Derbyshire is right on Iraq

Derbyshire's policy would be insane simply as a matter of realpolitik.

Let's say we smash up Iraq and don't pick up the pieces. Let's say the Baathists are hit hard enough not to recover. (And if they can recover then we've only angered our enemy, but left him in power -- not a good move). Who picks up the pieces?

Duh -- Iran. If the Shi'ites and Kurds couldn't turn to us, they'd turn to Iran. So we feel good after smashing up Iraq, and then wake up to find:

1) Iran AND Iraq's oil both at the beck and call of Ayatollah Khamenei

2) the Gulf emirates terrified of a resurgent Iran again making propaganda among their Shi'ite population and

3) thinking the US just hates Arabs so we're not a reliable ally,

4) Iran having a secure overland supply route to Syria and the Hizbullah,

5) the Kurds in Iraq being pushed to begin destabilizing Turkey again . . .

(And from a moral point of view, the Sunni Arabs would get much less mercy from Iranian Revolutionary Guards than from the Marines.)

Once again, policies based on shortsighted rage are neither sensible nor decent.

If we were going to topple the Saddam regime (which I still believe was a good idea), both morals AND realpolitik dictate that we be there to pick up the pieces.>

Oh please. the handwringing about this war is becoming rather silly. One of the problems here is so few people read history. For cying out loud. Wars take time, they are not over in prime time. sure lots of mistakes have been made in this war. LOTS of mistakes are made in every war. We are incredibly, unable to sacrifice for anything good anymore. the number of casualties in this war, barely rate a training accident in most wars. the complaint on how long this war has taken, shows little understanding of history. The French and Indian Wars, Revolutionary War, War of 1812, the two Mexican Wars, the frontier Indian Wars, Seminole War, World War 1, World War 2, Korea, Vietnam, and other small wars we have been fighting for centuries, all cost more lives than this did. And most took much longer. One thing I constantly hear is how this war is different than others. It isn't. Indian wars for instance, were low level violence, interspersed with real battles.I grew up in southern Arizona, where first the Papago's, and Pimas, then Spanish, then the Mexicans, the Anglos, fought Apaches for 400 years. Rod, your own state of Texas had wars and fighting going on 300 years before Texas was considered "pacified". You are where you are because people had more determination to not give up in those days. both Indians and Frontiersman practised forms of terrorisim. Read accounts of the Indian wars. the things that happened to victims then, were just as brutal as anything today. If you want us to pull out, at least understand the problem of Radical Islam will NOT go away. It will just move the fighting to the U.S. Sometimes wars have to be fought, even though everybody involved is tired. Those soldiers on the frontier in the Old West wanted to go home too. Waterless Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, etc. seemed just as pointless, then to many people, as Iraq does now. What if they had given up then?>