Yes, this is actually pissing me off…

War is a giant field of gray, there is no black and white, period. As far as this one goes, when it started, I thought it was the dumbest thing we could possibly do, seriously. And the reasons justified to the UN were just so FUBAR it wasn’t even worth the TV time used to show them. The fact is, we invaded a country and completely obliterated the form of government that was in place, and now we have a responsibility to rebuild that country, whether we like it or not, and failure to succeed is a failure, not only to us and those we are now responsible for, but to the greater world.

Yes, the news likes to detail the horrors that happen in several parts of the country, including Operation Matador – which is to secure the Syrian border to keep outside insurgent groups, outside. The majority of this is happening in the Al-Anbar province, which is the biggest province in the country, and where the Sunni Triangle exists. There are 10 other provinces that are back up and running, several in Kurdistan, where their militia has maintained control, even pre-invasion.

The fact is, the bigger picture has to be looked at, you cannot focus on one aspect of this situation and make a judgement about the whole. The reason this country would fall into a hell hole, if we leave, is not because there’s massive amounts of fighting all over the country, but because this country still doesn’t have enough of a force to defend itself from those who will continue to attack until the current form of government is obliterated and a Theocratic dictatorship is installed, and run by those who are either Ba’athists, or members of the outside insurgency. While there are Iraqi’s who are members of the insurgency, more and more “front line insurgents” are from other countries, because the Iraqi’s are realizing that joining up with them is a guarantee of death, either by being a suicide bomber, or being the target of a US rifle round. They’re also seeing how this war is being fought by the non-US troops, by targeting groups of Iraqi citizens, who do nothing but shake the hand of a US soldier, or participate in the new form of government. That is a desparation that this group of people has reached, and those that want to use the US military death toll as justification to allow these people to be swallowed up in a sand pit of civil war need to be bitchslapped. These soldiers gave their lives defending innocent people on foreign soil. No, not defending US lives and freedom, but Iraqi lives and freedom. It’s those people that this war is about, not us, not oil, but the right of individuals for self-determination. If they, as a group, decide that they want their form of government to be more theocratic, then that is their decision and ours to respect it. However, it is not for a small group of foreign militant individuals to walk in and govern the people that live there. Question our motives all you want, our freedom grants us that right. Our ideals have also granted the Iraqi’s who protested the invasion, the right to form and protest. No US soldier blocked that right, in fact, they protected that right and allowed the protests to happen. Something that would not have happened if that group was protesting something Saddam did, while he was still in power.