I certainly understand your position and I agree that the past nine years have done serious financial damage to the USA which is what Bin Laden set our to accomplish. Lately I've been thinking that a nice stand-off war, to hold them at bay, would be much less expensive and there would be very few casualties, if any. Karzai has had plenty of time to organized a pretty good defence and has done very little. I also think that war for the Afghan tribesmen is like the NFL is to us. It's their sport and they'll keep it going as long as they can.

>I am all for our getting out of the United Nations, Afghanistan, Iraq, Germany, Japan and bringing the troops home. The economic policies of both Bush and Obama are and have been bankrupting our nation. When you see hyper-inflation sometime in the not too far future, you will not be so likely to want to "spread the wealth around" any more. I am saying these thigns as a retired military officer, not as a civilian who does not know anything about the military. I am not a pacifist, but am a right-wing conservative.
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>Cecil
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>>Or an economic crisis this huge, not in our lifetimes anyway. Most economists agree that the actions of the government (under both Bush and Obama) averted a much larger crisis. If anything they think more money should have been poured in as fuel. In my opinion historians will be much kinder than the hysterical ranters of the moment.
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>>What do you think of Obama's Afghanistan strategy announced this week? I think it was making the best of a bad situation. The part I especially liked was letting Afghanistan / Karzai, and Pakistan as well, know we will not go on like this endlessly. If they continue to harbor terrorists, all bets are off. Take terrorists out surgically without worrying about any bruised feelings of sovereignty. Isn't that what Bush said in the first place? He was right. Now it's time to show it's action and not just words.