>Yes Charles
>
>I am serious.
>
>The chosen approach was to attack 1 country who had nothing to do with it and 1 country that was a basket case.
>If we had confined ourselves to Afghanistan and maintained (proper) sanctions against Iraq we would be in a much better place now.
>
>I would not have been against seizing individuals who where identified as involved but I am against bombing the average citizen in their own country with "surgical airstrikes".
Attacking anyone inside of Afghanistan was an act of war, and was intended as exactly that. That is not how you address "a crime".
I think Afghanistan was a case study in doing it right - right up until we caved to Pakistani sensibilities at Tora Bora. The diplomacy that allowed forward staging in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan ( and our being more realistic about Chechnya in exchange) and our causing Mushareff to be more frightened of us than the ISI/Taliban, and the paramilitary component was about as well done as it has ever been done.
Iraq is another matter, and I am more persuadable. I don't mourn Saddam but the whole thing would have been better modelled on Afghanistan than Gulf War I. But then I don't much like large military operations.
But the idea that what happened in NY, PA and Washington (or London or Madrid) was "a crime" is like saying the Luftwaffe violated British airspace in 1940.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
