Easy, but wrong. This makes no account for the fact that they were training terrorists, to attack American soil.
They consider us the enemy -- OF COURSE they're training people to fight us...
You paint them as peace loving hermits.
I do no such thing.
Plus, even if all they wanted to do was keep AF in peace,
They don't care about "peace" they just want it to be theirs.
that is not a realistic political goal.
Who said their goal needs to be realistic? It's what they want.
They provide no services to lay any claim to being a legitimate Gov't.
They have the guns -- who says they need to be "legitimate"? Power doesn't need to be "legimitate," it just needs to be secured.
The objective here wasn't merely to have a political goal, but to have one that was in fact attainable, and reasonable. They never have. They don't now. You can't fight this the way you're laying out, and win.
Wrong, wrong, and more wrong -- all they need is to have a political goal
THEY THINK is attainable and reasonable; they do.
It won't ever really "end." And success can only be measured in degrees.
Fair enough -- but occupation would be a huge step backwards.
If the goal was a permanent install, (not necessarily permanent full-scale occupation) then escalating the war on terror would be in line with the agenda. Of course I have no idea who had what in mind on our side, I'm just guessing. And it currently seems to be up for grabs? I really like Iran being interested in their neighbor; letting them handle this gets my vote. (Plus we should have never opposed them having nuclear generated electricity)
Iran used to be, and may again be, the boogyman for quite some time, and while their government is certainly something that bears watching, they're in the middle of some long term social reforms that might mellow them out....
....
unless the US intervenes and makes things worse, which, given our history in the area, is more or less a given.
Yes money was made, and I have heard more than a fair share of folks who were "certain" this was the whole reason for the war. Maybe I'm wrong but I just don't believe it. There's just too much opportunity to be evil and capitalistic right here at home to make it worth all that.
There's no such thing as "too much" opportunity for profit. Greed is a powerful motivator.
Again, I don't necessarily believe it, but don't underestimate the profiteers.
If you have such a propensity to create strawmen, you should at least hide it. I'm saying these guys aren't really persuadable in this way, and that their goals are too flexible to react the way your tactics require.
You still haven't demonstrated that you understand what my tactics are -- you've gotten them wrong every time you're tried -- so you're not really in a position to say this.
They have a goal. Either show them that their goal is unattainable, or find a way to give them what they want, and the problem is solved. They want us out of "their" territory. If we no longer need to be there, everyone wins.
More straw. And if learning from our own mistakes in Nam was worth anything at all, why did we ever enter Iraq w/o first tying up all the loose strings in AF? I mean our timing for entry into AF was terrible, but far worse re: Iraq.
Simple -- we didn't learn our lesson from Vietnam; but that doesn't mean we
couldn't learn because we didn't win, as you claimed.
The way we lost in Nam has no parallel to any way we could possibly "win" on either Middle Eastern front; but first you'd have to define winning.
Have a political goal for the region and achieve it -- either militarily or through some other means. I really can't make it any simpler.
Armed conflict was a mistake, since I think our ideal political goal should be "wash our hands of the whole thing and have nothing whatsoever to do with the place."
Nobody ever did that. Your textbooks just aren't helping you here, they're just distracting you from the subject at hand. Plus, we had plenty of chances to make mistakes that were never made in Nam; we seemed to avail ourselves of every opportunity for that.
And that's the problem -- nobody defined "winning." war is a political action with a political goal, and we couldn't decide on a goal in Vietnam: were we stopping the North Vietnamese incursion, or were we "advising" the South Vietnamese to train them how to do it themselves? We never could make up our minds about that, could we? So until we have a goal for the Middle East and a plan for how to achieve it, why should we be there?
That would be,
losing the war.
"Losing" what? Our national pride doesn't handle "losing" very well, but pride alone shouldn't be our reason for continuing -- another lesson we didn't learn from Vietnam; necessitating Nixon's "peace with honor" speech to extricate us.
More Sunny Zoo? What does he say about winning by losing?
You shouldn't need Sun Tzu to tell you to bail when a conflict isn't worth it anymore. When the political goal of an armed conflict is no longer attainable, but you continue fighting anyway for no other reason than to "win..." (win what?) then you're not fighting for a cause anymore; you're just.... fighting.
Less Sun Tzu, more like Kenny Rogers: "You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em..."
Giving them back their land and just giving up in defeat has a certain appeal. The only problem with that is the circumstances of the creation of modern day Israel, and the US role in it.
All the more reason to publicly wash our hands of the whole thing. They'll probably never
like us because of our role in creating Israel, but they
despise us for our continued support of it.
I say, time to cut our losses.
As far as alternative energy goes, well duh
And I do mean that in the nicest of ways. Those that had a mere 5 to 6 figures to invest a few years back will be the next Rockefellers if they put it in the right place. This is why Bush starting these wars with $ as the main motive just doesn't add up. As a favor to his cronies, he legalized fracking on his way out. No need to get shot at, either.
Legalizing fracking made the cronies money; the war made them more money. It's the nature of greed to always want more. You didn't think they'd be satisfied, did you? It's not like
they're the ones getting shot at, after all...
US aid come with expectations? Never! But in this case, altruism would have nothing to do with it.
So there
are strings attached.
It would simply be a different form of warfare, to win a different sort of battle that your Sunny Zoo never envisioned.
Ah, but he did -- you really should read him; you'll learn something.
Arrive with butter and blankets. When they yell Allah is great just tell them yup, and so is clean drinking water and sanitation, and go about our business.
