Your position on the last two wars as time has passed...

[Yollam]

Poll question: Your position on the last two wars as time has passed...

Your position on the last two wars as time has passed...

[sutz12]

1. Afghan invasion had real evidence...

and support from around the world. Pretty much everyone knew the Taliban were supporting OBL.

Iraq, they did it because they wanted to. No other reason at all.

[shenmue]

2. I agree

Good points.

[Yollam]

4. I personally supported attacking Al Qaeda strongholds in Afghanistan...

...however, I did no think it was necessary to replace the existing Taliban regime. I tend to favor respecting self-determination unless all elkse has failed.

[MadMaddie]

3. And if we would have completed our mission in Afghanistan..

we would have been able to get rid of OBL and his criminal buddies and help prevent Afghanistan from regressing back into the power of the Taliban....

Over 3000 soldiers would still be alive and thousands of Iraqi's would still be alive!!

[BOSSHOG]

6. Maddie, Maddie, Maddie

Obviously you are not a political strategist for our great leader. Catching OBL, which was a great possibility while we concentrated our efforts in Afghanistan would have totally messed up bush's political agenda. And you are obviously not a "conservative" because all those deaths would mean nothing to you. Good for you.

[MadMaddie]

7. Oh BOSSHOG you have such a way with words....

:rofl:

[coalition_unwilling]

14. I hate to nit-pick, but the Taliban offered to turn OBL over

if the U.S. would show it the evidence. The U.S. never did show the Taliban the evidence. (This fact has been obscured through all the subsequent "fog of war" that has grown up around the Afghan invasion, the use of the Northern Alliance as proxies, and the retreat of the Taliban.

Colin Powell promised to make a non-classified dossier available with incontrovertible evidence of OBL's guilt. He never got around to it, as far as I could tell. That was when I turned decisively against the invasion\occupation of Afghanistan.

Not to start a "posting war" but please consider: If the Taliban accused you of a horrible crime and demanded that the U.S. turn you over to them, wouldn't you want the U.S. government to ask to see the evidence before extraditing you to the Taliban? Funny how, when the shoe is on the other foot, the same standards don't apply.

[CJCRANE]

19. The neocons would've been happy

to ignore Afghanistan and go straight for Iraq. It was people like Colin Powell, Richard Clarke and Tony Blair who persuaded them to go to Afghanistan first. Even then they let Bushco's patsy (bin Laden) get away (just like they let his relatives flee America after 9/11).

[CJCRANE]

5. I supported the Afghan invasion

but now realise that bin Laden is just a B*shco patsy/useful idiot who was built up by the BFEE back in the 80's as a mujahideen leader against the Soviets and now used as convenient boogeyman.

[Inland]

8. There barely WAS an "Afghan invasion".

We relied mostly on proxy local militias.

[pitohui]

17. yeah, that was got me peeved abt it

it should have done right, and mullah omar and all else who harbored bin laden should be in prison cells today answering for the money they took to give safe harbor to this known criminal

if a man kills one person and i give him safe harbor in my house, for five freakn years, i go to prison as an accessory, but i have not even seen a real attempt made to track down omar

he is like the forgotten evil-doer

[Inland]

20. Bush put no resources into A'stan, didn't risk

much, let the locals take the pay to do it, with the predictable results--warlords run the country outside of Kabul, the Taliban is regrouping, and Osama lives.

Apparently, Bush didn't want the US to get sated on war and suffering--or victory--until the Iraq war could be launched. He saved our patience, money and blood for THAT. Afganistan's purpose was to confuse THAT war with the great big palooka Saddam.

And it WAS justified, imo; even if the Taliban weren't accessories, they were in between us and Osama and as they didn't move, well......I'm not a pacifist. I just want to end the war that Osama started, not substitute a really stupid, worthless on in Iraq.

[Yollam]

9. Wow, so far no converts on Iraq.

I had hoped there would have been some folks who bought into the Iraq fraud then saw the light, but I guess not...

[BurtWorm]

10. I was and remain ambivalent about the Afghanistan invasion.

I was sickened when I saw the bombs falling on Kabul on the first day of the war. I was, nevertheless, hopeful that bin Laden would be hit or caught. The Bushists have done nothing to earn my faith in their ability to prosecute any war.

I have always opposed the Iraq invasion, and nothing will make me think it was a good idea or that the US can redeem itself there.

[CJCRANE]

12. Bin Laden was never going to be caught -

the Northern Alliance swept in from the North (obviously, given their name) and the Taliban/Al-Qaeda strongholds in the South-East were the last places to be occupied thus giving bin Laden et al plenty of time to slip away into Pakistan.

[BurtWorm]

15. The Tora Bora fiasco is what gave bin Laden time to slip away.

He could have been caught or killed, but the US decided to play political footsy with the warlord in the area at just the worst moment.

[sheelz]

11. I was against both Iraq and Afghan

invasions and continue to oppose them now.

Oh, but I support the Afghan pipeline deal. :sarcasm:

[MamaBear]

13. The World Will Never Be at Peace if we Keep on Rushing to War

I'll admit I don't have *The Answer* but I'm pretty damn sure that the only way to find peace is to look for it some other place than at the end of a battlefield.

Especially when there is no battlefield, only homes and villages and places where people gather.

I understand that puts me in a minority, but so be it. War is indeed a process for settling disputes, but silly me, I just keep believing there is a better one: not one that one country or group will impose on the rest, but one that eventually will be agreed upon mutually, if people are willing to do the hard work that process will require.

Or we can keep on blowing people into red mist.

[pitohui]

16. afghanistan attacked us

look, it is not even open to doubt that mullah omar harbored osama bin laden and provided him safe haven for five freaking years in return for huge cash outlay, he needed to be removed, the taliban needed to be removed, and their hateful leaders need to be tracked down and put on trial wherever they are found for their crimes against america, against women, against humanity

you would think a one-eyed mullah with $3 million in cash from the bank of kabul would not be that hard to find, but * thoughtfully gave him a headstart which still pisses me off

when you are attacked, you fight back, we pay enough taxes and we deserve a strong defense, not a token presence in afghanistan while another band of thieves and religious nuts continues to loot that nation

the war on afghanistan needed to be fought, you can't brush off a brutal attack on your own soil, it just needs to be fought better

iraq is another matter, this is strictly abt locating a dis-armed and helpless nation and hoping to steal its resources in order to prop up the value of one's halliburton stock and maybe one's petroleum stocks also, it is a shameful thing from start to finish, unfortunately, now that their secular gov't has been removed, we have no choice but to occupy and keep the religious whacks from blowing each other up

so that's what i think at this moment in time anyway

[Donald Ian Rankin]

18. I supported Afghanistan until I saw what was actually happening there.

I didn't think that it would do much to make the world safer from terrorism, but I thought that replacing the Taliban with a decent government was a) feasible and b) worth the harm a war would do. I still think that, but it rapidly became apparent that the American government wasn't interested in doing so, and as such I realised I'd been wrong to support it.

I think that replacing Saddam Hussein with a decent government was never possible, because of the internal tensions between Iraqi factions, and so I was opposed to Iraq from square one.