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Capitol Ideas
Why Are We in Afghanistan?
At first it was retaliation for 9/11 — but eight and a half years later?
(Page 2 of 2)
Thomas Friedman of the New York Times may have noticed this. He sees that the world is not quite as “flat” as he would like. Arab and Muslim societies need to start “shaming suicide bombers and naming their actions ‘murder,’ not ‘martyrdom,’” he wrote, with a touch of impatience. Until they do, “this behavior will not stop.” No kidding. So Obama should “call for it,” he added, not just for “more airport security.”
Consider the Islamic traitor at Fort Hood, who shot and killed 12 soldiers in November. The response? Chaplains moved promptly to “comfort” the “larger army community,” which was itself “struggling to make sense of what happened.” It made perfect sense, however, to those engaged in Islamic jihad — and to those who understand that that is their intention. It made no sense only to those who think that the world consists of liberals-at-heart, some of whom suffer from too much “stress.” A lieutenant colonel on the base said that the Fort Hood “community” responded like this: They were holding “critical-incident stress-management sessions.”
That’s it. They have martyrs, we have critical-incident stress-management sessions.
It is not our duty to give Obama cover on the grounds that a war calls for patriotism, not partisanship. Great errors of judgment must be pointed out, not glossed over. Democrats in Congress will probably want to get out of this war ahead of the Republicans, who could lend support to Obama’s ill-advised war. Yet it could be the GOP’s opportunity, as the Cato Institute’s Ed Crane has pointed out.
At least let’s hope that John McCain isn’t the GOP nominee once more.
About the Author
Tom Bethell is a senior editor of The American Spectator and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages, and most recently Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary? (2009).
Letter to the Editor View all comments (79) | Leave a comment
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jason taylor| 3.20.10 @ 12:06PM
"It's good that the horrors of war have been individualized" so that the world wars will be made more unlikely? Er, the enemy did not try to "individualize" war(or anything else except their Leader) then. They did expect us too though.
Alan Brooks| 3.26.10 @ 11:23AM
Let's kill Ahmadine-jihad instead of Bin Laden, the former is a bigger fish to fry.
Replacing "make love not war" is "make war on Iranians, not Afghans"
Sheila| 3.20.10 @ 1:58PM
Finally, a cogent response to the neocon knee-jerk reaction. We need to kill muslims because they are attacking Americans, not because they are killing Jews or Israelis. Wars are properly waged to capture land (which we don't want) or to retaliate against attack and persuade the attacker that the cost of future militancy would be too high. As Bethell notes, our thoroughly feminized culture is unable to even consider "victory," much less the death and destruction which it would entail. When we attempt to nation build (from tribes living a pre-medieval nomadic lifestyle) rather than kill as many of the enemy as possible (a neutron bomb comes to mind) we are destined to fail. I wholeheartedly support our armed forces for the purposes they were initially conceived of - defense of America and American interests. The last president to use them in that fashion was Ronald Reagan. I don't anticipate seeing them used appropriately again in my lifetime. Decline and fall.
GW| 3.20.10 @ 2:59PM
While I tend to agree with you (Afghanistan might not be as important to our natl security as once thought), you once again couldn't avoid the buzzwords of "neo-con" and Israel showing your neo-klan roots. Go have sex with Pat Buchanan.
Alan Brooks| 3.28.10 @ 1:13AM
"Go have sex with Pat Buchanan."
David Duke is PRETTIER.
Margie| 3.26.10 @ 12:12PM
Screw you Sheila, with your "decline and fall" crap. And you aren't afraid or ashamed of your anti-semitism either. So it's alright to kill Muslims for the "white people" right, but not if we're helping Israel. Looks like we have a female Toddard here. Everyone's a "neo-con" except you and your ilk.
S.L. Toddard| 3.26.10 @ 1:46PM
Such a classy lady.
victor| 3.26.10 @ 3:50PM
Spine Less Toddard:
Class? What would you know about Class?
