Reply #40: You forgot to add ...

[SomeGuyInEagan]

Us: "And, here is another big sack of money. Sure, our schools are crumbling, our roads are shit, our children will have to pay for this because we simply cannot (wink! wink!) ask the wealthy in our country to pay their fair share - after all, (keep a straight face) the wealthy are (suppress the urge to laugh out loud) the jo ... jo ... job creators (whew, that's tough to say with a straight face)."

Sadly, there is a lot of truth throughout this thread. Afghanistan might not be the mess it is today if we has acted like a world leader back in the '80s and stayed around to help them rebuild schools, hospitals, housing and commerce after the Soviets pulled out. Iraq may have never invaded Kuwait if the American Ambassador April Glaspie had not told Hussein that the U.S. took no position on his border dispute with Kuwait the week before he invaded. And if we had quickly pulled troops out of the region following the first Iraq War, the U.S.S. Cole and the World Trade Center (twice) may not have been targeted by Al Quada, who considered it blasphemy to have our troops on their ground after the war. And that led to even more U.S. aggression into the region.

So, now, we have an ongoing war (almost ten years now) in Afghanistan. We invaded Iraq. And we have Pakistan, who we paid billions to assist us with finding Bin Laden and it appears that at best, they just weren't really good at it. But we muddled the area. And now Pakistan has nukes. I don't see the U.S. leaving the region in my lifetime.

Oy.