Reply #26: Minor disagreement

[pop goes the weasel]

Even bin Laden wouldn't dispute his complicity in the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. And he was behind the daily terror in Afghanistan, thanks to US interference there in the 1980s. Afghanistan had to be dealt with. However...

Invading (and I'm not convinced that an invasion was the best measure the US could have taken) would have been one thing, bombing was another.

Why do we have to bomb the heck out of a place before sending in troops? Oh yeah, so we don't have to send in troops in enough strength to actually hold the ground. That way, war can be instigated without a massive initial call-up of manpower so the people don't really think about what they are getting themselves into. That way, the pResident can declare "mission accomplished" early on, even though the US has still not gained control of the situation. That way, no one has to look at the faces of children and women who are killed by US weapons--or even count their bodies. That way, we can destroy what's left of a backward's nation infrastructure while giving the miscreants who were responsible for its collapse plenty of lead time to get away.

The situation in Afghanistan is tenuous, to put it mildly. We needed to put a lot more people in there after running the Taliban out to simply do reconstruction. Unlike in Iraq, Afghanistan was largely emptied of the sorts of trained professionals who can run and maintain a modern nation. We needed to keep our promise to come up with the money necessary. We needed to keep our promise to the women of Afghanistan. But all that would have required real work, real dedication, and a real concern. It wouldn't have been grabbing headlines and advancing the "War pResident's" image as a <snort> "leader." No canny photo ops. And so the stage had to be set for another air war. Meanwhile, conditions in Afghanistan deteriorate and the Taliban creeps back into power.