You verbally abuse, berate and degrade women such as Margie for the "crime" of simply disagreeing with you.
S.L. Toddard| 10.10.09 @ 11:03AM
Poor Margie. A disloyal, unpatriotic American and an un-Christian woman. You shame both Washington and Christ.
Poor Toddard! Imagines himself to be Judge, Jury and Executioner!
victor| 3.26.10 @ 3:53PM
I forgot to say that SLT is in a "class" by himself.
That's because decent people won't associate with him.
S.L. Toddard| 3.26.10 @ 9:35AM
A magnificent piece. Kudos, Mr. Bethell.
Alan Brooks| 3.28.10 @ 1:19AM
Sure, pull out of Afghanistan; but let's also pull our troops out of Germany, even though there is no war there; the Germans can defend themselves by spending more of their tax receipts, as Pat Buchanan himself has said. Pull Israel out of the Mideast, as well-- so Israel's enemies will have only each other to fight.
BTW, Toddard, you are as classy a lady as Sheila.
Harry| 3.26.10 @ 9:43AM
We're in Afghanistan to deny it to Al Qaeda. They need a base from which they can operate freely and we can't allow them one.
Unfortunately, while we're in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda has moved to Pakistan, Somalia, and other failed Muslim states.
Tim| 3.26.10 @ 9:50AM
"Asia is not going to be civilized after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old. "
Rudyard Kipling
ncatty| 3.26.10 @ 9:58AM
Barbara Tuchman, the author of "The March of Folly", would be pleased with this article, as I am.
Pingback| 3.26.10 @ 10:03AM
The News Factor, an informative online Conservative News Magazine » Tell me again how links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
txn4ever| 3.26.10 @ 10:19AM
Why are we still in Germany, or Japan? The Phillipines? We have to do the dirty work no one else in the world is man enough to handle.
Tim| 3.26.10 @ 2:33PM
Oktoberfest? $2 lap dances?
Jon Ballard| 3.29.10 @ 11:58AM
We are in Germany and Japan because few people in the professional politician class have the guts to tell the taxpayer their money is being squandered for a non-existant threat.
Notary Sojac| 3.26.10 @ 11:19AM
The reason we are in an endless war in Afghanistan is that we are pretending not to know where the enemy comes from.
Nearly all the money and the ideology behind Al Qaeda comes from Saudi Arabia.
Don't want to go to war with them? There are reasonable arguments why we should not.
But attacking the terrorist ground troops while leaving their ideological and financial base intact is the equivalent of fighting melanoma with Bactine.
Siegfried X| 3.26.10 @ 11:49AM
Contrary to what Mr Bethell says, "counter-insurgency" tactics mean reversing the Taliban's MILITARY OCCUPATION of parts of Afghanistan. It isn't touch-feely nation building. That's real military fighting. It's the same thing that "the Surge" did in Iraq.
Like the Taliban have such tight control of Kandahar that they can order the cell phone transmitters to be shut down every night. Like civilians in towns our troops are in are still reported to be threated by Taliban.
It is clearly worth it to give the people of Afghanistan a choice. It appears sadly that Karzai was soft on the Taliban all along (even though they killed his father), and a lot of the Southern Afghans are sympathetic to the Talibs. Obama has probably already thrown the war away by setting a 2011 date for the state of withdrawal.
The effort must still be made. Probably part of Afghanistan will choose the Taliban and part won't. We made end up with a partition.
As for the rest of this article, it is such self-contradictory gibberish that it isn't worth commenting on. For example, the author complains about the 8 1/2 year war and yet tells us that our supposedly feminized country can't stomach a long war.
Siegfried X| 3.26.10 @ 12:10PM
" At first it was retaliation for 9/11."
No, it was the basic purpose of any war - to prevent further attacks. Al Qaeda attacked us and continues to threaten to attack us. Until they withdraw the threat or are all dead, war must be eternal.
