Brice & Michael
It's nice to see civil talk thank you. But I think the current
administration has deemed the public and or "the media" could not grasp
the real reasons why we are in Iraq. If you want to bring Democracy to
that region Iraq was the obvious choice. They had some form of a
government already albeit a dictatorship but the government was installed
and working. The rest of the region pakistan, afghan are all very
tribal/nomadic with almost no local government/judges.
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Pakistan already has a form of government, but they are not hostile
like the much of the rest of the Middle East. I don't think Iraq was
mich different that way than pakistan. I agree with you about
Afghanistan, very decentralized. I never could figure out why the
Soviets invaded, what is there? Landlocked, no warm water port.
Nateral resources, Camel Urine byroducts and drugs?
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The second reason
is that Iraq has become the new buffer zone between Iran and the rest of
the region. Iran may be part of Opec but they dislike Arabs/Saudi almost
as much as Israeils. Granted the house of Saud has regained control of the
country after near collapse in 2002/2003. They still fear there own
relgious sect which now controls most of the Universitys and public
debate. The administration cant come out and say we are protecting them
after the whole dust up about ferrying Bin Ladens family out after 9/11.
So we moved our troops out of Arabia when we got a firm handle on Iraq.
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Your statement about Iran disliking the Saudis, although true, is really
true about nearly every country there. Iran is willing to fight to the
last Syrian, etc.
Well, I would Iran would be a better buffer than Iraq, since that is where
most of the trouble is boiling out of, as well as many disaffected people
there who might be glad of a change in 'leadership'.
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The second benefit has been it attracted all the Jihadeist to one area.
Before everybody gets upset here are some reasons. The Saudis never had a
large enough force to protect it self during the first Gulf war. They do
not have much of a qualified armed force. They welcomed world wide
internvention even if it pissed off the relegious clerics of having
western infedels on sacred land. If Saddam had ventured into Saudi then
the world economies would have a full scale collapse. Between the first
and second Gulf wars Saudi Arabia changed economically there GDP is down
30 %. Take home pay for the average Saudi went from 31k to 21k by 2002.
There people where becoming poorer. Yet a huge building boom was taking
place. That buiding boom was done by outsiders mainly western countries.
So now the local populace has become lazy to boot the relegious sect has
hit upon this and has turned the citzenship againts western thought and
ideals which started to creep in after the first Gulf War. Hence we will
be in Iraq for a long time. To protect Saudi Arabia just for economic
reasons. Personnly I think it would of been intresting to turn our backs
on Saudia Arabia and let Saddam roll into Arabia. He would of rooted out
the Jihadist there and then let him roll into Pakistan to get Bin Laden.
He had banished Bin laden twice out of his country. He's been our stooge
before during the Iraq/Iran war of the 80's. But then again that's why
where in this mess today.
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I agree that Saudi was glad we came to their 'rescue' in the first
Gulf War. The fundamentalists have always been uncomfortable with
non-muslims in the country, and are always looking for an excuse to
thin them out. The problem is, there is not enough of a labor force
there to keep everything running, so if you do not hire foreign workers,
a lot less gets done.
The population is not exactly too 'lazy' to boot out the fundamentalists.
Remember the religious police are part of the government and it is
not a Democracy, but a Kingdom, albeit a fairly benign one.
I question your figures regarding the income drop, the cost
of living there is pretty low also, so even if income has dropped.
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