| I suspect we agree more than we disagree. The remaining differences are about whether there are only three options- "passive" == "do nothing but wait for the next attack" and "active" == full fledged war wasting trillions of dollars and lasting decades or "c" improving the life of th average Mohammed which in practice devolves to full fledged war and subsequent "nation building". Your analogies all suffer from being set up to have only binary alternatives and so are flawed - a ultra "passive" and sissy option and an "active" or chest thumping all out aggressive one.. In real life, I suspect there are a lot of options between those extremes (and a few beyond them). You could have just bombed/droned or even better captured the top leadership of AQ (at Tora Bora for example) and hung them from lamp posts wrapped in pigskin and never said a word or claiming credit. The message would have been delivered loud and clear, with you still free to hunt down the Saudi and Pakistani financiers. You could probably still grab the lot from Quetta and Riyadh with a few strategically placed billions in the right Pakistani and Saudi pockets or a private ( and believable) threat to cut off all aid to Pakistan and impositions of weapon and other embargos unless OBL and co are trussed up and delivered to you. The generals will all fall over themselves to obey. I still disagree with you on civilians not being able to say "enough" to their governments without putting a complete military and strategic plan in place. No government would ever get criticized or elected out by this logic. And as for comparisons of wars, there will always be differences in any two wars. But there are also similarities and lessons to be learned. Sure the Vietnamese didn't have a Caliphate (but communism also had an impossible goal) , but the United States getting into a battle with high moral aims impossible to fulfill militarily ("Make you and me safe from communists" - Make you and me safe from Islamists") and no clear victory definitions or path, relying on technical superiority, staying and bumbling around long enough for initially friendly host population to turn hostile, rogue units killing innocents and the resulting back lash, leaks of "classified material", presidents campaigning to stop the war and then escalating once in office, loss of prestige worldwide,deep divisions in American society people foolish enough to trust the United States left twisting in the wind and generally getting sucked into a quagmire certainly sounds familiar. And all this has nothing to do with why Assange should necessarily take the US side in a dirty war when the USA administration doesn't care to vet the material before publication. The witch hunt in the name of "saving innocent informants" is the height of hypocrisy. That said this thread is overly long so I'll stop contributing. Politics and HN don't mix well. Cheers and have a nice day|! |
Cheers.