GB| 3.26.10 @ 1:23PM
The universal truth is that our soldiers have been killed and maimed by the thousands, with no end in sight, and to this day, no justification and no "mission." Fellow "conservatives" stood by -- silently and cheered it on -- and let this happen.
Perhaps the guilt of knowing how disastrous this "policy" of no goal, no mission, and the resulting fallen soldiers by their thousands, is why "conservatives" feel they will honor our fallen heroes by keeping this going -- maybe, someday, they will come up with a rationale behind this mess which they can explain to our maimed soldiers and the families left behind.
For this -- to ease your conscience -- we should continue to sacrifice more of our greatest resource?
This is the definition of madness.
Oh, does the fact that we're bankrupt have anything to do with why this must end? Or does this "control" and "cut" spending not apply to waste overseas?
But what should we expect. "Conservatives" (does anyone have any idea what this label means any more?), have been lost since 1988.
Why the mantra for cutting taxes and spending is ok for big-government domestic spending, yet not applicable to wars we cannot afford (simple math, folks), is the height of hypocrisy.
We don't have the money. Period. It's a universal truth. $2 trillion and approaching the 9-year anniversary, and why "we're there" and what the "mission" is changes from month-to-month and year-to-year.
At what point do "conservatives" decide to be consistent? The labels of "neo-con" and "paleo-con" are distractions. Maybe "hypocrite-con" is more appropriate.
Bush and his advisers could never formulate the answer as to why "we're there." Neither can Obama and his wordsmiths. That's a problem -- no one knows why we are still there, and bravo for a "conservative" finally coming to reality and penning what should have been written 7+ years ago.
Al-Quaeda? Are you serious? Taliban? Are you serious? They are bogeymen and you have fallen for it. Try this: think for yourself. Stop buying the government line that we have to give our up cherished liberty (what our soldiers are fighting for, right?) because we're "scared" of maniacs in a far-off desert. When did we become this weak-minded? When did we become this weak?
The problem with Bush and his "loyal" followers is the same as Obama and his "deranged" followers: spending, spending, spending. No direction, no ideals. Just charge more on China's credit card.
We are bankrupt! $30 trillion in the hole for Medicare and $10+ trillion in the hole for Social Security. More spending (called "investment" now) as far as the eye can see, so what's another 10, 20, 30 years at hundreds of billions per year to station ourselves in a desert to de-burka-fy Afghans.
So, ultimately, the "conservatives" (so silent during the Bush years) somehow decided spending on war, and Medicare drugs, and farm subsidies, on No Child Left Behind, etc. was and is better than spending on "health care reform."
I know we have all lost when "conservatives" cannot seem to think for themselves, and can only offer more wasteful spending (and here I mean blood and treasure) on a pointless undeclared war by working hard to create a "mission" (retroactively, of course) to justify the mess they got us into. Man up, stop deluding yourself, and accept the truth.
Come up with any thoughtful response supporting our policy in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I won't have to reply. You will prove that you are lost, and try as you may to convince yourself that you are a "thinker," you are simply another lost sheep who succumbed to erroneous group think long ago.
Siegfried X| 3.26.10 @ 2:37PM
"Al-Quaeda? Are you serious?"
Are you a 9/11 conspiracy theorist? Everyone else is serious about Al Qaeda.
Patty| 12.19.10 @ 3:43PM
You don't have to be a 9/11 conspiracy theorist to state the obvious fact that we didn't go to war because of the Al Qaeda. I'm just a teen and I can see that.
Neon Leon | 4.9.10 @ 8:42AM
Thanks for your thoughtful post.
Not all of us are buying the Government propaganda.
Bottom line is that our foreign policy is why most people hate the United States. We are not preventing future attacks, but provoking them. This is an unwinnable war and we are completely bankrupt.
Everyone who questions the Government's intent gets labeled a 'conspiracy theorist'. Don't listen and just keep trying to educate the public with these types of insightful posts.
