Iraq

I read an interesting article today comparing the Iraq War with the US occupation of the Philippines after the Spanish War. The article appeared in Foreign Policy in 2004 called Imperial Amnesia by John Judis. It showed the parallels not with Vietnam but how we destroyed the Filipino population bringing them to their knees by killing 200,000. We used 120,000 troops and over 4.000 died. Americans suffer from very short term memory while the world has long memories. The hatred that existed in Iraq before the US invasion was opened with the invasion.

Americans wake up to history. Turn off the TV's and learn something for once. The United States has always been a horrible at nation building but we never seem to remember this from generation to generation. We failed in Vietnam and we will fail in Iraq and Afghanistan. Call the troops home and start looking at our commitments overseas. Remember John Quincy Adams remark about we don't go overseas looking for monsters to destroy. Learn to live as a Republic again instead of an Empire.