I can imagine it, but I'd rather not, because it would have been stupid. Did we specifically target the pilots of the planes that attacked us at Pearl Harbor? THEY started the war with US, not the other way round. When someone starts a war with you, you don't specifically target the exact individuals directly involved in that particular attack, you f'ing destroy them.
I can agree with you, but total war has not annihilated the Afghan people. Instead it’s killed our troops, or psychology injured many of them. Afghanistan is a cesspool. Those people do not want to move forward. I have read articles here on FR that noted your ally there this week, can be your enemy next week, and it extends all the way down the social ladder.
I don’t see the gain in a war like Afghanistan, unless we just nuke the floor of the country to glass, and then send in the marines to etch in ornamental memorials to the owners of the land, before it belonged to Islam. That’s the only total war I could see with any benefit in Afghanistan. I mean, what does America have to show for Afghanistan? Bin Laden was in Pakistan.
We removed a backwards government for a backwards people, so they could elect another backwards government who can’t hold off the previous backwards government.
I at first thought we could bring them into the modern age, but I feel that is just a impossible dream, unless we eradicated the entire population, and transplant other people there.
These people are not the Japanese... they have no interest in modernity at all. Unless its new ways to commit genocide, or take American lives.