Society is brainwashed. Time for everyone to wake up.
Pingback| 3.26.10 @ 12:14PM
Why Are We in Afghanistan? « Depravity links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
davelnaf| 3.26.10 @ 12:22PM
We have given Kabul the right to determine whether or not we should leave Afghanistan or stay. To stay we have promised to nation-build there instead of employing a strategy that basically denies Kabul to the Taliban. The Taliban believes that we will eventually weary of nation building, and that is fair calculation. But if they see that we are building up bases like Bagram and Kandahar into something they can never again have they will eventually accept that their struggle is likely to stretch on into the indefinite future and conclude there is no future in humping an AK or RPG around that country. It is true that many Taliban have nothing better to do and these people will always be a problem. But if the point of Afghanistan always was, as it certainly still is, to deny Al Qaeda a sanctuary then this has been accomplished and would continue to be the case by denying the Taliban Kabul and generally making life difficult for them. Life for the average Afghan is difficult enough, but being holed up in the mountains during the winter increases that level of difficulty by several factors and one would think it is not something that even the hardiest Taliban would want to do until they can no longer do it.
It is not necessary to give the government in Kabul everything they want. Kabul knows that if we leave Bagram they will fall soon after that. We can prevail in Afghanistan by doing less and doing it smarter.
Northern Rebel| 3.26.10 @ 12:27PM
Newsflash:
Bin Laden has been dead for years! If not, show us the picture with the newspaper.
It seems to be in everyone's "best interests" to prop him up, Bernie style.
The bottom line is, we need to be in Afghanistan long enough to be able to go after terrorists in Pakistan. A patriotic President, (Ahh, the good old days..) would have already strong armed the Pakistani leader (in private) to let us bomb the crap out of their hideouts.
"President" Anti-Christ will attempt to engineer our defeat, and everyone will say, "See it can't be done."
Until we have patriotic American leadership, God help us all!
Copyleft| 3.26.10 @ 12:33PM
George W. Bush was wrong to invade Afghanistan. He had no valid reason to do so. Fortunately, our heroic new president has found a reason and now our occupation is not only valid but legal.
Nick| 3.26.10 @ 1:36PM
Are you referring to President Dither?
Who kept President Bush's SecDef?
Who is using drones to kill Taaa-lee-baahn, Taaa-lee-baahn, Taaa-lee-baahn Baaah-naah-naah leaders?
Without reading them their Miranda rights?
Who hasn't done a thing to repeal the Patriot act?
Who DITHERED for 6 months, only to decide to give the generals half the troops they wanted, but still ESCALATED the war?
Is that to whom you were referring?
GavInTucson| 3.29.10 @ 3:34AM
I believe Copyleft was making an attempt at sarcasm.
S.L. Toddard| 3.26.10 @ 1:44PM
"George W. Bush was wrong to invade Afghanistan. He had no valid reason to do so. Fortunately, our heroic new president has found a reason and now our occupation is not only valid but legal."
You are being facetious, correct?
Tim| 3.26.10 @ 2:34PM
I think he's bucking to replace you on the shit list's #1 spot...
S.L. Toddard| 3.28.10 @ 11:38AM
Well, he's going to have to try harder than that.
NavyBrat | 3.26.10 @ 4:46PM
Crappy Leftist said: "George W. Bush was wrong to invade Afghanistan. He had no valid reason to do so."
Uh, yeah he did. He had about 3000 reasons. Unless you, like your hero Ward Churchill, think that all the people who died that day were "little Eichmans" who deserved their fate. Go hug a suicide bomber.
Homebody| 3.26.10 @ 10:26PM
Eh, I think "Copyleft" means the guy copied his post from another post on a leftist website somewhere. In other words, he's not actually making the argument himself, just copying what a leftist posted (probably with some of the middle of the original post left out to keep from obscuring the hypocrisy) and posting it here for our amusement.
