"DGDevin" wrote in message
m...
wrote in message news

But the replacement isn't working, and is unlikely to work in the
foreseeable future. A government that can't survive without massive
military intervention for decades doesn't seem like much of a solution.
Having U.S. bases in Europe during the Cold War was expensive, but
thousands
of American troops didn't die in the process.

Irrelevant. There is little choice.

Let me get this straight: it isn't working, it isn't likely to work, but
we
have to keep on pouring in money and young Americans to be maimed and
killed
because, "there is little choice". Sure there is a choice, get the hell
out. And when the Taliban take over again and consider welcoming Al-Qaeda
back with open arms, you drop the occasional cruise missile into their hip
pocket to remind them that it would be a good idea to keep their lunatic
practices strictly domestic. Because we didn't care what they were doing
until Bin Laden set up shop there, so provided they aren't hosting any
more
international terrorists in future, it would seem a reasonable outcome for
things to go back the way they were.

Even if they *are* hosting lunatic terrorists, that's not really a good
reason to kill all their fellow countrymen who couldn't give a damn about
terrorism but are powerless to stop their terrorist brothers. We wouldn't
have been justified in declaring martial law on any states that McVeigh
lived in (had he not been stupid enough to get caught quickly). We're not
justified in taking on an entire country just because they, like us, can't
control their terrorist criminals. Would a farmer shoot his pig because the
pig watched as the fox stole his chickens and did nothing? They do nothing
so that they can save their own lives.

We couldn't control McVeigh and yet we expect others to do what we could
not. We were unable to prevent him from committing the 2nd worse terrorist
attack in our history but we DEMAND that of Afghanistan, a country barely
able to keep its head above water on a good day? We punish the entire
country for "harboring" a guy we can't even find, even when we have total
access to every square inch of Afghanistan and a little bit of Pakistan,
too? For ten YEARS? That's pretty damn dumb and it makes us look impotent
and incompetent. Why prolong the agony if it can't succeed? And even if it
did, the terrorists will just move somewhere beyond our reach. Oops. They
already did. The tribal areas of Pakistan. Now what? Declare war on a
country with nuclear weapons and people crazy enough to light one off?

--
Bobby G.