Iraq pullout: When sexual innuendo attacks!

Okay, first things first, I don't remember a single thing that we talked about at that meeting on Tuesday.

But no need to send me packing to Campus View just yet, because I did watch the debates.

So far both campaigns have managed to avoid a coherent position on middle eastern policies at all. The Obama camp supports "strategic withdrawl" or whatever it is they are calling it these days and McCain favors keeping boots on the ground for 100 years if necessary.

I am typically pretty liberal, but even I know that pulling out of Iraq is quite possibly the stupidest thing we could do short of invading another country.

We've heard all about "war under false pretenses" and "where's osama?" and all the other noise, but even us ideological types have to look at the ground every once in a while and accept that we did in fact step in not one, but two piles of dogsh*t.

Iraq is a mess. It has been a mess, and probably will be continue to be a mess well into the next several decades. Public opinion at the moment is against staying, and most of our politicans, being the professional opportunists they are, want to bring our boys and girls back home.

Not to call everyone who thinks this war is far from necessary and a drain on national resources stupid, but we are pretty much stuck.

Here's the deal:

Mesopotamia has been a flashpoint for religious conflict for the last 700 years, and the tinkering of the British didn't really help to ease the enmity. 70 years of oligarchy never really helped to ease the long standing conflicts between the Sunni and Shi'ite sects of Islam that both call Iraq home.

The leadership of Saddam Hussien and the Ba'ath party oppressed the Shi'a majority, slaughtered the Kurds, and generally made the delicate situation much much worse.

Enter the Americans:

After Hussien was toppelled, victory was declared, and many cigars were passed around, the first real grumblings of civil war turned up in the form of insurgents and religious extremists. Demagouges like Muqtada al-Sadr began to stur up furvor and comanding their own army of dissatisfied, AK47 toting, scary looking guys who prefered to dress in black.

From the summer of 2004 to the spring of 2007, the conflict boiled over into all out civil war with the United States Army in the crossfire. The violence attracted all manner of radical and militant islamists from around the Arab world and helped to keep the infant government from gaining anything close to full control of the country. Public opinion in the United States had swung wildly back toward the left and the new democratic congress demanded action in Iraq to stop the violence. The popular line had been "strategic withdrawl," but the Bush administration decided to try Gen. David Patraeus' troop surge.

Within months, the capital city of Bahgdad had returned to a relatively peaceful state and the national prospects of Iraq were looking up because of a new wave of American troops.

Today, the United States military presence continues to be the most important factor in Iraqi politics. Without troops providing security, moving humanitarian aid, protecting contractors and government employees, and training Iraqi security forces to stand on their own two feet, the war would have long been lost to anarchy.

Although I may be a fan of Obama, his policy of withdrawl will not be just what the doctor ordered for Iraq or the Middle East. The country remains deeply conflicted even with a relatively high security level. He's kept his policies overtly open ended and left on the qualifiers about military leadership coming first. Its a smart move. As a president he'd have a much greater obligation to finish the job in Iraq than pull a full 360 of military strategy.

Democracies take time, especially ones that have to cope with various ethnic groups screaming for independence and a large amount of oil wealth to be exported. The Iraqi government is running on a flimsy constitution, still suffers from major corruption and still must contend with local religious leaders for sovereignty in the hearts of many Iraqis. Americans must be ready to commit a large amount of time and money to help rebuild the country and ensure its transition to a stable democracy. We've had troops on the ground in Germany and Japan since World War II, and continue to keep a large dispatch of American military personnel around the world. Iraq looks pretty bad now, but a continued presence will drive violence down and give the United States a good foothold in the center of the Islamic world.

Then we can finish up in Afghanistan.