Comments on: These stories come in like clockwork.

By: ER

ER — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 16:31:56 +0000

The Taliban had pleny of sins that needed punishing, but that was none of our business. Harboring the guys who flew airliners into our office buildings WAS very much our business, and we needed to punish them. Decapitating Al-Quaeda and emasculating the Taliban was an American foreign policy and military triumph that can be shared by both Bush and Obama.

I’ll never fault Bush for going after the Taliban. I fault him for easing up on the Taliban and concentrating on Iraq, instead.

There were a lot of reasons for him doing this: geopolitics, strategic placement of US arms, logistic support of expeditionary forces, local feuds and conflicts, exploitation of Saddam’s own enemies, attempts to impose our philosophy on that culture, and of course, oil.

But Bush’s primary motivation was that Jihadism was an anti-American movement sweeping the Muslim world that required a strike at the Muslim
world itself, to demoralize, divide and discredit that world. He was mistaken. His actions only made things worse.

Still, you can’t blame the man alone for making that mistake. That’s a cheap shot; Monday morning quarterbacking. We can’t guarantee we wouldn’t have made that same mistake if we had been in his shoes at the time.

The real mistake came when it started to become clear that it WAS a mistake, and to refuse to realize that, to make excuses for it instead to cover his political ass, and not take steps to correct the problem. It was a lot like Vietnam.

By: bowser

bowser — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 09:23:47 +0000

Before we started demonizing the Taliban, their only sin was not turning OBL over to the US. They were as innocent regarding 9-11 as were the Iraqis.

Iran and Pakistan both border Afghanistan. It seems to me they have more of a “right” to be there, to try to influence events, than does the US. If Afghanistan were invading Mexico I would think the US would have a legitimate right to arm Mexico.

By: ER

ER — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 02:53:37 +0000

I’m really wondering if the Taliban are really that much of a problem to anyone. As I recall, the Northern Alliance was already kicking their butt pretty regular when we first showed up right after 9/11. And we’ve been making their life pretty miserable for the last decade or so. Most of the military resistance we’ve run into in Afghanistan are new enemies we’ve made along the way, and people set up and supplied by the Paki intelligence service.

We’re not in Afghanistan to finish off the Taliban OR Al-Quaeda, and Al-Quaeda is in even worse shape than the Taliban. We’re there because we’d lose face if the puppet gov we’ve set up were to cave in after we left. I say we leave and let them implode. Afghanistan will go back to a tribal patchwork as soon as we’re gone.

But as long as the palefaces are there, the local kids will be trying to kick us out, no matter how many we kill, and the Pakis and Iranians will be supplying and arming them.