Siegfried X| 3.26.10 @ 12:44PM
Sitting in bases loses the war. We own the bases, the Taliban control the rest of the country. The Talibs have people in every village, controlling them.
Either we have the guts to fight a real war, for every inch of Afghanistan, or we lose.
It doesn't take us occuping every inch of soil, as Iraq showed. Once we are willing to get out in the villages and get the terrorist's boot off people's throat, the elders are willing to lead their own people against the terrorists. It happened in Iraq, and now a region of Afghanistan is fighting the Taliban, throwing them out.
Patty| 12.19.10 @ 3:49PM
Several generations have tried to conquer Afghanistan; each one failed. Wouldn't you think that's a hint to leave it alone? Let the 'elders' fight their own battle, while Americans worry about America and not the Middle East.
Derek Leaberry| 3.26.10 @ 1:03PM
The country's running trillion dollar deficits for as far as the eye can see, an entitlement crisis looms, and the Left is building a political majority centered around government money and power. We need to get out of Afghanistan. Who rules Afghanistan is the least of our problems right now.
Drew | 3.26.10 @ 2:53PM
Quote: We cannot win this war for an important cultural reason: ours is an increasingly feminized culture, so we cannot take the casualties
We cannot win in Afghanistan because of feminism? Twaddle. Anybody who'd spend fifteen minutes with a company of US (or British) infantrymen would know what utter nonsense that was.
Why are we still in Afghanistan eight years after first going there? Look a thousand miles or so to the West for your answer. We couldn't (and didn't) finish the job in Afghanistan because we were busy fighting a war of dubious legality in Iraq. We simply didn't have the combat brigades to spare. (We came within a whisker of ruining a generation of our best NCOs thanks to stop-loss orders and repeated deployments.)
Afghanistan probably isn't "winnable" in the same way that fighting the Nazis or Imperial Japan was. It certainly isn't possible (or even desirable) to achieve an uneasy armed truce like we did against North Korea.
But Afghanistan is "winnable" in the sense that a) the country was wrecked by thirty years of invasion by the Soviets, followed by a decade of Taliban-led chaos and b) despite everything we still have some allies in the region.
Afghanistan is - today - critical for two reasons: One: we cannot allow a nation state of some 30 million people, comprising a quarter million square miles - to become a de facto base of operations for Islamic terrorists and, Two: We cannot allow such a Terror-supporting state to spring up along the border of nuclear-armed Pakistan - a nation with a population susceptible to Islamic-fundamentalist lunacy.
The War in Afghanistan will not be won by conventional military force alone - although such force is a necessary precondition. The casualty numbers alone tell us this: Despite fighting a war their for more than eight years "only" one thousand US (and 1700 coalition) forces have been killed there. The majority of these have been via IED attacks - and most of these have been confined to two provinces - Kandahar and Helmand, as well as in the Kabul region.
The Obama administration, acting on the advice and recommendation of our military commanders - has set forth a pragmatic, goal-orientated strategy: Concentrate our forces to achieve victories (both military and developmental) in the Southern provinces that had provided the Taliban sanctuary. The strategy is twofold: Eradicate the Taliban from a region - but then immediately follow this up with development designed to create a functioning Afghan government, one that provides services to the local inhabitants. Military force wins the battle - development wins the people.
Carpet-bombing and indescriminate warfare (the "masculine" form of war?) CANNOT and WILL NOT win in Afghanistan. Ethical and moral considerations left off the table - those are simply a recipe for military defeat and national humiliation.
There are no guarantees that the Obama strategy will succeed in Afghanistan. But its doing a hell of a lot better than the seven+ years of half-measures and blundering we had before.
Nick| 3.26.10 @ 3:08PM
Hey, it's Drew, everybody.
The Molech worshiping, progressive troll!
