PICTURES FROM BAGHDAD: "WHEN THERE IS NO VISION THE PEOPLE PERISH."

These are children in Baghdad. A friend of mine is a marine and he sent me all this pictures from iraq. I have so much to say about Iraq and I feel pretty confused about the whole situation. Right now I have 2 friends actively serving there. One is a marine and one is in the army. I respect them both very deeply for their scholarship, creativity and kindness. One has told me a lot about the situation there. There aren't enough troops on the ground. Insurgents tear down any kind of building up of infrastructure that either the international military builds or the Iraqis build. When I said that I think we should pull out completely and provide enough resources for Iraqis to rebuild Iraq he said: "If we left right now Iraq would implode." I think he's right and I think the $82 Billion dollars proposed for more military support is actually warranted--the only option seems like rebuilding and quelling insurgency--at least until they can pull out completely and allow people in Iraq to rebuild without the crushing threat of insurgents tearing down anything they put up. Both of my friends there feel like the war was a kamikaze mistake--that we went in without an exit strategy and created havoc that now has to be cleaned up. I believe in many ways that we went there in order to make Bush a two-term president and to increase military spending and win rebuilding contracts. However--there's another question, and I hope I can be heard on this one. What should be done when you have a dictator like Saddam? First off we shouldn't train them and sell them weapons. There are terrible terrible things happening all over the world that perhaps could be stopped through military incursion. Maybe the US should drop its paternalist habits of "saving" other countries from their dictators, when it's actually at fault for creating them, and it should certainly stop creating them, but what is to be done when you're at the stage Iraq was at with Saddam? Stand by and watch? It seems crazy to do that when we have the resources to stop a dictatorship, perhaps we should have done it wearing blue helmets as UN forces, but it's still military invasion anyway you look at it. So taking all these things into consideration I feel like the current administration's policies have pushed me to become a supporter of more military funding and more troop deployment and military incursion in Iraq. I realize that the United States' military policy would look very different if it used its policy in Iraq around the world and that we would probably not stand for other countries pre-emptively attacking one another. But the question remains, what should have been done and what should be done now? Read this blog of an Iraqi girl for more. Here's an article from adbusters about Liberal Hawks that Gabe sent me.