SoftBonds
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quote:
ORIGINAL: DaddySatyr
I wanted "payback" for the attacks that Bin laden planned as much as anyone (I lost 4 people that day) but when my friends were going around, talking like: "We're gonna go over there and turn that place into a fucking parking lot!", it was me who cautioned: "They haven't been truly conquered in Afghanistan in 7 centuries. You don't go into that place, thinking it's going to be a cake-walk"
The legitimate Afghan government was taken over by Bin Laden. Whether we like it or not, he was the de facto government. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. That's just the way the shit rolled.
I feel really bad that the people of Afghanistan have had to pay such a price for being sheepish and not nipping Bin Laden in the bud in the first place but, they made their own bed by way of their inaction.
Mostly, as a father of a combat marine, I want our troops home.
As an American, I want us to stop engaging in empire-building and when we feel that force is really necessary, we go in, obliterate the enemy and get the fuck out (preferrably in under 60 days but, I won't engage in day-dream).
As a human being, I feel badly for all of the innocents that have gotten caught up in this horrible mess and I hope that mankind learns sooner rather than later.
Peace and comfort,
Michael
There is a lot to be said for that strategy. I think an even better strategy is what I would call the "Libya/early Afghanistan," strategy. If we have an enemy we really feel we must take out, find a local ally who wants the same thing, then give them air support. It helped the Northern Alliance push back the Taliban, and it helped Libya kick out Gaddafi. Then we had to go and put ground troops in Afghanistan for some silly reason???
Note that I say air support, not military aid. What did Saddam do with the military aid we gave him after he failed in his war with Iran? Turned it on another nation.
You can count the number of nations that could stand up to the air power of ONE US aircraft carrier on ONE hand. There are a chunk of nations that could make a fight of it, but still. Lets get our troops home and put them to work on a peace dividend, retrain them, give them rest, anything but another ground war.
Heck, how about the Marines go back to guarding Navy ships and bases, two of their three core purposes that they haven't done since Bush needed more ground pounders...
I don't see us getting into a war with Russia, China, the UK or France, or Israel (the nations that could probably beat a lone carrier), but it is still good to have the Air Force as backup to the carriers, and the Army as a "take and hold," force, but I don't want to use them for at least 10 years. Rest, refit, rearm, rebuild.
Heck, we are going to be spending through the nose on the VA as is, lets not compound it.
For anyone who wants to sabre-rattle at Iran, just realize one thing, if we send our army into Iran, we will break it. I have no doubt that in less than 2 weeks no element of the Iranian military would exist if our army went in, but I also have no doubt that in 2 years our army would make the post-Vietnam army look rested and optimistic. Iran is 3 times the size of Iraq, it has the same sort of mountains as Afganistan, it has 3 times the population of Iraq, in short, it would take a million man occupation force. We don't have that. If we got every unit up to full strength, got out of every other nation, and rebuilt every unit's readiness, we still would not have that.
A draft? You are kidding, right? We don't have the stomach for that any more. As soon as someone mentioned the word, half the folks who were pushing for a war would be pushing for a settlement.
We can break Iran's toys, we could even probably kill their leaders, but we would just create a nation hostile to us in a way we can't even understand.
Maybe the solution is to go the same route with them we used on China??? Of course, if Obama, or even Romney did that, the NeoCons would shit a brick sideways...
I don't know. Hope is hard for me to muster these days... Maybe Fargle is right...
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