Re: Excellent

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#68745
sgtdraino
Participant

[quote=”Valdron”]Thanks for the backhanded admission that Afghanistan has been totally bunged up.[/quote]

Please don’t put words in my mouth. As I’ve said before, I don’t think I’m qualified to make that judgement. I don’t think you are either.

[quote=”Valdron”]Well, the first thing I would do is appoint Rumsfield as commander of an isolated frontier outpost, say in the southwest of Afghanistan.[/quote]

Rumsfeld isn’t in the military, so you wouldn’t be able to appoint or order him anywhere. After you replaced him as Secretary of Defense, he would simply be another civilian.

[quote=”Valdron”]As for other things, stop stabbing the United Nations in the back.

Increase the level of aid so that people aren’t starving.[/quote]

I believe these areas of policy are generally outside the purview of the Department of Defense. This is State Department stuff.

[quote=”Valdron”]Crush the worst of the warlords. Provide adequate security for aid workers. Settle in for a long haul, and pay attention to the place.[/quote]

Those are nice generalities. Do you have specific plans on how to accomplish these?

[quote=”Valdron”]Make a real investment in rehabilitating and rebuilding a country we helped to destroy.

PS: We here in the international community have noticed that America has a problem.[/quote]

First you count yourself among those who destroyed Afghanistan, then you count yourself as a member of the “international community?”

[quote=”Valdron”]It’s ruining your friendships, wrecking your economy, and giving you an ugly black eye. It’s this tendency you’ve got to put your troops in someone elses country whenever you’re feeling antsy.[/quote]

I’m not going to debate you again. That would be pointless. I did read your whole post on the history of the situation. I would agree that most of the events are probably fairly accurate, but I also think that a significant amount of your story consists of simple rumor and opinion. Particularly anything CIA-related. But all of your story is obviously colored by the way you view the world, which has been developed via your social interactions with those around you, as you’ve grown up. In short, it is a biased view of events.

That’s not meant as an insult. I have biases. Everyone has biases. But people don’t always recognize their own biases. You presented your version of history as if it was absolute fact. As if you have full knowledge and grasp of the situation over there. It isn’t, and you don’t. I don’t either, but I do know enough to recognize that you are very smart… but not quite as smart as you seem to think you are.

Once again, 99% of everything I hear from opponents of US policy is simple negativity. “Oh, that won’t work. Oh, you shouldn’t have done that.” It is easy to play devil’s advocate. It is harder to actually come up with alternative ideas, that go beyond feel-good generalities.

And in no way do I march lock-step with US foreign policy, or domestic policy, for that matter. Mistakes have been made, are being made, and will be made in the future. But I am unconvinced of utter failure. And even if there ultimately is utter failure, that doesn’t mean action should never have been taken.

Many battles are ultimately lost, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have been fought in the first place. The world is a complicated place, but “stability” is not always the answer. Not when stability includes torture and degradation. Sometimes change only comes about through great pain. Risks must be taken in order to succeed, and sometimes the worst happens.

I personally believe that Muslim fundamentalist extremism threatens the whole world, and it is a threat that the world has not yet figured out how to deal with. You can’t negotiate with it, and it’s very hard to fight it conventionally. As the world figures out what procedure works, mistakes will inevitably be made. Plans will be tried, and many will fail. But try we must.

The UN is an organization with a built-in tendency towards the status quo. Keeping things the way they are, good or bad. Stability is everything, and military operations have never been one of the UN’s strengths. The UN has been a very valuable organization in the past, but I believe it is becoming outdated. I don’t think it is equipped to cope with the realities of present day. Perhaps a new international organization should be put together, with a more pro-active mandate.

Or perhaps not. 🙂 Ultimately, I’m just another joe with an opinion.