Charlotte, N.C.

According to the non-partisan Congressional Research Center, if Congress approves a pending Bush request for another $147 billion to pay for an additional year in Iraq, the total cost of the war–related activities since 2001 would be three-fourths of a trillion dollars, which is far more than the inflation adjusted $650 billion price tag of the Vietnam War.

The question is what our worst problem is:
a) That we wasted such enormous amount on the unnecessary wars.
b) That we created such chaotic situation in the Middle East that we can’t bring the troops home for the oil-supply routes could be interrupted.
c) That Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are exploring the ways to launch a new war against Iran.
d) That the Democratic-controlled Congress doesn’t have enough guts, brains and patriotism to impeach incompetent an President and Vice President.
e) All of the above.

We are strategically wrong in the Middle East. Unfortunately, that’s not just a fault of Bush’s White House; that is a result of the widespread misconception among major political parties, the mainstream media and the business, political and intellectual elite in the USA. We are ignoring the fundamental premise of the UN charter that prohibits meddling into the internal affairs of foreign countries. It is an official postulate of US foreign policy to intervene in domestic affairs of the Arab countries in order to elect governments that would be friendly toward US interests. (If the democratically elected governments in the Arab world were friendly toward us, there would be no need to intervene at all.) If our intervention is successful in installing governments that don’t represent a majority of population, then we create conditions for the terrorists to successfully recruit among the people who were deprived of their basic human rights to vote freely for kind of government they truly prefer. This means that our foreign policy creates conditions for never-ending conflict in the Middle East.

Isn’t it shocking that we have several military bases in the Arab countries where the locals are openly hostile toward our forces, but we don’t have a single military base in the only friendly country in the region? If our government is supportive of Israel, let’s build several military bases in Israel to clearly indicate that we are going to protect that country at all costs. The point is to build the bases within internationally recognized Israel borders, not on occupied Palestinian territories.

Only after we gain a defendable position we can be more aggressive in our foreign policy. To be aggressive we don’t need fighter jets, tanks or guided missiles. Nothing is more powerful than the truth.

The fact is that the Arab world's problems stem from the period before the USA was even created and that the Arab countries were colonized long before a single American soldier had ever crossed the Atlantic. For the Arabs to find answers to their real problems, we have to withdraw our troops from their countries, for we really skew their focus in the wrong direction.

Kenan Porobic
07/09/2007 @ 3:46pm

Riverside, Calif.

During the run-up to the war the mainstream media were saying how wonderful it would be if Iraq became a democracy, but, as an aside, reported that the Middle East street did not want us to invade Iraq. People who didn't even like Saddam Hussein wanted to go to Iraq to defend its sovereignty. One commentator remarked that the Iraqis were called the Prussians of the Arab world. Further, we had seen the Soviets fail in Afghanistan, the long Palestinian insurgency and Hebollah. It was obvious that insurgency would follow the conventional war. I expected an insurgency, but the size and scope of it was not predictable. We should not have been surprised that Iraq would be a training ground for insurgents, when we look at the number of trained fighters that emerged from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. What is surprising is that the spread of insurgents outside Iraq occurred during and not after the war. The bottom line is that we do not have enough troops to bring any degree of security or win in Iraq.

The surge is an offensive operation which increases casualties for the assaulting forces and the number of air strikes to support the assault. We are running in place, and going nowhere. We need to get our people out of there. There are no winners in this conflict.

Pervis J. Casey
07/05/2007 @ 1:55pm