Travis...
Welcome to FR. Unlike a lot of Democrats these days..who lately have become worse than the folks who come to your door to convert you to X religion (I am not a fan of anybody who does this...I am a Jew and happy with it), your statement is thoughtful and honest. I too feel perhaps things need to back off a bit.
Here’s the but. Liberals need to acknowledge that there should have been a burial of the hatchet in 2001. There wasn’t. It’s polarized this nation and to be honest, with regards to Iraq...whatever your feeling about the whys and wherefores about going in...and we could fill books about the reasons...we’re there, and to be honest, it has done one thing in retrospect..it’s attracted a lot of Al-Queda folks to come get killed in an environment controlled by us. Wars are not won by being on the defensive. You go on the offensive and you seek out the enemy to kill him. We did that in both Afghanistan and Iraq. There are other reasons that Afghanistan’s got problems right now...among then are:
1- A lot of foreign troop contingents have rediculously restricive ROEs put on them by their governments who are seeking to prevent casualties from affecting their domestic political situation (the Germans were especially known for this). Thus, these nations may send troops, but they end up not doing very much at all.
2- The history of the area. Nobody’s pacified Afghanistan and Waziristan since Alexander the Great...and the methods he used would get us crucified on CNN.
3- The terrain. Simply put, Afghanistan is light infantry country. It’s not the place for M1s or even Strykers. We need more 11Bs and Marines in total. But with the current economic crisis...I doubt we’ll get them.
There’s one other factor on why I think we went into Iraq...and it’s not something I think anyone really wants to say. After 9/11, the Arab world didn’t think much of us. They thought us quite weak. And when we started to bomb Afghanistan, they reacted like somebody retaliating against us by nuking West Virginia...so, I think some folks decided..fine..the Arab world wants to underestimate us..fine..we have unfinished buisness with Saddam. So, we did..and we made sure the rest of the world saw it...for all the public poo-pooing..I am sure privately it scared the hell out of the folks we wanted scared. Not to mention Saddam was violating the cease-fire...he was firing on aircraft patrolling the no-fly zone. So, you can make the argument we were simply resuming hostilities that had been suspended in 1991. Frankly..I think that’s the argument that should have been made.
What I want to say is this post is just like all the other BS we have heard since tues, "Oh, we have to pull together and unify the country!". The POS liberals spent the last 8 years tearing the country apart and doing everything they could to undermine President Bush and now we are supposed to say "Oh, yeah, let bygones be bygones, as if they haven't been the biggest pieces of crap to come down the pike, ever.
While being evil, spiteful, tantrum throwing children since 2000 they now expect us to forget all about it. Well I, for one, will not forget about it, nor will I feel good about America again until we have the Marxist SOB who is going to occupy the WH after Jan 20, out on his ear. I hope he does something really stupid in his first six months, and then we can start up Impeahment web sites, get some of our really conservative senators to start phony investigations the way the dems did with Bush and Cheney. I will fight this gun grabbing, over taxing, welfare enabling marxist Ba****d every way I can and I will respect him or get behind him.
He will ruin our country.
This part is to those people who claim one man can't bring down our country. I say to them he isn't just one man, he has a lock on the senate and the house, he has judges in his pocket from the Clinton era and more to come if any of the Supremes resign. He can easily tear down the country if people don't fight tooth and nail. Unify? He** no, I won't go.