Originally Posted by yakbladder

Some of you need to put down the rose colored glasses.

You know, it's one thing to support our troops, I'm all for that. But it's quite another to become so ignorant about a cultural and political situation that you REFUSE to even see anything other than clear-cut shining victory. This is not Americans vs. Hilter. This is not one clearly good side against one clearly evil side. There isn't even a 38th parallel.

Sunnis and Shias have been quarreling now for thousands of years. This isn't just going to be a "can't we all just get along" moment. Do they co-exist in other countries? Yes. But typically only through brutually repressive means. Now on top of that you've completely disenfranchised millions of Iraqis who had previously disenfranchised the other millions. This isn't just going to "go away in a couple of years". Throw in the Kurds who probably don't even care if the nation breaks up because then they really would have their own country (although Turkey would come knocking on their door shortly thereafter).

It's great to think that you'll form some unifying army of mixed ethnicities and religions who band together to keep Iraq free and everyone is happy and rainbows and all that. But many of them will still identify with regions, with religions, and they've probably, much like the police, been infiltrated to some extent by militia members. Education right now is mostly done in religious institutions whose motto does not include the words "Tolerance for all!".

The country right now is not in all-out civil war but in the areas where the two meet (Sunnis and Shias) it's about as close as you can get without a declaration. Within a year after the American forces leave, all of this resentment is going to boil over again and there is going to be some serious bloodshed.

Stop thinking that overnight, or even over the course of one generation, you're going to transform these people into the beacon for Westernized thought-processes and actions. It is not going to happen.