[kevkrom]

For Rubin, it’s as if the (2nd) Iraq and Afghanistan wars never happened. We were/are there for 10 years, we lost thousands of soldiers, the people in the Middle East seem to hate us for it, people are still dying on a daily basis, and the future of both countries remains uncertain.

But at least - and agree with it or not - there was presented some kind of case that Iraq and Afghanistan mattered to the U.S. national interests, and that there was some definition of what victory was in both cases.

Syria, or even Libya? No such case has even been made, let alone debated.

[Steve_Seattle]

"But at least - and agree with it or not - there was presented some kind of case that Iraq and Afghanistan mattered to the U.S. national interests, and that there was some definition of what victory was in both cases."

I won't disagree with that. I always bristled when I heard people say that there was a "rush" to war In Iraq. It was actually planned and debated for months, both in government and in the media. It was one of the few wars in the last 40 years that we DIDN'T rush in to.

I was actually a bit more optimistic about success in Iraq than in Afghanistan. We were told - not by Bush, but by the Middle East experts - that Iraq was relatively secular, educated, and modern, so it seemed plausible that removing Saddam Hussein might actually work. Few people expected the ensuing 10-year, religious based insurgency.

In Afghanistan, however, we had a sprawling, backward society that the Russians wasted a whole decade trying to control. We should have just blown up the al-Qaeda camps, arrested the Taliban ringleaders, and gone home.