>My 2-year thingy was an unsuccessful attempt to pin
>down Carrol and anyone else who said the U.S. mission
>couldn't possibly work. The reasoning was that if some
>period following the conquest of Afgh passed with no
>big incidents, the mission could be called successful
>on some level.
War can work for some purposes sometimes, but the resulting "peace" (or "a cessation of arms" as Hobbes puts it*) is most likely short-lived -- unless you "exterminate all the brutes" -- if such underlying causes of terrors and other threats to regimes in power as economic exploitation, political repression, etc. are not abolished.
* "For those men that are so remissly governed that they dare take up arms to defend or introduce an opinion are still in war; and their condition, not peace, but only a cessation of arms for fear of one another; and they live, as it were, in the procincts of battle continually." (Thomas Hobbes, _Leviathan_ Chapter XVIII) -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Anti-War Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>