Capt G.| 3.26.10 @ 9:07PM
An interesting construction of an indecipherable position. Perhaps the cognitive dissonance emanates from the belief that Mr. Bethel believes the military itself has become feminized; a point that can be made, but not made by Mr. Bethel. The American will to make war has been feminized and therefore the feminization of military action itself. But, just because the level of casualties in Afghanistan are militarily insignificant it hardly follows that the war is worth fighting for American mothers or the rest of us. Using the Olberman technique of referencing an article while completely distorting the article's contents is not an effective form of influencing the opinions of the sentient.
To "wreck" a country one usually starts with an actual country. Afghanistan has a degree of difficulty qualifying as one on any scale, including the historical. Generations of invaders and other transients have found no rational reason to linger in a country for which the word "benighted" was seemingly created. The Afghan desire for central governance extends somewhat beyond apathy. Nation-building is fraught with risks, not the least being failure. Our aptitude for nation-building is adequately displayed in our own secondary education schools.
And Afghanistan has certain deficiencies as a center for the export of terrorism; pack mule qualifying as a major transportation resource being one. And you cannot bomb a nation back into the stone-age when the apogee of that nation was the stone-age.
If we worried about Pakistan we should focus on Pakistan and not the parking lot next door. Iraq remains far more important for no other more important reason than it is next door to the actual principle exporter of terrorism and instability in the world and Middle East. We might better ensure continued success in the one country where we've had a measure of nation-building success and a country that remains pivotal in our efforts to break up the status quo, and the "stability", of the Middle East. The reason nothing has been accomplished in Afghanistan is that there is nothing further that needs to be accomplished.
There is no "Obama strategy" in Afghanistan any more than there was a Bush strategy, largely due to the fact that the US has no strategic interest at stake in Afghanistan. Success might as well be defined as a chicken in every pot. We fly in a few million chickens and call it good. The country will soon establish a level of peace and civil society little worse than 1970's Ireland.
It's time to declare the war on terror won. We can accomplish the mopping-up phase by repealing the federal proscription on armed passenger flight and turn our attention to real future threats.
We can simplify and expedite matters by declaring war on Iran and instituting an embargo and US Navy blockade on that country. We might as well, given our unwillingness to support Iranian revolutionaries willing to do the job for us.
As it is, we're on a path designed to trivialize the only thing worthwhile in being a great power.
Don | 3.26.10 @ 9:51PM
I have concluded from my studies of history that providing slaves with an opportunity for freedom is not really a cultural change of any magnitude at all. Most people, women included take to liberty like it was a God given right.
Strange, I know....
raylynn| 3.26.10 @ 10:45PM
Thank you for this thoughtful piece; someone other than George Will needed to say it. We can no longer endure the ignonimy, not to mention the price tag of the Afghanistan adventure. Our troops need to be home. We don't need to send them all over the world on missions our Founding Fathers would have never approved of.
yahoo| 3.27.10 @ 12:53AM
YouTube Video Converter is actually a combination of Online YouTube Downloader, FLV/F4V Converter and video player, which makes convert YouTube Video to common video/audio conveniently.
FeralCat| 3.27.10 @ 2:46AM
Circa 2049:
Just about ten twenty thirty forty years ago I set out on Obama's Afghanistan road,
Seekin' my fame and glory, lookin' to turn the POS mullah’s hemorrhoid into a pot of gold.
Well, things got bad, and things got worse, I guess you will know the tune.
Oh ! lord, stuck in Obama's Afghanistan yet again.
Flew in yet again on a big plane, I hope I'll be in one piece flyin out when I go.
I was yet again just passin' through, must now be yet another 5 10 15 20 tours or more.
Running out of time and patience ["Not to complain but whatever the hell happened to my youth?!"], looks like they took still more of my friends.
Oh ! lord, Im stuck in Obama's Afghanistan yet again.
The Hope and Change man in the White House said yet again I was on my way.
Somewhere I lost his connection, he ran out of words to say.
I came into Kabul, yet another one year stand, looks like the plans fell through yet again
Oh ! lord, stuck in Obama's Afghanistan yet again.
Mmmm...
