This is all such a no-brainer.
I think it’s far from a no-brainer.
We’ve been there for 8 years and the place is a mess. Oh, yeah, by the way - we’re broke. Every dollar we spend there is borrowed.
The government we’ve supported is at best ineffective and at worst hopelessly corrupt. The Constitution that we helped them adopt states that Afghanistan is a “Islamic Nation” or some such. Are we to be in the business of helping Islamic nations be successful? Why?
Do you really believe that the small population of Afghanistan is a threat to us? Why? How?
At what point will we have done enough to make Afghanistan like Omaha? $400 billion? $1 Trillion? 1000 more dead?
Colin Powell said: “You break it, you own it”. Everyone treats that as Gospel. This in itself is a classic neo-conservative formulation.
How about just breaking things, and walking away. “Sorry, you really pissed us off with your support of the Taliban. We are done, for now, blowing the shit out of your crappy little dung heap of a country. But rest assured, our drones are above you, our sattelites are intercepting your calls, our computuers are crunching your conversations. Act good or we will be back and kill a lot more of you.
PS: We won’t bother sorting out who’s who in the future. You have been warned, act accordingly.
Are we to go teach each and every Afghan that they must follow the Miranda rules? What’s the end point of neo-conservative nation building? What Islamic nation has been successfully turned into a tolerant multi-cultural, diversity respecting, non-corrupt functioning democracy - much less a vibrant free market utopia.
NONE.
I say pull out. If you need to inflict more punnishment pull out ground troops and bomb. Enough of losing our finest in this dusty hell hole.
We need our brave boys back in the USA to fight the libtards.
That's not good news. There seems to be an ample supply of "no-brainers" in Washington right now.
Is that how they play soccer over there?