11 years and trillion bucks later, I don't the American public really gives a shit about those people anymore. Jesus that war went longer than Vietnam. We tried, we did our best for improving freedom and democracy in that landscape, but when the local government that we helped install pulls a Saudi trick of being 75% as theocratically evil as the Taliban and that Karzai regime blames us for everything that goes wrong...fuck it. I'm sorry, but there is charity and then there is pointless blood-letting. Not to mention that same corrupt government wants us out, we can't force a supposed sovereign ally nation to continue deployed inside its borders against its will.

(Fun Fact: Rape victims in Karzai's Afghanistan can escape imprisonment for "adultery" if they marry their rapist. Is another decade going to make a difference with them?)

We went to Afghanistan to kill Bin Laden and "smash" that terrorist network. Through two different administrations, we've accomplished that mission (more or less). Hell come to think of it, how many of us gave up on Bin Laden sleeping with the fishes? I'll be honest, I did.

If Mittens wants to seriously campaign that withdrawal is surrender and that we must sacrifice much more for even more years in Afghanistan, let him. The American people will tell him to go piss off. Americans are tired of war, especially Afghanistan which they believe they've "won." Just think of the kids growing up today who've never known a time when America wasn't at war?



Some are, but with your logic, I should hate that Obama retained Bob Gates as his Secretary of Defense, who held that job under Dubya's last days. Despite the party he belongs to, he's revealed himself to be quite a capable one trying to strategically withdraw from two unpopular wars, and advocate for DADT repeal and responsible Pentagon budget cutitng. (Not to mention he despised this popular Neocon motion of bending over totally for Tel Aviv's demands. And he's goddamn right.)

As for Bin Laden/Bubba, yeah you're right. Not to dismiss that, but remember Richard Clarke's anecdote that the first order of foreign policy business in the Dubya White House once he came in was Iraq. Al Qaeda was irrelevant. Until 9/11. Both administrations fell asleep because of complacency, lazyness, bad luck, all those usual recipe ingredients for a major catastrophe.



I don't think Bush Sr. gets enough credit, surprisingly even after Iraq 2, for choosing not to go after Saddam. Yes Bush's coalition didn't have the political mandate to go and "finish" the job and said coalition wasn't in a hurry to displace Saddam. But Bush Sr. agreed with them for the same reason.

His people were worried that a power-void Iraq would became...well, what happened after we invaded in'03. He was worried that the Shia majority in power would become too friendly to Tehran...which happened. He was worried that we would be bogged down over there in an endless quagmire. Which obviously happened too.



I remember as a kid back in the 90s a popular joke, one which THE WEST WING later retold: Democrats wants to gut the military, but have it fight everywhere, Republicans want to fatten up the military but refuse to use it.

Not true anymore.