Solutions to Iraq

The Iraq War like the war on poverty or drugs is a war because people are dying. Old people die, so there must be a war on old people, but like the war on old people, the War in Iraq seems to be one-sided. I guess there's a war on cancer and traffic accidents too. Who's winning those wars?

Iraq must be a problem since there are so many people hurting or dying from it. All problems have solutions by definition. Some solutions are better than others and some are wrong, but they are still solutions. The only answer that is not a solution is ignoring the problem. There might be problems where this is the best answer, but I doubt Iraq is one of those. So here is a comprehensive list of solutions to the Iraq problem after a quick definition.

Problem: X thousand Americans have died and ten times that number have been permanently damaged and at least one hundred times that number of Iraqis have died and millions of people have been devastated by the madness that seems to get worse and worse.

That doesn't sound like a big deal because it's not people we know, right? A million people dead or sick or living in hell. It happens all over the world and we still go to work and make a few more bucks to buy more fast food or some cool new gadget. But we can't feel guilty or stop what we're doing or the terrorists win. That's what they want because they are so crazy that they want to die. It makes them happy to die if they can add a little guilt or misery to our hedonistic lives.

So what is the solution to Iraq? What is our goal?

1) No more American deaths.

Answer: Outsource: Pull all the troops out of Iraq.
- People get upset when a soldier dies because they're dying for our country and make almost no money. There are at least 150,000 mercenaries or contractors in Iraq now. If we replace the troops by doubling the number of contractors, there's no change in progress or presence in Iraq, but we don't have to worry about American deaths any more because no one cares about guys over there to make a quick buck. They might not even be American. Heck, we could hire all those guys killing people in Darfur and put them to good use killing bad guys in Iraq. Chicken fights, dog fights and ultimate cage fights should pale next to this pit of insanity. Xtreme Reality TV! Capitalism is our thing.

2) No more Iraqi deaths.

Answer: Move the other half of the Iraqis out of Iraq.
- We'll call it Diaspora Part II and move them all to Israel. Heck, most of them are dead, missing or on the run anyway. This is killing two birds with one stone (just metaphorically!). If the number of Muslims in Israel suddenly went up by 10 million, the pressure to form two states would increase dramatically. It would be like depending on China for your economy because half your exports and three quarters of your imports were from them and insult to injury they were backing half your national debt. They would be the only game in town and they outnumber you ten to one.

The only problem with this solution is there might not be 10 million Iraqis healthy enough to move. If they were then why haven't they already moved?

3) Eliminate the threat of terrorists from Iraq.

Answer: Fight them over here so we don't have to fight them over there.
First off, I don't buy the theory that fighting them over there has saved one life here. In the entire history of this country, how many times have we been attacked by foreign terrorists and how many deaths can be attributed to them? Everyone says they are all crazy and we can't reason with them. If this is true, then how could we possibly kill them all?

Why not assume that they really have an agenda? They kill us because they hate our freedoms? If this wasn't so ridiculous and ineloquent, I would suggest it was something the Nazi propaganda machine might tell us. No, they wanted us out of Saudi Arabia (I guess we were scared because we left) and they wanted us to get rid of the evil secular cancer growing in the middle of the Islamic universe. We jumped right in and fixed that problem for them too.

*) Win the war and get out of town.

Answer: We won the war. Let's get out of town.
I must be one of those hate America Americans because I don't want to win this war. Um, we won the war in like 14 days back in 2003. It's like the winning Superbowl team sitting on the field for four years bragging about it and daring anyone to take it from them. There's no army left to fight, but we're a big target if someone wants to throw rocks (or mortars). Iraqis won't take over reconstruction projects because they're too dangerous. Would they still be dangerous if we weren't there taunting the bad guys? What happened to all those guys who said we weren't nation-builders. Wasn't our president one of them? But supposedly we can build a nation with guns and helicopters.

We just gotta leave. Imagine how many tons of food and supplies we could airlift into Iraq for half the price we're paying now. In the vacuum left by our absence, there's no way the Iraqi death rate could go up. Everyone says there will be genocide, but what do you call it now? Everybody left there has guns. Our army is giving them away. It's not like they can't protect themselves. We really believe that these people living in this country for thousands of years together hate each other more than Hutus and Tutsis or Palestinians and Israelis or the IRA and British nationalists? All over the world people live right next to each other in hatred. Cypress, Yugoslavia, Taiwan, Rawanda, El Salvador, Zimbabwe, Kashmir, Chechnya, North Korea, Sri Lanka and how many more? Why are the people in Iraq more likely to destroy each other than all these other places?

It's so stupid. It's like someone said, "What would happen if the whole government was run by retarded people?" If it wasn't really happening, no one would believe it. Instead of talking about environment, energy and education, we'd talk about immigration, gay marriage and islamic terrorists. Let's try to imagine if those three things were ten times worse than they are now. Oh my god! 100 million illegal aliens! Now there's no way I can get that job picking strawberries, mowing lawns, cooking burgers or roofing houses (or all of them at the same time). Aw crap, what am I gonna do now that all the gays are monogamous? Wait, why did I want them to be single? Islamic terrorists? We already made that at least ten times worse now through our military actions. Why don't we bomb Saudi Arabia if we want to get rid of an evil dictator? At least that Iranian guy seems to want to take care of his people. They elected him.

Maybe the majority of people in this country are retarded. Maybe we are just a big bully on the playground no one can stop. The rest of the world is a big let down too. Everyone gives Neville Chamberlain a bad rap for appeasing Hitler. How could you not put Gordon Brown (or Tony Blair), Stephen Harper (who's that you say?), John Howard (liberal my ass), Shinzo Abe (or worse Koizumi), or Hu Jintao in the same category? These guys are lapdogs hoping the crazy superstar superpower will be found dead in the bathroom from an overdose of hedonistic power. They'll step in, empty our wallet and slip out the back door.

It makes me want to puke.