Iraq and the True Conservative

I view myself as a Conservative in the true sense of conserving what is good in our society and our world. What's going on today isn't conserving anything, it's just destroying many things. Take Iraq for example.

What are we going to get for spending the lives of our fellow citizens? More security? That only happens if we succeed nearly 100%. The odds don't seem so good. I am not much in favor of out-and-out withdrawal, but putting more meat into the meat-grinder seems to be the worse course. The "small victories" we see today are the result of the various insurgents groups going to ground, and as soon as our boys move to another neighborhood, all the badness will be back. We can't afford to put enough troops into Iraq long enough to make these groups forget how much they hate each other. Look at Saddam. He crushed just about everyone for 20+ years and they still hate each other.

Various folks say, " look - Saddam who was a bad guy had peace for 20+ years, so we good guys can do better than that." They are wrong. Saddam was willing to be unconscionably brutal to create his peace. We are handicapped by our own morality for the most part, and consequently cannot terrorize everyone, or even play favorites with one group, such as the Kurds or Shiites. It would take us more troops than Saddam ever had and for a longer period.

Iraq is just a waste of our fellow citizens lives, because we will never be willing to expend what it takes to win. And what do we do in the meanwhile? Start tearing apart and polarizing our society much as we did forty years ago (unfortunately the Vietnam analogy seems more and more apropos).

We need to conserve our society and be judicious spending our soldiers lives. Iraq was and is a mistake. It's time to move on and withdraw because there is no alternative.