After reading the articles on Military Occupation for today, I started to realize just how complicated it is to occupy another country. It's costly, takes a long time, and success is a relative term. The hippie that I am makes me say that we should never go to war, but I am definitely aware that not many people agree with me, and that we have to react to threats throughout the world. But military occupations are even more complex than just going to war, and carries repercussions.
I just got a letter from a family friend who is stationed in Iraq- one of his good friends in the platoon was killed last week, and he reacted to it much better than I did, and I didn't even know Jon very well. I honestly don't believe that Bush, Cheney, or anyone in their administration takes the individual losses into account of the overall costs as heavily as they should.
US invaded Iraq because we saw Iraq as a threat and wanted to secure their nation. However when you consider the three factors for a successful occupation described by Edelstein, we can see where we may have started to go wrong. Iraqi citizens did not see the invasion as necessary, there is no perceived common threat, and we have not proven ourselves to be a very credible ally. Considering we started poorly, it's not too surprising that it's still not going well. And of course we don't want to leave until we can call ourselves successful. If we could just be more autonomous--let other countries do as they may, maybe we'd have a more stable economy, and not lose as many men and women overseas.
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