End the war on terror and save billions

The Washington Post ^ | 6 December 2012 | Fareed Zakaria

[MinorityRepublican]

As we debate whether the two parties can ever come together and get things done, here’s something President Obama could probably do by himself that would be a signal accomplishment of his presidency: End the war on terror. Or, more realistically, start planning and preparing the country for phasing it out.

For 11 years, the United States has been operating under emergency wartime powers granted under the 2001 “Authorization for Use of Military Force.” That is a longer period than the country spent fighting the Civil War, World War I and World War II combined. It grants the president and the federal government extraordinary authorities at home and abroad, effectively suspends civil liberties for anyone the government deems an enemy and keeps us on a permanent war footing in all kinds of ways.

[Tublecane]

You mean $100 trillion+

[Tublecane]

You are insane.

[winkadink]

End the War on Poverty. End the war on drugs.

[muawiyah]

There are plenty of advocates for re-establishing the Ottoman Empire around ~ and some of them imagine that we are the successor state to the Hapsburgs and Brits ~ the folks who beat them into the ground.

That means they intend to use whatever weapons they can to get it back. So, no, he's not insane ~ just practical.

[trebb]

I thought he had ended the war on terror - Al-Quedai was crushed into oblivion long ago, when Muzzies blow up stuff on our soil, it is not terror, but some sort of grievance being carried out as a “natural reaction” to what ever grieved the person. Where does the Muzzie author see any signs of a WOT?

[gotribe]

Time to dismantled Homeland Insecurity, too, fire all the TSA robots, put an end to domestic drones, outlaw imprisonment without trial - for ANYONE anywhere, and reduce the IRS budget by 20%.

[cripplecreek]

Apparently conservatives approve of the Zapp Brannigan plan.

Now, like all great plans, my strategy is so simple an idiot could have devised it. On my command all ships will line up and file directly into the alien death cannons, clogging them with wreckage.

-Zapp Brannigan

[iopscusa]

Idiot Fareed gets this right, The Big Fake War on “Terror” has been a failure as it morphed into trying to spread the BS of “Democracy” to 3rd world Islam. BS when the Rino Globalist like GWBush-Trotsky does it or when NWO Bolshevik Obama does it. Get the hell out of the ME, S. Korea, NATO, Africa, etc.

[Flintlock]

Whatthehell................Give Barry a break!

HE’S SURRENDERING AS FAST AS HE CAN!

[Flintlock]

Whatthehell................Give Barry a break!

HE’S SURRENDERING AS FAST AS HE CAN!

[cripplecreek]

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be under the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."

-James Madison

We're fighting an endless war that has become pointless under the idiocy of "If we don't fight them there, we'll have to fight them here" without bothering to protect our own borders. I'm also fine with standing to defend Israel but there are far more cost effective methods of doing so than providing targets elsewhere.

It seems to me that the world is using Reagan's strategy against us. The whole world is breaking us because they know we can't resist an expensive fight whether we need it or not.

[Sherman Logan]

But, he argued, “There will come a tipping point . . . at which so many of the leaders and operatives of al-Qaeda and its affiliates have been killed or captured, and the group is no longer able to attempt or launch a strategic attack against the United States, such that al-Qaeda as we know it, the organization that our Congress authorized the military to pursue in 2001, has been effectively destroyed.” At that point, “our efforts should no longer be considered an armed conflict.”

I think this argument, as far as it goes, is indisputable.

The problem, of course, is defining and knowing when we have reached the "tipping point."

[Notary Sojac]

That is a superb post, Genl. Forrest. I trust you will repeat it in future threads where confronted by the willful stupidity of the “nation builders”.

[Sherman Logan]

It strikes me that the War on Terror has a good deal in common with the War on Drugs.

Everybody agrees that the tactics used are not very effective, but we continue on apparently because we believe we have to “do something,” even it if isn’t working.

Which makes both operations more or less a form of theater, indulged in not to achieve a goal but to project an image.

[CSM]

Yeah, it isn’t like we have had an embasy attacked by AQ or anything....

[VRW Conspirator]

I was originally a supporter those wars and have come to regret that position.

Most feel the same way, surely. I liken the Iraq war to the Doolittle raid of WWII. America was "punched in the eye" by the Imperial Japanese and wanted to punch back. The raid was risky and suicidal yet it was some sort of vindication by bombing the Japenese city of Tokyo.

And 9/11 was a "punch in the eye" but the location of a capital city to bomb was nonexistent. So America largely settled for the nearest and related scumbag dictator's country. Well, we got what we asked for and then some.

We should have blasted our troops through a few other countries, including Iran, before ending up in Iraq, or not gone in the first place. It is what it is.

Iran will get the bomb and Obamacare will not be repealed. Have a nice day NB.

[Notary Sojac]

It strikes me that the War on Terror has a good deal in common with the War on Drugs.

As it does the "War on Poverty".

America historically has done fine when we declare war on another country.

Not nearly so well when we declare war on an abstract concept!!

[Notary Sojac]

Actually, one non-nuke MOAB pinpointed at 21.4225°N 39.8262°E might be sufficient to shatter Islamism for good and all.

[McGruff]

Peace in our time!

[Sherman Logan]

Quite!