ORIGINAL: Cowboy6622

Well I don't think we should back down from supportint Isreal. We must accept that this area has been at war with themselves since the biblical days. They will be until the end of the days. The US Military and almost every President since, o, probably Eisenhower or so has striven for "peace in the middle east". This is an unrealistic goal. I don't think it would make much of a difference about our relations with Islamic countries if we withdraw from Iraq or not. They will still hate the Great Satan (The United States), and will still probably try to kill us. I don't buy into this "if we pull out of their countries, they will leave us alone." I don't believe it matters if we are there or not, if we withdraw, they will probably consider it a "Great victory in the war to conquer the Great Satan of America." I'm not so sure if we should keep our troops in Iraq or not. I thought we learned our lesson about this BS in Vietnam. Go to war to WIN the war, don't go in to police it. Go to war, kick their @$$es so bad they don't know what hit them, and leave. Iraq should have been in control a couple of years ago, but they are still relying on America to protect them, and I think its because they know they can just stand by and let us patrol them and they won't have to worry about it. I think we should start slowly withdrawing, 10,000 troops or so withdrawn to give the message that "we will not be here forever."

Think about this: we are still in Germany, Japan, Italy, and Korea among other countries. They don't hate us because we are there. They haven't decided to destroy America becasue we are there. This stuff about they are attacking us becasue we were there first stuff is BS