Sometimes, they need to basically accept that what they are doing is wrong, and should shut their trap to allow someone else to fix their damn mess.

Sometimes the people involved with the breaking aren't the best to do the fixing.

Send the whole bush administration members to Iraq.

And give them some company: members of the press that kissed their asses as they committed murder.

Alas, America has a lot of unpaid bills around the world for breaking things.

Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Congo, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan, Honduras, Chile, Cuba, to name just a few of the more modern ones.

However, it's unlikely that any of the aggrieved will receive restitution while we're still running up more bills in Syria, Yemen, and anywhere else we're "spreading democracy".

As long as the green zone exists in Iraq, it will never be a free country.

I say let them fix themselves it's not worth our kids.

I don't want STUPID people fixing anything.

However, paying for it's repair is a whole different matter.

n/t

I don't know how to fix it, but I think we owe it to the people whose lives, through no fault of their own, have been destroyed by the decisions of leaders of our country.

As much as I would like for us to sit back and not do anything in Iraq, I think we have a moral obligation. I also have no idea on how to fix it either.

who should be trying to fix it.' Those folks would gladly break things to take the high paying job of 'fixing' those things.

I protested this war before it was launched, while it was launched, and after it became an open-ended occupation. I told everyone who would listen, and many who would not, that this was a boneheaded policy guaranteed to end in disaster for all concerned, with the exception of the stockholders of well-placed military contractors. I absolutely saw through the media BS, and practically tore my hair out in frustration to see my country commit to such a criminally foolish, and foolishly criminal war of choice.

If the Bush/Cheney junta and their enablers who created this mess now feel so responsible, they can leave politics, donate their fortunes to the various UN relief agencies working with the victims of their massive fuck-up of a "foreign policy," and perhaps even volunteer themselves as military/political "advisors" on the ground in Baghdad.

Let them personally confront the people they "liberated"--all those folks they told us would cheer and throw flowers and send us cheap oil forever.

As for the rest of us--the best thing we can do right now is to stop assuming we know what's best for peoples about which we know next to nothing, while our own society is in desperate need of serious, thoughtful (and expensive) intervention.

Countries aren't pieces at pottery barn and air strikes and covert attacks to prop up random brutal assholes aren't superglue.

Engaging in an unprovoked war of aggression doesnt mean you get to go back and engage in more war until you fix the country.

And that is for several reasons, including our own best interests.

Iraq is a fine example of what I mean: George W. Bush broke Iraq. Do I want George W. Bush to fix Iraq? Fuck no! I don't want a chimpanzee to shave my scrotum, either, for equally obvious and similar reasons.

Sometimes the breaker is incapable of fixing what has been broken, and is likely to cause even more harm if expected to repair the damage.

That's none of President Obama's concern. Let the Cheneys, Rumsfelds, Wolfowitzes and Kristols saddle up and go to Iraq if they're so insistent that "we can't not do anything."

..... however, what if the object that is broken does not want to be fixed?

I have been an ardent detractor of the Iraq war since before it happened, but to be fair, we tried over a period of years to prepare Iraq for the day we would be gone.

Now, one could make the argument that we failed by not promising Malaki cement shoes the day he started steering his government towards a sectarian orientation. But for now, I feel like our options are limited.

We can support the current Iraqi initiative to oust Malaki in favor of someone less partisan, we can offer various forms of material and intellectual support, but sending our kids back over there? No fucking way.

not only PUERILE; it is a VILE EXCUSE FOR TAKING A COUNTRY BY FORCE AND THEN GIVING IT OVER TO THE LIKES OF HALLIBURTON, BECHTEL, G.E., ETC., for "RECONSTRUCTION."

becomes "Are you capable of helping repair it yourself? (You may be a specialist at breaking things not fixing them.) Or is it better for you to play a 'behind-the-scenes role' in repairing what you have broken?

We certainly owe the Iraqi people a moral debt for breaking their country.

If you walk into 'pottery barn' and break a wall, or the cash register, or a light, you don't 'fix it'. You give the store the money so that they can hire the person they want to to 'fix it'. You can't simply walk in and tell people 'I broke it, so I'm going to be the one who fixes it'.

I think everyone in Iraq would highly agree - its not our country, not our decision. With that said - trying to help is still good form. It would be nice to think, in spite of the history, that we still have some standing to act as a force for good, especially if a country asks us to help fix a mess we helped to cause.

You break it, you walk away and let someone else pay and clean it up and you crow about how you did such an amazing job and complain how much worse the people paying and cleaning up are doing.

That's Truth, Justice and the American way.