Screw the experts

CNN collects their stable of doomsayers disguised as experts to warn against the dire consequences of a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq. They basically preach there's no way out. According to these guys we have to stay pretty much forever in order to avoid a "full scale civil war."

Bloody hell. These are the same guys who wouldn't admit the greater part of the violence in the country was sectarian for months and months after it was painfully apparent to even the least informed observer. In fact, correct me if I'm wrong here, but aren't these the same experts that were predicting for the last four years that everything would be fine in just another Friedman unit or two? Come to think of it, weren't at least some of them predicting how easy it would be before the invasion?

These are the same sort of experts that predicted dire consequences from leaving Vietnam. Yeah, the transition wasn't pretty but it didn't turn out as badly in the end as they proclaimed it would then either. The truth is, no one really knows what will happen when we leave and these experts stand to gain more if we stay. At the least their punditry services will be higher demand.

Personally, I trust my gut instinct over the pompous predictions of experts any day and my gut tells me things have gone from bad to worse in the last four years. Nothing we're doing there has made life better for the average Iraqi and it has already destabilized the Middle East. Our Imperial President royally screwed this mission up and staying as an occupying force is only delaying the inevitable upheaval. It won't be any less ugly a transition in ten years than it would be in ten months.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. The Iraqis will never be able to stand on their own as long as we're holding their hand. I find it incomprehensible that the reason we can't leave is because in four years their government has only managed to muster "120,000 Iraq soldiers now classified as trained by the U.S. military in Iraq, along with 135,000 police force members." And this doesn't lead me to believe that they have any incentive to speed up the process.

[T]he head of the Iraqi ground forces, Gen. Ali Ghiran-Majeed, recently told CNN that some of his soldiers don't even get paid, and that on any given day one quarter of the force is on vacation.

Our soldiers are on their second and third extended tours of duty and routinely recalled early. We're sending back soldiers with serious injuries while a quarter of the Iraqis own forces are on perpetual vacation? Does that even make sense? I mean, whose country is it anyway?

When we're fighting harder for their freedom than they are themselves, it's time for us to go home.