[wastedyears]

I used to subscribe to the “fight them there or fight them here” mindset. Kinda funny since I was never eligible to serve in the first place, but thankful due to hindsight.

That thought process is extremely toxic and makes “serving” seem like a conveyor belt of anxious and proud Americans come back maimed and killed.

Why are we still there? Why did we start a proper war in Iraq or Afghanistan? Why did we go to Iraq the first time? Why were we in Mogadishu? Korea, Vietnam? Panama?

We had every legitimate reason to go to war against Iran after they took our embassy, but neither Carter nor the house wanted to. Why? Why ignore a legitimate reason such as that, to instead play policeman all over the rest of the world, getting our good people ruined in the process?

[Vigilanteman]

In 20-20 hindsight, the proper thing to do with Afghanistan would've been to subdivide it into four countries more or less along tribal lines with the Taliban getting the southern third around Kandahar and the northern two thirds to be subdivided among Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, all of which are Islamic kleptocracies but none of which export terrorism.

The rump Taliban state could then be warned that exportation of terrorism would result in being bombed back into the stone age but their medieval kleptocracy would be left alone.