[Travis McGee]

There will be operations in Afghanistan, and I hope that it works out for us.

But I recall going personally to Beirut in January of 1983 as a young officer with great optimism and high hopes and the best intentions.

Beirut, (with our fleet anchored within rifleshot), was a pimple on Afghanistan's camel, and we know how Beirut turned out. And Somalia later.

Great intentions are not worth crap in the middle east.

Read "Blackhawk Down" about the operation to snatch Aidid's lieutenents THREE MILES from the US Army Ranger/Delta compound.

Again: big as Texas, 18,000' mountains, 500 to 1000 miles from our fleet.

Catching Osama is going to be no piece of cake unless he's real stupid. And we know he ain't stupid.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

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[Bush2000]

Beirut, (with our fleet anchored within rifleshot), was a pimple on Afghanistan's camel, and we know how Beirut turned out. And Somalia later. Great intentions are not worth crap in the middle east.

Nonsense, we're not trying to occupy Afghanistan in the same manner that we occupied Beirut. Bush wants to hit Bin Laden and the Taliban hard and get the hell out. This is the right strategy. Practically every conflict where we've had a peacekeeping role has turned to sh*t. And mostly because our Democratic Commander-in-Chiefs didn't have the balls to go the distance (except Truman).

[Bush2000]

Catching Osama is going to be no piece of cake unless he's real stupid. And we know he ain't stupid.

If Bin Laden holes up in a cave, we can detonate enough rock and dirt to bury him forever. End of problem.

[piasa]

Osama won't be a piece of cake, that is for certain. This is going to be a long, perhaps permanent affiar, not just with him but with others of his kind. While Blackhawk Down is a very accurate account of Somalia - the best I know- that account was about the LAST effort to get Aidid which failed. What it didn't cover was the other opportunities, by other means- not to capture him but to kill him- which PRECEEDED that last fateful effort. And there were others, if you know what I mean. People have no idea how close Aidid was to buying the farm when Clinton turned chicken and wouldn't give permission. I suppose he was worried about the political fallout of killing Aidid outright, given the prohibitions on assassination, and 'perhaps'- just maybe- was more interested in discrediting the service. Finding Aidid was never a problem. The will to take him out was the problem. That's what I mean when I say it was 100% political. Aidid was in the bag, quite literally, before the UN even pumped his power with all their food aid.

[walden]

If the military had been turned loose to fight in Beruit in the manner they thought best, rather than being kept leashed to political considerations, would it have turned out differently?