Sam, you really don’t get it. Sure, there are individual projects going on. I’ve said that repeatedly, but you’re still listing them as refutations.
It’s been 2 goddamn years now that Osama has been Public Enemy #1, and Bush properly (if simplemindedly) issued that “Wanted: Dead or Alive” proclamation. So where the hell is the serious effort to get him? 12,000 troops don’t go very far when spread across a country that size, certainly not for offensive operations, and especially when you think you know where a high-value target is. There are about 15 times that number in Iraq, as you well know.
And why, for pity’s sake, are you so eager to apologize for Bush’s dereliction of duty here, even to the point of insisting that the goal just isn’t that important? There has been no answer from you cheerleaders to that. There’s an obvious answer, but is it the right one? Is your proper outrage as a human really so subsumed by your unreasoning partisanship as it appears? Why?
I would have thought that it was the monsters who created the conditions, but it doesn’t really matter.
I would like to know if at any time during recorded history a war has been waged for the sole purpose of ridding the world of a dictator. If so, when and where and what was the outcome? I should add that World War II and Hitler spring to mind, but that really wasn’t our reason for entering that war.
I would like to ask Mr. Stone to please inform us just which dictator he would go after next if the choice were his. After all, there are a bunch of them—which one poses the biggest threat to the USA and our way of life; a threat that justifies another pre-emptive war? Not that I consider the current one justified. Maybe we should recruit more people for our armed forces and go after all of them at once?
What Mr. Stone is suggesting is that WE impose OUR will on the rest of the world—kind of a mob rule, where might does indeed make right. WE are going to save THEM if we have to kill them all to do it.
I think that, all in all, the world would have been a significantly better place for it if the US had invaded Afghanistan subsequent to the events of 9/11, deposed Al Qaeda and the Taliban, caught Osama bin Laden if possible (individual-person objectives aren’t always possible), and then did serious Marshall-plan rebuilding of the country’s physical and political infrastructure, preferably with the onboard assistance of many of the world’s nations, significantly to include Turkey and Muscat&Oman and other nontotalitarian Islamic countries.
And I’m not saying that we haven’t done a good deal of that, or are not continuing on that general path. But I’m distressed to think that our attention and money has been diverted elsewhere, and that there’s a danger that we’ll leave the place with the task unfinished. Because then we will leave resentment towards us in our wake, and before long Afghanistan will again be fertile breeding ground for yet more people who feel invaded, outraged, and vengefully inclined towards us and our ilk. In which case, with or without the successful capture of Osama bin Laden, we’ve just turned over the topsoil and added fertilizer rather than uprooted terrorism.
It’s much trickier in the case of Iraq. I don’t think there’s any possibility of making that one come out a net positive. Even if we rebuild the place and make it a bastion of freedom and equality and economic might and remove every faction that is geared towards terrorist activities and get a formal accord signed between Iraq and Israel, Iraq and Kuwait, and Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and cause Iraq to be ranked high by Amnesty International and other such groups for its excellent treatment of its citizens and its adherence to the most civilized of due process procedures in its police and criminal justice activities, we’ve still thrown down a gauntlet to the whole fucking world that says if we, the United States, think your government sucks and is up to bad shit it shouldn’t oughta be, we will invade your country and depose your villainous leader and rebuild the place to our satisfaction.
And that puts us in the Darth Vader column no matter what else we accomplish over there.