@izzythepush,
izzythepush wrote:
So much for hearts and minds then, you might as well tell moderate secular Moslems that Al Qaida is right, America is waging a war against Islam, not extremism.
The battle for hearts and minds has been fought and lost...by us. The lives and treasure lost in this effort was horribly wasted.
If there are moderate Muslims, they are the most ineffectual allies we could ever seek. (Although very recent events in Libya -of all places- may suggest a small contingent of moderate Muslims with honor and guts, may actually exist).
It's absurd to expect the US to fight a war in which its only choices are to somehow kill only shadowy enemy combatants who deliberately surround themselves with civilians, or bend over and take terrorist attacks.
When the Iraqis turned on al Qaeda and joined forces with the Americans, it wasn't because they were sickened by extremists supposedly hijacking their religion or in sympathy for the killing of American soldiers who trying to give them schools and navigable roads, it was because the maniacs were feeding on them, and they could rid themselves of them alone.
We should do all we can to avoid killing innocents, and the use of drones does just that, but we should still do all it takes to wipe these bastards off the face of the earth, as long as they present a threat to us.
Meanwhile, I'm all in favor of withdrawing from the region, and removing our infidel stain on their blessed wastelands.
How telling that Lefties are more than willing to paint all of their fellow Americans who are conservative with the pigments of a handful of right-wing nuts, but insist that we appreciate some silent and apparently gelded majority of moderate Muslims despite the tens of thousands we see chanting Death to America on TV.
