The Iraq War: Time To End The United States Presence

This month will start the eighth year of war in Iraq and the U.S. presence there. Six years and nine months after President Bush announced "mission accomplished." We are following a schedule to have all combat troops out of Iraq by this summer and all U.S. personnel out by the end of 2011. The wars end would come eight years and nine months after the invasion if that schedule is maintained.

That schedule should be shortened and all Americans should be brought home this year and the sooner the better. The Iraq government held its elections this week end and every American general who has been questioned on TV this weekend still say school is out on what will actually take place after the elections are all over. In other words seven years later we are still in the dark as we were the day of the invasion when many so called hawks in the Bush administration said the war would be a cake walk. The problem fell to the boots on the ground, while the hawks stayed home.

The various factions in Iraq and their neighbors will decide what kind of country Iraq will be, with or without our presence. The people in Iraq who want to cause trouble can do so anytime they please and proved that during the week before the elections with many bombings and killings. They have that capabilities regardless if our troops are there or not.

The war has taken an awesome toll on our men and women in uniform who have been deployed multiple times, over 4300 American deaths, over 30,000 Americans wounded and billions of dollars. Those in Iraq who are still performing terror acts maintain the ability to still kill Americans there even though they have been withdrawn from the cities. One more American casualty in Iraq is too much. 2011 is a long, long way off. Our troops and personnel should be brought home this year.

Lift The Cuban Embargo

The Obama administration should quickly try and engage the Cuban government in diplomacy and set up a working agreement to end the economic embargo of Cuba. This should be done as soon as possible. There are strategic reasons for this. Cuba is a member of our hemisphere and as such, should be a close trading partner, friend and ally. The forty plus years of embargo has not resulted in reversing Cuba's human rights problem nor has it changed their communist form of government.

The U.S. trades with Russia and China and has diplomatic relations with those two countries. They have their own human rights problems and are not even close to being in our hemisphere so our chances of influence on their human rights problem are nill. On the other hand, Cuba being only 90 miles from our shore and within our hemisphere would be in a more reasonable position to be influenced. I don't mean being influenced in a colonial way but the normal influence that neighbors are exposed too.

Cuba and the U.S. could help each others economy in a meaningful way and especially for the mid continent region of the U.S. The embargo has left the Cuban people with only the bare necessities. Cuba is no military threat to the U.S. or its neighbors. Being an island is not a strategic position for Cuba to be in militarily. Plus the U.S. has a military presence on that island at Guantanamo Bay.

The U.S. has missed many years of opportunity with Cuba because of an embargo that has never accomplished what it set out to do and all those years, lost what could have been a partner. The time to move is now and the U.S. should make the first move.