Melody

After today’s discussion, I’ve been having second thoughts about my personal opinion on Iraq. First of all, I am sure that there are other options that I haven’t thought about (after all, we were only given three options to choose from), but I keep wavering back and forth. Now I wonder if we should just pull completely out of Iraq and see what happens. It’s our fault and at this point we don’t have much to lose. There are obvious problems with this idea, but I would love to hear some other solutions. This whole war is just not only horrible, but it is embarrassing to see the country struggling to make sense of what is going on. The entire war is not our fault, but us being the most powerful country, we had to intervene and make something of a war that wasn’t ours to begin with.

I don’t know a whole lot about Iraq, only just what I see in the news or learn in class. Therefore, it wouldn’t be right for me to offer my “professional opinion”, seeing as I don’t have one. Anyway, one possible solution that has been brought up is to possibly divide Iraq into three different regions to accompany the different religions. Religious differences is the main reason of the Iraq war, which is why some people think it would make sense to make a state for each religious group. I think this idea is risky and has little potential. Dividing a country does not seem like a good idea because all it would do is emphasize differences and just create more distinction between the groups. However, at this point, it seems like none of the groups would be willing to accept one another, so perhaps dividing Iraq is the desperate measure that needs to be taken. There is one other example of this method being successful, and that is Israel, which was formed specifically as a Jewish homeland. Then again, there are still many dangerous effects that are occuring in Israel now, so maybe this was not the ideal solution.

Dahr Jamail writes:

Everything in Iraq is set against the backdrop of shattered infrastructure and a nearly complete lack of reconstruction. What the Americans turn out to be best at is, once again, promises – and propaganda. During the period when the Coalition Provisional Authority ruled Iraq from Baghdad’s Green Zone, their handouts often read like this one released on May 21, 2004: “The Coalition Provisional Authority has recently given out hundreds of soccer balls to Iraqi children in Ramadi, Kerbala, and Hilla. Iraqi women from Hilla sewed the soccer balls, which are emblazoned with the phrase ‘All of Us Participate in a New Iraq.’”

Dahr points out that sometimes America offers empty promises. It seems that the only reason we are interested in the Iraq war right now is because if we can create a democracy in the country, then we will have great access to the oil that is in the area. Right now, there is so much devastation and violence in Iraq. More troops may be the brute force that is needed to mitigate the ferocity of this war. Bringing in more troops will only create more chaos, but taking out troops would leave Iraq in ruins, with only America to blame. We partly began this problem, and by involving the country, it is now our responsibility to see it through. Unfortunately, there is no easy solution.