I was chatting with a friend last evening about politics. It sort of went like this (I’ve taken creative authority to change it some):

“So, who are you voting for?”

“I don’t know, whomever the leading democrat is at the time of the election.”

“You don’t have a preference over Obama vs. Clinton?”

“No, not really. I’m pretty much a single issue voter.”

“What issue is that?”

“Abortion. I won’t vote for someone who would want to take away my right to one should I need one.”

“Yeah.”

“And I don’t have a preference over either democrat at this point. And I wouldn’t vote Republican unless there was one who supported all of the same things I am passionate about… health care, the war in Iraq, had a good solution for illegal immigration…”

“What do you think a good solution in Iraq would be?”

“I don’t know. Apparently we don’t know either. That’s a tough one.”

“So do you think that we should stay?”

“Well… we sort of have to it’s a hard situation. We went into a volatile country, and destroyed the one stable part of it’s government– we took out a tyrant who was killing his own people… and now all the crazies are free to go around killing each other.”

“They are used to violence and death. They’re so afraid to just be. They’re like a whole bunch of traumatized PTSD people who don’t know what to do with themselves.”

“And the government there isn’t working right because you have two groups (Sunnis and Shiites) who want to kill each other, and if their government is filled with both parties, they won’t be able to agree on anything.”

“Which is why it’s taking so long for them to get on their feet.”

“Democracy can’t work for them because there’s been too much violence. It’s part of their culture now.”

“They’re just so used to it. They’re used to the killing, so they can’t come up with a way to protect themselves.”

“Yeah, and here we are, the big bad government who goes in and knocks out their government, and we fund them and support them, but they can’t get back on their feet because they can’t agree.”

“We’re pushing democracy onto a country that doesn’t want democracy.”

“But we can’t leave them because then it would lead to an even more massive civil war. Then even more innocent people would die. And it would be our fault.”

“Yeah, we really can’t leave.”

“But we can’t stay there forever. Those are our men out there, putting their lives on the line. And our men, who aren’t used to that kind of violence are becoming sick because of it. Look at how many guys will come home with PTSD because they’re so traumatized. That’s not right either.”

“Not to mention how much money we’re spending.”

“It’s insane.”

“So. We stay and spend more money, and sacrifice more of our people. Or we leave the fighting crazies there to duke it out between themselves, knowing that we started it but couldn’t finish it.”

“Yeah. We can set deadlines, but that’s not working because their government doesn’t know how to work like that.”

“We could let them have whatever government they’re comfortable with.”

“I can’t see that working. One party would have to establish dominance, and we could end up with the same evil tyranny there was before.”

“Yeah. Until you get people in there that start seeing a different way of life, this is what’s going to happen.”

“How long would that take? An entire generation. And even then, the children who are there NOW are the ones who are suffering. So we just continue to have traumatized people growing up there, not knowing that there is anything else.”

“Sounds like we didn’t really think this out very well. We just went it and hoped for the best.”

“I don’t think there is a solution, really. I just wish that our men didn’t have to go through it.”

So… I don’t think we came up with a solution. I don’t know that our politicians here in America have a good solution, either, otherwise we probably would’ve found it by now. What’s done now is done. Do we stay there and try to fix what we’ve done? Or do we bail and leave them to their violence?

Next up… immigration.

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