When I left Iraq in September of 2007 I was pretty excited to wipe my hands clean of that experience and leave it to the next group to follow us in there and carry on where we left off. I did this knowing that we had done a lot of good things and eliminated a lot of very bad people and we had put a huge dent in the bad guys ability to keep carrying on with the actions that they had been doing when we first showed up there. I also know that eventually there would be no more American combat troops in Iraq and that it was eventually going to come down to the Iraqi Police and Iraqi Army troops that we had been working with. As part of our responsibilities there we were supposed to be training these individuals, however when we were constantly fighting, there was no time to actually train them. So they got a lot of on the job training which was the best we could do.

Working with the Iraqi Army and Police was always an interesting endeavor. They were entertaining at times, some seemed eager to become good soldiers, but in the back of your mind you always had to wonder if one of them was going to turn on you and fire his weapon at us instead of with us. I can’t say I’m at all surprised with the way they’ve crumbled in the face of a fight with no guidance or strong leadership to direct them. And in my best guess I would predict this will continue to happen until there are some fundamental changes in the ways Iraq and countries like it deal with the people terrorizing their countries.

This raises the question of what part should America play in these changes since it can be intelligently argued that while not a very friendly place, the chaos that is now present wasn’t there until we invaded Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein. I suppose you could also argue that the aggression of al Quaida was inevitable since they’ve gained some traction and this mess might very well have happened anyways. But it is my opinion that we have done enough. We have lost enough and sacrificed enough and made some progress which was then lost. In my opinion the problems that plague that area are not problems that are going to be solved by dropping bombs. You can kill people with bombs, but you can’t kill ideas, and in a sense, we’re not necessarily fighting people. We’re fighting an infectious idea that is spread via people, but we don’t have the capability to kill that idea so it will continue to spread to other people until there are some fundamental changes in the way that people in those countries deal with that idea. America’s only possible response to this is the use of bombs and military force, whether it’s our own, or by funding governments in that area because we have no credibility with the people who share that idea. Their very purpose is to dominate or kill anyone who doesn’t buy into their ideas, and unfortunately, that includes all of us.

All of this is my way of saying that I would strongly disagree with any US military actions in Iraq or surrounding area. We gave it our best shot and paid a pretty heavy toll and came out of it leaving a bigger mess than when we originally went in there. It’s my opinion that if we did get militarily involved again, we could spend 10, 20, or even 100 years fighting there but it would do no good. There are issues there that are more complex than can be solved with sacrificing more lives.