From my blog: Women can obviously be a potent political force, but should we work to stop the war in Iraq? What are the prospects for Iraq if American troops exit? According to estimates, the country still requires billions of dollars for reconstruction. Without a sufficient infrastructure-- even in Iraqi cities-- civilians routinely go without adequate electricity, water, and other essentials. Continuing violence only exacerbates these problems. If one believes that the insurgency is only reacting to US occupation, and will dry up as soon as the US withdraws, exit makes more sense as a strategy. But if you believe that the US occupation is only one root of the insurgent movement-- as is probably more realistic considering the internal battle over Islam, the ethnic conflict between Sunnis and the now dominant Shiites and Kurds, and the scramble for control of oil revenues-- you can't imagine exit before Iraq has sufficient resources to defend itself. However, the Iraqi army is currently in abysmal shape and the security forces that do develop are more likely to be militias in Shiite and Kurdish regions than a centralized military, a situation which would basically make inevitable a descent into civil war and further ethnic strife. Years on, I have yet to determine whether war in Iraq was the right answer, even though I believe in the cause of democratizing the Middle East. Nontheless, less humane than US occupation could ever be would be leaving the Iraqi people alone to address the detritus of our footprints there. Why are most feminist groups so unwilling to engage the complicated moral issues in favor of simplistic black-and-white thinking? War is bad: That has certainly become a progressive truism, but it seems much more useful for abstract philosophizing than for effective strategizing. Much more difficult to deal with is what you do with war once it has already become a reality.