On 3/6/06, mike larkin wrote:
> Count me in this camp. Opponents of the war (which I was one, so mea culpa) never offered a coherent alternative about what to do about al-Quada. Like condemning the Allied war effort in 1942 but never addressing what to do about Hitler. I think the U.S. invasion is the principal reason there hasn't been another attack since 9/11. <
huh? what about the attacks in Spain and London? In any event, al Qaeda always waited a couple of years between attacks, perhaps because their efforts were so labor-intensive and they didn't have many people. A bit after the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, you might have said that _Clinton's_ anti-al Qaeda policy was really, really successful.
Also, I'd think that we could learn not to use Hitler analogies. The Taliban was horrible, yes, but was it Nazi? Was is worse even than the US allies, the Northern Alliance of warlords? Was the Taliban worse than the US military machine?
My objections against the Bush invasion of Afghanistan haven't changed. In it, the US acted as detective, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner rolled up all in one. It was attacking forces (the Taliban, al Qaeda) that were largely or partly of its own creation, without learning any lessons about how to avoid similar mistakes in the future. Once the invasion had been pulled off, the US largely pulled out, leaving the mop-up to NATO and repeating (on a smaller scale) US policy after the end of Soviet occupation, i.e., "liberate" the country by destroying it and then abandon it. It abandoned it because the successful invasion had reinforced the Bushmasters' hubris, encouraging them to invade Iraq (which had been the main target all along). -- Jim Devine / Bust Big Brother Bush! "Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense." -- Gertrude Stein