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Firedoglake - Firedoglake weblog » Failed States . . .:

"Iraq has emerged as the world’s second most unstable country, behind Sudan,
more than four years after President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. invasion to
topple Saddam Hussein, according to a survey released on Monday.
The 2007
Failed States Index, produced by Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace,
said Iraq suffered a third straight year of deterioration in 2006 with
diminished results across a range of social, economic, political and military
indicators. Iraq ranked fourth last year.
Afghanistan, another war-torn
country where U.S. and NATO forces are battling a Taliban insurgency nearly six
years after a U.S.-led invasion, was in eighth place. . . .
The authors of
the index said one of the leading benchmarks for failed state status is the loss
of physical control of territory or a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.
Other attributes include the erosion of legitimate authority, an inability
to provide reasonable public services and the inability to interact with other
states as a full member of the international community."

One of the things that struck me when I read this is the thought about what good our efforts have been in the country of Iraq. It is a failed state now, and the supporters of the war use the argument, and I have made a point of saying, that the troops need to stay to prevent Iraq from falling into chaos and being a staging ground for terrorists. This falls apart though if it already is in chaos and a staging ground for terrorists, could the country really get the much worse.

I know that failed states are threats to our security because they give terrorists a base to operate from. That really is the main thought that I had reading this. There are many failed states in the world, we cannot and should not fix them all. Anyone of them could be a base for terrorists. Somalia a country that the republicans could wait for us to get out of during the Clinton administration is a base for terrorist for example. Creating democracy is a bold idea, sharing it with the world is a generous idea, but in the end i think that it isn't something the people of one country can give to another. They can inspire them, don't get me wrong, but that government of the people needs to be created by the people of that country not ours.

I still don't support an immediate pull out, but this is something to think about when we think about our role in Iraq and our role in the world.