Well, first off, you ignored Major's post again. You should read it. It flatly puts the lie to your various posts here suggesting Obama wants to "invade" Pakistan. You really shouldn't find any of this bizarre since it couldn't be more simple. I have opposed the Iraq war from the start. I have supported the war in Afghanistan from the start. Why? Because the people who attacked us were in Afghanistan, not Iraq. This position wasn't born of some kind of Obama love as you so dishonestly suggest. It's always been my position -- it was my position before Obama was even a senator, let alone running for president -- and the position of the vast majority of people who opposed the stupid debacle in Iraq. I'm for going after the people who attacked us instead of the people who didn't. If you find that bizarre, I don't know what to tell you. Now read Major's post and explain where you disagree with Obama's position on Pakistan.
Because I'm wrong. The objective is greater security in Eastern Afghanistan. I should say no plan to achieve the objective. The idea is to copy the Baghdad surge plan which covered a few neighborhoods, and implement it in the mountains of Eastern Afghanistan with (right now) 1/4 the troops. Let Lame Ducks Lie.
That's a good start. You've just got about three more of those to go in this thread and then you'll be all caught up.
That entire post is incredibly ironic coming from a supporter of the Iraq war. Whether it's Osama's head on a stake or his hands in cuffs, I couldn't disagree more strongly with you that it would be worth some small strife to bring the 9/11 mastermind to justice. Again, we are not talking about invading Pakistan as you keep wrongly suggesting. We're talking about employing a surgical strike to bring the person that killed thousands of American civilians to justice. And, even then, we're only talking about doing that if Pakistan refuses to do it themselves. I don't care how insecure our alliance is. No country gets to harbor a US enemy of this magnitude without us doing something about it. If there's a better justification for launching a military strike I don't know what it is. And if you want to talk bizarre, consider the fact that the same people who are now so opposed to going after US enemy #1 were for invading and occupying Iraq. Maybe I'm naive but I would think that one of the best ways to prevent another catastrophic attack on US soil would be to do whatever we can to get the guy who pulled off the last one. I am flabbergasted that there is even a single American who feels otherwise.
I've read the whole thing, multiple times. Obama has called for invasions, and Bush has done them. Invasion does not imply intent to conquer. If you enter a sovereign country's territory without their permission, you have invaded. If the Del Rio police cross the Rio Grande to take out a gang leader, that is an invasion. It's well-defined in international law, and considered an act of war. So far, Pakistan's objections have been minor, and I hope they stay that way. Just because the war was justified, and it was, doesn't mean that any action within that war is justified. Committing acts of war against an ally is not justified in my mind. Is your position that you would go after Al Qaeda (on "actionable intelligence"), even if it meant undermining our least stable ally in the Middle East? That's Obama's position.
I never supported the Iraq War. The closest I've come to support is when I said that if we were to stay in Iraq, the surge was necessary.
Yes, that is my position. If they know where Bin Laden is and refuse to act -- and refuse to grant us permission to act -- they are not our ally. And, by the way, I'd love it if you'd take back that crack about Democrats only feeling this way because it's Obama's position. It was my position before Obama even became a senator and I pointed out a couple posts ago that it has always been my position (and that of most anti-Iraq war posters here) to do whatever we can to bring Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda to justice. Ascribing that to blind partisanship is really insulting when there are years of posts here, searchable if you like, that prove that to be wrong.
I apologize for accusing you of blind partisanship. To be fair, I might would have agreed with you about action against Al Qaeda in Pakistan back in 2003-04. We had a window there where we had the kind of support in the civilized portion of the Islamic War that we could have gotten by with it. The Pakistani people wouldn't have been too upset if we attacked Al Q in Afghanistan. We squandered that potential in Iraq. We can't get it back, and now the risk of disaster far outweighs the potential reward of vengeance.
Thanks. I'm especially sensitive to that charge with all the BS talk of Kool Aid and Messiahs and whatnot. Especially since it's not true. I agree with you that we squandered a great lot of good will in Iraq. And I think it's a reasonable position that the risk of disaster outweighs the reward, though I disagree with it. If the reward were simply vengeance, I'd be inclined to agree, but it isn't. And I repeat that I think the best step to take in avoiding another 9/11 attack would be to take away the freedom of the person who perpetrated the last one. I also think that you overestimate the effect of a strike against Al Qaeda on our relations with Pakistan. I agree that our alliance is unstable, but I believe it will be more so under a president so committed to diplomacy, as I expect our relations to be with all countries, allies or not. But even now, under the same policies enacted by a US president that is universally scorned around the world and that has earned the extreme ire of our enemies and allies alike, we have not payed a price for striking at our enemies in Pakistan. What bothers me the most about this argument is how generally disingenuous it is. (I'm not talking about you really, here, as you seem to have a different position than the various politicians who have opposed Obama's position.) McCain, Bush, Hillary, Biden, etc. all characterized it as going to war with Pakistan when we all know that "war" would be an unlikely result (except through the strict semantics you employed earlier). The argument is used to make Obama look somehow rash or as though he lacked sound foreign policy judgement, when every one of them in fact holds the same position. Every one of them would take action against Osama Bin Laden if they knew exactly where he was and Pakistan failed to act. You are an exception as you take a relatively extreme isolationist position here. But McCain isn't and doesn't. He's just trying to score cheap points as he is in pretty much every arena now.