If I only had a woman ["Hey Jack, do you remember what a woman is?"], for evry Obama tour Ive done.
And evry time Ive had to fight while cheered on by CINO's Obama and his many successors sat back home oblivious to Islam and power drunk.
You know, Id like to catch the next plane back to where Im from.
Oh ! lord, Im stuck in Obama's Afghanistan yet again.
Oh ! lord, Im stuck in Obama's Afghanistan yet again.
- CCR Soldier Boy
GavInTucson| 3.28.10 @ 3:55AM
Why are we in Afghanistan? Hmm, I don't know. Why were we at war with Japan in the Pacific following Pearl Harbor?
Why were we at war in Europe following Hitler's declaration of war with the United States?
Call me crazy, but it might have to do with the fact that there exists some enemies that have to be eradicated from decent society. Yes, I said it.
randolbov| 3.30.10 @ 4:49AM
I think we have more justification for being in Afghanistan then we do in Iraq. The Taliban needs to be destroyed
Theodore Van Oosbree| 4.12.10 @ 2:16PM
I am an ex-paratrooper, army brat, football player, gun owner, single -earner father of five and do not consider myself "feminized". I would not send my son to fight in this idiotic crusade and thus would not send anyone else's son either.
Pingback| 4.13.10 @ 1:05AM
Why Are We in Afghanistan? « Patrick J. Buchanan links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Steven Thompson| 4.13.10 @ 11:24PM
I agree wholeheartedly with Theodore!
This is a waste of our children, tax money and time. Why waste our precious resources to free
peoples from their ways of a "thousand years".
Enough! Al-Qaeda is in every Arab country. Why concentrate on Afghanistan? Can't convince me we should be there or anywhere else for that matter. Avoid foreign "entanglements"; words of a wise man. If foreign countries are causing us grief and threatening us, smash them and leave!
How else to deal with the "Bully" in the schoolyard of mankind? A good bloody nose works every time. Look at history. Either they join in the goodwill towards the human race or leave it and suffer the consequences.
End of story!
Steve.
Ephraim| 6.14.10 @ 2:28PM
This is why we're there period
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06.....gewanted=1
James| 7.10.10 @ 10:34PM
Premise is totally false. 9/11 was an INSIDE JOB! Facts prove this! Facts prove the buildings were blown up and that no plane hit the Pentagon!
Both wars are illegal! The false premise of this article illustrates the successful cover-up of what really happened on 9/11.
Socalgail| 7.16.10 @ 3:15PM
We are in these wars because it transfers money from tax payers to investors in the defense and oil industry. America is not a democracy or even a republic. It is a state controlled by wealthy oligarchs who pay off elected officials and judges to write and uphold laws which make it impossible to hold corporations accountable, to transfer any part of their wealth to the commonwealth, and who control the minds of the religious masses by funding fundamentalist churches.
Joseph Heinzinger| 10.29.10 @ 11:53PM
Didwe not consider afghanistan important after we got hold of old soviet era geology reports? Yes, why does geology have anything to do with the the buildup in the war? RARE EARTH ELEMENTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! China now exports 97% of these and supply is limited. They have expressed a willing to hold back exports for their own economy. Afghanistan is loaded with them.Rareearths are what makes the world go around nowadays with the importance in magnetics and semiconductors. Like your Droid or laptop? Guess where the minerals come from.
Rick Hoelzer| 10.31.10 @ 12:39AM
Why are there police on the streets of any civilized nation? The same reason armies are scattered across a civilized world. To keep it civil. It may not seem that way in the fog of war, but take them away for one month and you will suddenly see the difference between civility and barbarism.
Mike| 12.11.10 @ 4:51PM
When I ask people for a one word reaction to the words Afghanistan War it is almost always "Unnecessary."
And what of a one word solution for Afghanistan? May I humbly suggest "evolution" as in let's leave and check back with them in 300 years to see how they how they are doing climbing the evolutionary ladder.