[Rhodes22-list] Afghanistan

[DCLewis1 at aol.com]

Bill,
 
Re Afghanistan,  I share your skepticism but I think the invasion was  
justified to put the AQ training camps out of business.  I think it is also  a good 
thing to punish host countries that support AQ training camps and that  meant 
invading Afghanistan and taking down the Taliban.  The reason for  taking down 
the Taliban should not be that they didn't let little girls that  didn't want 
to go to school go to school, the reason for taking out the Taliban  is they 
hosted a tangible terrorist activity that harmed US citizens.  If  AQ 
organized and sponsored 9/11 from those camps, or people from those  camps 
participated in any meaningful way, if the Taliban aided - take  'em out, no questions 
asked.  JMO.
 
But that could have been done, and was done, a long time ago.  We  could have 
then left.  The last soldier out could have nailed a  message on the main 
door of their main mosque - "you do it again, we'll do it  again".
 
Instead the mission to take out training camps has morphed into "nation  
building" - and I understand that neocons are firmly against "nation building"  
but that they really want to build a nation; you figure out the difference, they 
 haven't.  They want free capital markets in Afghanistan as evidenced by  
Starbucks franchises on every corner, and every other air head concept that  
floats through jr's fevered brain.  The mission is done, we should be out  and we 
should have no responsibility to rebuild Afghanistan whatsoever - they  hit 
us, we smacked 'em down.
 
And of course the Taliban, or whoever, could again host terrorist  activities 
from Afghanistan, in which case we could smack 'em down again.   It's a lot 
cheaper, cleaner (less lives lost), and easier to smack 'em down when  they get 
out of line than it is to occupy and develop a country that doesn't  wasn't 
to be occupied or developed.  We see that in the body count every  day, and we 
see it periodically in the budget requests.  Afghanistan can  turn into the 
same swamp that Iraq is - if we let it.  And of course, in  the best neocon 
tradition, we are letting it.
 
We should have been out of there a long time ago.  JMO.
 
Dave