Ron Paul on the Iraq Pullout

Not all the Iraqi's resent us being there. Not even close

 

That is a very true statement!

 

It's not that liberating Iraq was/is a bad idea: freedom is always a good idea. It's that the Iraqi people have to want freedom badly enough to demand it and (due to religious reasons) never have. I think we're finding that Islam (at least as it's commonly practiced) and democracy are not compatible.

ETA: Ultimately a nation has to liberate itself. Freedom is not welfare.

 

[SIZE=+1]If it had been no trouble it would have been easy. If it had been easy we would not have needed to send the best. The worst of war usually gets the most attention while the rest gets ignored. It is easy, after the battle, to generate the lessons learned and find fault with all that didn't go right. It is easy for some to turn the acts our enemies into cause for placing blame and fault upon ourselves.

Compared to where we've been along the journey things are much better in Iraq and there is strong evidence and hope there of and for making its new representative government work. The Iraqis have been taking on more and more responsibility for themselves. Peace has returned to many areas. Commerce has returned among the people. Most want to make it work and, hopefully, they'll eventually succeed against those determined to use terrorism or tyranny to empower themselves. We're near the end of our mission there - the second long phase following the initial defeat of the old Iraqi military forces - and we've accomplished a tremendous amount in helping them build a better government.

I'd really like to see all those men and women so directly involved in these successes get duly recognized and credited with those very difficult accomplishments. I don't want them be "rewarded" with sympathy for servicing but, rather, honored and appreciated for a job well done by their service. It troubles me that we dwell so much on every negative, difficulty, cost, and time verses what's worked out well. I think the veterans of this war deserve to be recognized for what they've accomplished both in the initial war - which was quickly won - and in the long hard struggle since - which we've been winning a little at a time.

At some point it will be completely up to Iraq to handle their future. I don't know if they'll stay the course of a representative government or not but I hope so for them and for us. I'm relatively certain they're much more capable of that today than yesterday. If they do not succeed and, instead, fall back it will not be because we did not give it our best. That failure and consequences will then rest fully on the people of Iraq.

Of course, the problem of Islam remains in Iraq as does the problem of sin around the world and in our own land. Unless and until the radical elements of Islam are crushed the potential remains for continued trouble. It can not be defeated by negotiation. It can only be defeated, in a temporal way, by military force. Until Christ returns and all false gods are put aside forever there will be trouble and there will be times of war necessary for relative peace and security.[/SIZE]