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Mon 21 Jul, 2008 03:43 pm
to Afghanistan? How long do you think we will be there? I reluctantly supported going to war there, but, is it worth staying another hundred years?
Re: Are we just moving the neverending war
edgarblythe wrote:to Afghanistan? How long do you think we will be there? I reluctantly supported going to war there, but, is it worth staying another hundred years?
If that's what Obama wants, that's what Obama gets.
edgar - at least it was where 9/11 REALLY led us in the first place. At least crushing the taliban once and for all, and killing or capturing bin Laden would make a little sense. The war in Iraq doesn't make any goddam sense.
If the people we are fighting enjoy safe havens for 100 years, are we going to sit there that long?
I was against our supporting the Mujahadeen way back when and I look at all this mishugas as eyecrossingly sticking our big feet into century old complexity. If Omama makes it a choice, which I gather he does, it just seems an added bead to the stupid chain, to me.
Should we go after bin Laden? Should we try to finish what we started in Afghanistan (and Pakistan, if need be)?
There will always be fighters and terrorists from that area that do not like us. If we cannot conclude the war definitively in the next president's term, it is time, in my opinion to set up options: surveilance, counter tactics - But not a major military presence infinitum.
Sorry for the intrusion of philosophy, but there are those that believe that there is never peace. Peace is just a lull between wars when a country can get ready for the next war. Connecting all the wars into the concept of a "never ending war" might be too much reality for many people. It might though be the way we humans work?
I have no illusions about the state of war in human endeavor. A substantial number of people can envision no solutions other than destruction and death. Such aggressive personalities too often fight their way to leadership positions and drag even the otherwise unwilling into their scenarios of perpetual war. That there could be statesmanship and reason rarely occurs to such people, except as tools of their aggression. I have yet to see a war that could not have been settled by persons of reason in the incipient stages. Bouncing from WWII to Korea to Vietnam, with all the struggles in between, up to and including the two Iraq wars, just within my lifetime bears out Bob Dylan's statement, "I am not going to work for peace, anymore. There isn't going to be any peace." Is that reason to not look to depose the jingoists? All the more reason to promote the men of peace, I say.
edgarblythe wrote:I have no illusions about the state of war in human endeavor. A substantial number of people can envision no solutions other than destruction and death. Such aggressive personalities too often fight their way to leadership positions and drag even the otherwise unwilling into their scenarios of perpetual war. That there could be statesmanship and reason rarely occurs to such people, except as tools of their aggression. I have yet to see a war that could not have been settled by persons of reason in the incipient stages. Bouncing from WWII to Korea to Vietnam, with all the struggles in between, up to and including the two Iraq wars, just within my lifetime bears out Bob Dylan's statement, "I am not going to work for peace, anymore. There isn't going to be any peace." Is that reason to not look to depose the jingoists? All the more reason to promote the men of peace, I say.
I do not believe individuals can make a difference. I believe peace is a self-correcting paradigm that corrects itself to war.
Speaking of war, can I assume you have read Catch-22 by Joseph Heller?
Of course. Way better than the movie.
snood wrote:Should we go after bin Laden? Should we try to finish what we started in Afghanistan (and Pakistan, if need be)?
This is hard to answer. I'm way against the plods of my country's big feet over some of the decades of my life, but not entirely antiwar.. just mostly as war is practiced. (We've got weapons today, oh boy...).
I'm more for changes that don't just call in obliteration from each and any side, and not for all the routine of going for those first. Which.. only engages defense.
I've read Catch 22 and books that go the other route.
I don't believe we have to have wars to be human. Just as women's role in society has changed drastically, so the role of jingoists can be altered. There is no fairy tale way to accomplish that, but it has to be done.
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