Losing the war
It shocks me to still here pundits talking about what it will take to "win the war." First I need to make sense of what war they're talking about...Afghanistan or Iraq. Usually, they're talking about the "war on terror." Nevertheless, most talking heads seem to use them all interchangeably.
Either way, their statements pose so many questions. When referring to the conflict in Iraq (yes, it's still going), I get confused as to the endgame. If you remember, the U.S. first invaded Iraq because of weapons (damn is it hard to avoid using the now infamous phrase). When the weapons failed to materialize, the mission seemed to change to liberation, fighting "insurgents", and fighting terror. So when I heard statements by McCain about how we must leave victoriously, I got really confused. If the U.S. is there to liberate, what is there to "win" or "lose?"...and once the evil Saddam was toppled, why would we stay? Mission accomplished right? If the U.S. was there to "fight terror," how exactly does one win a war on a noun? When fighting a noun, when does one know the fight is over? If vanquishing terror is the true objective, why not fight terror in all of the places it rears? Like...Gaza, Darfur, North Korea, Tibet, China, Myanmar, and so on?
Either way, their statements pose so many questions. When referring to the conflict in Iraq (yes, it's still going), I get confused as to the endgame. If you remember, the U.S. first invaded Iraq because of weapons (damn is it hard to avoid using the now infamous phrase). When the weapons failed to materialize, the mission seemed to change to liberation, fighting "insurgents", and fighting terror. So when I heard statements by McCain about how we must leave victoriously, I got really confused. If the U.S. is there to liberate, what is there to "win" or "lose?"...and once the evil Saddam was toppled, why would we stay? Mission accomplished right? If the U.S. was there to "fight terror," how exactly does one win a war on a noun? When fighting a noun, when does one know the fight is over? If vanquishing terror is the true objective, why not fight terror in all of the places it rears? Like...Gaza, Darfur, North Korea, Tibet, China, Myanmar, and so on?
posted by Unknown at
2:54 PM
1 Comments:
I couldn't agree more! And straight from the mouth of a friend who spent a year in Afghanistan, there is no way to "win this war." We can help get rid of the terrorists in the area and try to help them establish a stronger government and military but there's no way to win. It's the same as Viet Nam and Korea the first time around 60 years ago. Guess we didn't learn shit from either of those.
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