efficient government. If he places himself as the head of that government, being that he is undoubtedly ambitious to fit his ridiculous skill level, then you have an impartial head of state who will be fairer than any of the sides in the eventual finality of the civil war. So, all we need is Julius Caesar and Iraq will stabilize, leading to a trend of stabilization throughout the middle east. So the addition of 20,000 more troops increases the chance of this happening from 0.000001% to 0.0000012%

Don't surge, and send people out from there. Let them handle it themselves.
It sounds cruel, and it is, but it's probably the best way. US troops make disorder, and soldiers are good targets for bombs, aren't they? I mean, seen from a terrorist's, it's tempting to kill a group of people, but it's even more tempting to kill a group of people that otherwise would have killed you.
So I say, take out the troops, and send in food and people that can help build up the country instead. And don't use people from western countries. They would just get bombed. Try using good hearted people from the lands around Iraq, and by good hearted, I mean that they want to help.
Religion doesn't matter when the world is at the brink of destruction.

^agree
I'm sure we could think of another way to help them. Sadly, Bush decided to gamble his... reputation? on whether he succeeds or not, and he can't save his reputation unless those lives sacrificed actually helped significantly. So he's betting more on a losing horse because it might save him.

That seems untrue in the lands of Muslims.

20,000 troops is simply more fuel on a fire.
The way to solve fights never seems to be with more fighting. It's with resolution.

Either way there will still be fighting. Our choice is to have our people in the mix or have Sunni's fight Shi'ites.
We aren't fighting against terrorism any morebtw, it is now labeled "extremism."

It's still terrorism to me since extremism has more of a positive connotation.

Your analogy of feeding fuel to a fire is wrong. A more proper analogy would be spreading sand on a fire. Right now, we are not spreading enough sand, but when we bring in the 20,000 troops, the fire will have no air to consume and eventually die out.


Think about what you're saying for a minute. If we withdraw our troops, then the civil war will surely break out at that very instant. How can sending in food and carpenters help the innocent civilians there when those resources would probably go to the terrorists? The whole reason the Muslims are killing each other and everyone around them is because of their religion. This brink of destruction you mention was probably caused by religion and strong beliefs in the first place.

I think we should either take it over or leave, not some in-between state. Obviously leaving would be much better for PR, so i pick that.

Life goes on, let him send them if he so choses, afterall they joined the army for a reason -- let them do their job.

Leaving is better for the United States' national debt and PR, staying is much better for the middle east, although again its delaying a prescribed conflict for as long as possible. If you're pro-american (which incidentally conflicts with the Republican party's stance) you're probably more likely to take the first solution as opposed to the second one. Here its american stability/wealth vs. american prestige, and since the pubs tend to think we have them both by default, they preserve what is anticipated to be lost, or at least that's what we're led to believe. Me, I like chaos, and I like the destruction of superpowers, so I'm torn between the two solutions. Both are positive in my regard.

I heavily agree with the assertion that soldiers can be used as soldiers quite liberally, especially when the soldiers aren't drafted, its voluntary in this case.

Do-0dan you seem to miss something. Our occupation is causing more death and violence than there would be if we pull out.
Terrorists you speak of are not as problematic as you make them seem. The word is so ambiguous that I could call the U.S. Army a terrorist organization in this case.

The terrorists have been killing each other far longer than we've been in the Middle East.
I guess we could just give up and pull out. We could leave those innocent civilians to have to live everyday in fear from being bombed by opposing sunnis or shiites. I guess we should just leave it to the terrorists to defeat the terrorists. Besides, if the country falls under control of the terrorists, Iran or Saudi Arabia could jump in and take over easily.

This is an interesting point to bring up, as it is a question that is not easily answered. There has always been tension between Sunni's and Shi’ites, but the same would go for any differing groups. The times where these two groups actually gained the weaponry to be considered a threat to the rest of us though, was roughly during the cold war and aftermath. Which just so happens to be when we were in the middle east, and when we first started pumping money into those areas, continuing through the gulf war, into what has escalated into this cataclysmic scene.

Some have even pointed at the American built intelligence agency in Pakistan, the ISI, as being the beginnings of Bin Laden's training camps and forces.

They have to live in fear of bombings every day either way, and the US presence hasn't limited the attacks, nor has it prevented them from expanding even further, it has destroyed a corrupt government, perhaps, but it is likely to be replaced by another. The support of Iraq during the Iran/Iraq conflict led to the effective training of the current terrorists which are there today. Its fairly certain that Iran already is supporting the terrorists, so upon the end of the civil war either Iran will have an auxiliary ally or will in fact move to occupy the territory, but the second action is relatively unlikely, as it my spur another western response.