Looking back in hindsight, what would you have done after 9/11?

I only hope Afghanistan isn't precedent, I'm glad the Taliban is (somewhat) out of power, but we need a strategy for all of AQ. We can't simply invade Somalia and Yemen in an attempt to quash an international organizatio.

 

I admit, I'm not sure what my initial reaction would have been. At the time, I thought Bush should have sat down with the Taliban government, demanded the capture of OBL and then asked how they would help us accomplish this. It wouldn't have needed to been a long, dragged-out process - it could have been done within a couple weeks - and if the Taliban tried to delay, then he could have gone ahead with the "invasion."

Bush should have had similar conversations with the Saudi Arabian government - "what are you going to do about the fact that Islamic schools in your country are churning out violent radicals?" should have been answered. But Saudi Arabia seemed to get a pass - probably because of our oil needs.

We should have never invaded Iraq before resolving the Afghanistan situation. This was a case where the neocon sociopaths (Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz) used American ignorance of the Middle East and the President's own vendetta against Saddam Hussein (due to the assassination plot against his father) to launch their long desired attack on a mostly impotent enemy.

One thing I can say without hesitation is that I would have stopped Rumsfeld from closing the Peacekeeping Institute at the Army War College once we had invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq. This was the one entity in the military that actually considered what it would take to successfully occupy a country. I have no doubt this decision was largely due to Bush's public distaste for "nation building," yet 10 years later, it would seem that nation-building was exactly what we tried to do. So many of the later mistakes - initially refusing NATO assistance in occupying Afghanistan, sending inadequate manpower, cutting agricultural aid to the Afghans, supporting the warlords even after the new central government was established - would likely have been avoided had this not occurred.

And who can forget Rumsfeld's snarky "You go to war with the army you have," which he said when was becoming clear our newly reorganized quick-strike style military was poorly equipped to handle a slow, drawn-out occupation? The whole thing smelled like (to use an example from my own life) a crazy HR director who hires some new employees to be generalists, then mostly assigns them administrative assistant duties and b****es about them not meeting expectations. It's a recipe for disaster, and it's only because McCain and other demanded a "surge" that the whole thing didn't completely fail.

 

This

Not so simple after all.

 

One other thing you have to take into account, this was the first major attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor. After something like this, the public doesn't want a long winded explanation about how you're fight a multinational and complex financed organizition, they want to hear that we're going to war to avenge those deaths, anything short of an invasion would have massive public outcry.

 

Can't rep you, but agree.

 

I might have informed those 100000 Iraqis that they would be killed by war criminals 2 years after 911.

 

Poll choices are not "in hindsight" choices. They are common sense choices.

In hindsight, I should have invested a substantial amount in Halliburton stocks and then should have sold it couple of years later for 4 times as much.

 

Nuke Saudi Arabia?



DD

 

Biggest thing we could have done besides obviously not invading iraq would have been to push an immediate peace deal for the middle east. U.s. had the knout at that moment in history to bend the world anyway whatsoever. We could have said, enough with this stuff. No more joking around. End it.

We could have completely isolated Iran. We could have gotten anything passed in the u.n. that was about isolating and preventing violence.

Instead we lost all credibility by giving our middle finger to the world and just going our own arrogant way.

We took a terrible tradegy and made it worse when we had an opportunity to truly unite the world behind a greater vision. To me this is the single biggest failure of Bush.

 

Just like then I know I wouldnt be listening to chickenhawks like kagy(ahem administrator) treeman giddyup hydra refman ,tj, and even our beloved DD

call it coincidence that we don't hear from them here save space ghost(who doesnt count) and DD..DD is content enough to hope a billion posts covers up the truth

they got what they wanted thousands of US troops dead.. and to think we didn't even get any of the oil these clutchcity bbs fearmongers were hoping for. The coordinated agenda displayed here on this very bbs is the sickest thing I have ever seen EVER.

guys like treeman and kagy spreading fear are as much to blame as anyone else. the blood is on their hands..http://www.iraqbodycount.org/




The fact that they were so damn righteous about it pisses me off as much as the fact that they were completely WRONG AND DISGUSTING

a quick search reveals (and sickly reminds me) some examples of classic fearmongering from the time:
http://rafer.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=38811
http://bbs.clutchcity.net/showthread.php?t=47982&page=3
http://rafer.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=23892
http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=15467
http://bbs.clutchcity.net/showthread.php?t=62756
http://bbs.clutchfans.net/archive/index.php/t-15467.html

sad part is you think cheney and co would actually SHARE any of their spoils with the loyal soldiers like kagy refman etc? BWAWAAAHAHHA
hold on a second while I gag cry and laugh all at the same time.SICK

hope it was worth it sickos..hope you got paid although I STRONGLY doubt it.

 

If it lets me, I'll rep you right after I reply. This is your best post yet.

We can't kill every person that hates us especially when we ourselves keep making more people hate us. And I'm not talking about them hating our freedoms -- I'm talking about them hating that we brutally killed their mother, say, or their sister or their baby boy. And for no good reason.

But we absolutely could say look, we're for democracy and this is why we think democracy is good. We don't want to prevent you practicing your religion; we are all for free practice of religion. We do have different values but we respect your values and we hope you can respect ours. Also, if you attack us, we will find out your name and we will obliterate you. We have the best spies and we have the best resources so we can find you, and we have the best weapons and military so we can obliterate you. But we don't want to do that. We want to be friends. Meanwhile we're going to go obliterate this handful of people that actually attacked us. We know their names and we know where most of them are. We will find the rest. We know non-crazy Muslims don't support killing innocents so we expect you will help us if you can.

After 9/11 that would have just worked. Now I still think it would be an effective approach. Bombing isn't.

 

Yes but what the public want might not be what is best for the country/world. It is the presidents job to do what is best for the country, not what wins him the next election (altough unfortunatly politicians do not understand this).

 

arno_ed: Think you could add the Netherlands' greatest rocker Herman Brood to your sig? It would make me rep you every time I saw it.

 

No problem, it is always good when people actually know about Dutch people:grin:

 

I feel that moment has passed. In nov 2001, we could have said....Israel Palestine- put a peace deal on the table in 3 months or the u.s. completely withdraws. No one would have accused us of anti semetism. People would get it. The failure to make peace there indirectly has horrific consequences to us. The American public and the world...including Israeli citizens would have backed that 100 percent. Bush had a 90 percent approval rating. americans were looking for something transformative. We could have forced a two state solution at that moment. That would be a far greater achievement than invading Iraq and ousting sad dam.

We could have gotten china and Russia behind us to isolate n. Korea and Iran. To have them give up arms. We could have pressured the middle east to begin enacting democratic reforms and truly started to win the hearts and minds of Muslims...moderate Muslims.

It was a rare moment in history where the world was united. It was totally squandered and it angers me to this day to know good kind people who lost their lives in 9/11 and their deaths were used to accomplish ignoble goals.

We

 

There are very few people who would do what is best for country or world if it doesn't align with his self interest.

 

I know, that is the main weakness of a democracy.

 

Not saying I agree, just saying what public sentiment was.

There are reasons why I'm not totally convinced democracy works.

 

anybody confused how a dude who registered a little over 2 years ago knows names/arguments from what must have been 5+ years ago? or is this a renamed account?

 

it's not unique to democracy . And possibly more prevalent in non democratic societies.