Robb Rourke, 45, is a stay-at-home dad in Alexandria, Va., who believes that the U.S. military presence in Iraq will be limited.
“Hopefully we will be out of there soon. I don’t see it happening by June 30. I say the latest two years from now. It’s optimistic, but I’m thinking it’s realistic,” he said.
Rourke, who recently ended his campaign for the Republican nomination for a northern Virginia congressional seat, fully supports the Bush administration’s Iraq invasion. “We were right in going because I believe what we did was a pre-emptive strike against the second coming of Adolf Hitler.”
He doesn’t take seriously the charges that Bush invaded “to get even with what Saddam did with his dad or do what his dad didn’t finish. Or the oil argument. That’s a bunch of malarkey.”
–Frank James
CIVIL WAR FEARS
`I suppose we could pack up’
Peter Molan, 62, of Baltimore believes that the U.S. has gotten itself into a quagmire. “There are several things wrong with the notion that we will be able to get in and get out,” he said.
“I suppose we could pack up and leave,” said Molan, who retired as a senior Arabist and Middle East analyst with the Defense Department. “It’s probably the case, though, that the tensions in Iraq are such that were we to do so, the probability is there would be further civil war.
“I don’t see any evidence to suggest, despite the notion that we are going to relinquish political control to an Iraqi organization on June 30, that the Bush administration really wants to leave anyway.”
Molan said the length of U.S. troops’ stay in Iraq has a lot to do with the American people’s patience for the occupation. One thing that could make it shorter, he said, is a Democratic administration that could make enough of a clean break with the Bush administration to persuade other nations to enter Iraq in serious numbers to help relieve the burden on U.S. forces.
“A Democratic administration might be able to say: Yes, the Bush administration has made a terrible mistake by approaching this the way it has. And we can admit that and we can attempt to turn things over to the UN. That would mean the international community in general and the Arab community in particular would be less suspicious of the American role in Iraq.”
–Frank James