If you can't beat 'em, bribe em -- as long as it's subtle? Workable, IF Christians could be counted on to be subtle... I don't see it happening. Look what happened in Japan; the Shimabara Rebellion and 250 years of strictly enforced isolationism. You expect better luck in a region which
already has no reason to trust our motives?
I predict trust would be won by the populace quicker than either of us could ever imagine, but not by spending our $ as we saw fit, like building roads they don't need. We would have to actually ask them what they want, once their most obvious needs were no longer pressing.
And suppose what they want is for us to go away and leave them alone? Would you comply?
If our goal was to assist them in developing their own stable Gov't., this would've worked much better.
Perhaps, but instead our goal was to assist them in developing a stable gov't
that was beneficial to us. There's little room for altruism in foreign policy; which explains why it's never seen.
I remember that.
Only in the "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times" sense. Some did, some didn't. A quick military win and a quick exit would've been wiser per your concerns here.
Which wasn't going to happen since our goal (a stable, allied Iraq) couldn't be accomplished through military means. We're the ones who destabilized it when we overthrew Hussein. Colin Powell said it best: We broke it, we bought it -- and the GOP threw him under the bus for saying it.
Iraq was always stable, just not so much an ally anymore. Saddam Hussein was a tyrannical psychopath, but we knew that already. In fact, back when Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini was the Boogyman
du jour, Saddam was
our tyrannical psychopath.
Take Khomeini out of the equation, and Saddam "suddenly" becomes a brutal dictator whom the people of Iraq need to be "liberated" from -- which ended up turning loose all the creeps that his brutality was keeping suppressed.
Besides, we supported Hussein (brutality and all) against Khomeini, and then turned on him when he "suddenly" became a liability -- the people of the Middle East remember when we pull stunts like that, even when we pretend to forget.
And they're going to trust us when we say "no strings attached; we really,
really mean it this time..."? I think not.
Our military intel should've KNOWN they consider it a sin for our feet to be on their soil before we ever went in.
They DID know -- but military intel is only valuable if the commanders (including the commander in chief in this case) actually
listen to it. Unfortunately, the administration at the time wanted us in Iraq for whatever reason -- and wasn't about to let anything as trivial as the truth stop them. Look what happened to Colin Powell, and realize that it was typical -- anyone in that administration who dared speak publicly against the war, even with the facts, ended up out of a job pretty quickly, with nothing left to do but mutter "told you so," after the fact.
They absolutely failed us in this regard, yet i have never heard a single Bush basher belly ache about this.
Your hearing is selective -- as is your memory; few officials in the administration dared challenge the decision, but a few did; and quickly became
persona non grata in Washington. Colin Powell is one example.
Nah, they'd drop their own shoe and throw it at our face. Remember that vid?
I'll never be able to forget it
As long as you're remembering it, try to understand it -- that wasn't some terrorist shoe attack; that was one of the people we were there to "liberate." Didn't seem so grateful, did he? How many millions of others do you think regret they weren't within shoe-throwing range?
"Winning," "losing". . . you keep throwing these words around, but what exactly are we fighting for? Give me an answer before trying to justify continuing the conflict.
Think if we did, they'd agree to not attack us? Could we trust them to hold up such a deal? Could we trust them to hold up any deal?
We're not offering them a deal; we're taking away their motivation. They attack us for a reason; take away the reason, and they stop attacking. These people are neither crazy nor stupid -- they're not attacking us for the heck of it -- so don't buy into the "they hate us for our freedom" propaganda.
I actually do think it wouldn't matter one bit. if we actually met their needs, which their own Gov't should have done and the Talibs never could, (of course we are mixing and matching 2 fronts but I'm talking about AF) they would take the aid and live.
But the Taliban would still be in charge -- and I don't think they'd take kindly to us trying to buy off "their" people with food and medicine.
Those humanitarians and their aid would quickly become targets, which would necessitate our sending in armed forces to protect those targets, who would in turn become targets themselves... which would necessitate more armed forces...
See where this leads?
It would be all the media coverage that would stop them from killing fellow Muslims, for fear of the rest of the Muslim community seeing it.
Right -- you think the Taliban is afraid of bad publicity?
If this idea would have backfired, this is the weak link. They might not care who saw them acting like the butchers they are, or they might even want to be publicized for it.
Exactly -- and yet you admit that this is the cornerstone of your strategy...
And its possible no neighboring Muslims would've come to their aid. And of course the armed militias might've over-run our provisions of aid, but no way would they have killed as many as we lost on D-Day.
Possible, but unlikely. remember, they trust the Taliban a lot more than they trust us. And once we're the armed "invaders" in their country, we're the bad guys -- remember, we've done this before; they've got no reason to believe it'll end well.
*sigh* We have a mess, and clearly it is of our own making.
On THAT, at least, we agree.
If we flooded them with basic humanitarian aid and went to work developing clean water and sanitation that would've intruded into their way of life, too. We would've gained their trust by the time we couldn't find any more obvious needs and they couldn't readily identify any more, either. I won't say we could've achieved that in 5 months, but 2 years? Probably so. And probably at a lesser cost than the ordinance we've used.
But as I said, they expect any humanitarian aid we send them to be a bribe attempt -- and as you've just illustrated, it would be. The ones in charge would try to prevent it, we'd need to protect it, and then...
Humanitarian aid would only be accepted if they (their government)
asks for it -- and if they do ask for it, they're not likely to ask the US... and the US doesn't want them asking anyone else -- Russia, China, N. Korea...
Remember what I said about altruism in foreign policy -- there is none.
