Our country is a great democracy, we are the only super power, we have the most Nobel Prize winners and we respect the rights of minorities. I do not dispute all of that.
However, when domestic politics feed on the blood of the young and the vulnerable of the nation, we need to ask the tough questions.
When an American soldier killed in front of our eyes on the evening news, motivates our representatives to question the patriotism of the American news agency, instead of addressing the spelled blood of our kids. We have a problem.
When a government issued intelligence report uncovers the failure of the American strategy in fighting terror, and our president questions the intention and motive of releasing the report instead of telling us how to fix the fiasco named Iraq. We have a problem.
When the president tells the nation that the kids are slaughtered thousands of miles away from home because the enemy is attempting to influence how many congress seats will be lost to democrats. We have a real and big problem.
As a reminder we are a democracy not a nation living behind an iron curtain, we as fathers mothers sisters and brothers of the falling have the right to know, have the right to be angry, have the right to ask why but this is the easy part.
We went in Iraq to destroy WMDs and disable an advanced nuclear program, we could not find either but the fight was easy and the price was low so we could afford a new goal, to build a democracy. The mood of the nation was good so either we believed, did not want to think or we were busy.
Three years later the numbers are staggering, twenty eight hundred American lives lost, eighteen thousand American lives altered forever by severe injuries, three hundred fifty seven billion dollars appropriated by congress, and six hundred thousand Iraqi died, there is no democracy, there are no WMDs, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel.
So the only valid question today should not be why we invaded Iraq history will answer that question. We need to know how to stop the bleeding; we need to get out of this mess without paying a price for years to come.
There are currently three proposals for solutions floated by different political factions. The first proposal is the administration one, which consists of two words "complete victory".
What is the definition of victory?
Why we did not achieve victory through our current strategy so far?
How will it happen doing the same things we have been doing for three years and producing miserable results?
Can we afford to do militarily or politically anything different within the same strategy used for the last three years, more troops, different weapon grades, demand new elections, rewrite the constitution, etc.?
It is not magic; it is very simple our strategy demonstrates a complete ignorance of the people's culture, the nature of the fight and the history of the country.
On the culture side, the Iraqi people have a strict definition of honor that will hunt us for very long time with ghosts of every corpse on the streets of Baghdad, and every picture of a naked wired man in Abu Gharib. The Iraqi people do not forget and I doubt they will forgive.
The fatherly figure in the Arabic character is almost sacred where people regardless of how old they are would hesitate forever to disagree with their elders even on simple things. When this elder is humiliated or mistreated as, it happens when soldiers enter houses, when they round-up males and take them away; the revenge will be the answer.
I am an Egyptian American born in Alexandria. I immigrated to the US in the late eighties, during this time lived in many places in US and Europe. I work as an IT manager and love it. I love to travel, it makes me feel young, and it awakes in me sense of adventure and curiosity. I love knowing people from different cultures; it never fails to amaze me how we all live in our little worlds that never meet. History is my second amazement, it always differ depending on who is winning, that leads me to my third hobby, politics is it history or human nature that is the culprit?
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