Reply #16: It's not just because BushCo insulted them (though that didn't help) [View All]

[htuttle]

Another problem is that there simply aren't enough troops to be had to 'control' Iraq. Even in a best case scenario (ie., if Bush and friends hadn't insulted everyone, and everyone decided to help), they wouldn't be able to get more than 30,000 UN allied troops or so (unless they could get China to send half of it's army). That's nowhere near enough to make a difference.

Iraq is now an intractable problem. The whole rest of the world saw this would happen before the invasion.

The ONLY way I see that Iraq could have transformed into what would be considered a 'liberal democracy', is if the people of Iraq had eventually overthrown Hussein themselves. That's the only way that Hussein could have been deposed without decimating the secular factions needed to form an actual democracy.

As it stands now, I think the best case scenario is a Kurdish state in the North, and an Islamic Republic in the south. The worst case scenario is a lawless, government-less area torn by civil wars and warlords like we've come to associate with Afghanistan and Somalia. As far as the sort of Western Democracy that Wolfowitz says he dreams of in Iraq -- "You can't get there from here."