You are just too naive to be taken seriously on this topic, if this is how you truly think. This is just ignorance on display, folks. Pure ignorance. To disregard the instability in the region that Saddam created is just foolish. To think that the situation there would have worked itself out in our favor by "trusting a tyrant" (the libs' strategy), then you are beyond hopelessly naive. Saddam was rebelling against the US. He had WMD, we know that because he'd freaking used them already. No one in their right mind would have 'trusted the tyrant' to keep our families safe in the US. Our national security interest is furthered by having a strategic interest in the Middle East. Did you see the upheaval in this country with $4.00 gasoline? If a multi-national war breaks out in the Middle East, you'll be putting $8.00 gas in your VW Microbus, libs. With the US in Iraq and other spots in the ME, the region is more stable, and we can react with greater agility to Al Qaeda or other terrorist activity. Again, when you reduce the critical thinking down to such intellectually dishonest headlines as Batman did, then you abandon all reasoning and are just lying to yourself. There is no easy way out libs, despite your ignorant fantasies. A responsible person must weigh the consequences of leaving the region and be prepared to deal with the aftermath. Finishing the job there, so we don't have to go back, is the only prudent way to approach this.
Hey, I want my apology as well! I was saying before the invasion that it would be wrong to do it, an incredible mistake, that we didn't and couldn't know what the repercussions might be, trotting out the old saw about "wars have unintended consequences" more than once, and said that we should concentrate on Afghanistan, a very difficult nut to crack, regardless of the relative ease with which the Taliban were routed, because history tells us that occupiers do not fair well there, regardless of any advantages in technology they might possess. They do not fair well there at all. Our window to create a "stable, effective, pro-western government" before we were tossed out, which is inevitable, was small indeed. Frankly, I think that window may have closed and history will point at Afghanistan as a success turned into a failure by George W. Bush. Iraq, in contrast, was not needed, went against UN resolutions, was sold to America and the world with a pack of lies, and will be seen as a failure that never had a hope of success. Afghanistan was Bush's one foreign policy success. It's more than a pity that he tossed that success away with his mad adventure in Iraq. Impeach Bush.
By what measure is the ME more stable with the US in Iraq? Gas is twice what it was before we went into Iraq. Many tens of thousands of people, mostly innocent civilians, are dead. Refugees have fled Iraq like it's the Titanic. Iran is training and funding terrorists and militias within Iraq. Al-Qaeda has gained propaganda points with the Abu Ghraib fiasco, the world no longer trusts anything the US says with regard to intelligence information, we'll have spent trillions of dollars in Iraq that could have been better spent elsewhere, and oh by the way Afghanistan is on the verge of going down the drain because we took our eye off of it. Other than all of that, things are much more stable. Only in your upside down, out of touch world does having 100k+ US troops stuck in Iraq constitute a greater agility to contain Al-Qaeda.
If you are acting in your nation's self defense then under national law, it is permissible to use military force. Going after Al-Qaeda leadership would certainly be acting in our nation's self defense. Furthermore eradicating al-Qaeda's leadership is of greater benefit than preserving the alliance of a Pakistan that won't go after it on their own given actionable intel. Pakistan isn't anything to brag about as far as allies go.
It's also much of the world's position, as well as the majority of Americans' opinions. Virtually the entire world was OK with and/or supportive (either politically or militarily) of action against Afghanistan, as that was where the terrorists were. Very little of the world was supportive of invading Iraq, because even if they did have WMD, they were not involved in an attack on another nation.
How do you plan to knock out the wasp's nest if you give them a stated area where they are free from any and all danger? The key to defeating a terrorist network is to ensure they don't have a central planning place and basically weaken due to lack of coordination and organizational structure - and the way they centralize planning/training is to have free reign in a lawless area (as Afghanistan was). That's one reason that the initial Afghan invasion was so effective at weakening Al Queda until they were able to reorganize in Pakistan. And benefit does Pakistan provide as an ally if they do not crack down on terrorism and are willing to provide a safe-haven?
