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Originally Posted by KevinTheOmnivore
Spare me. "The Arab is at your feet or at your throat," am I right?
I frankly don't care about what you think of muslims and/or Arabs in general. People can hate each other all they like, as long as they do not act upon it, be it through terrorism, financing terrorism, or outright war.
You said we should punish Afghanistan, punish the Taliban, and I guess punish specific members of Al Qaeda. You've utterly failed to explain how doing this would end the problem, or make us any safer, which is what this is really all about, correct?
You and I are in agreement that this ultimately needs to be about American national security. I think your theory on how to attain this is terribly short sighted, and frankly wrong. But I actually have more respect for it, because it at least seems to be founded in a theoretically "realist" approach (this is in fact why I think this is a liberal war, if only the liberals could figure that out).
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You go around expecting this crop of liberals to figure ANYTHING out, and you're going to be waiting a long time. There are no Harry Trumans or George Washingtons waiting in the wings.
As for my theory? It has worked in the past, when dealing with the culture in question. You aren't going to scare a fundamentalist Muslim with death in battle, but he also knows he doesn't get his 70-whatever virgins if he's just squashed like a bug.
Basically, I'd have had a stealth bomber or three over Kabul, etc, by September 12th. Mullah Omar would have been given one (1) chance to hand over Bin Ladin, with a deadline to agree of 5 minutes, and 1 day to actually comply.
Whether he did or not, our point would have been made. If he did, he'd have been forced to back down, losing much face. If he didn't, Kabul would be a glass-bottomed lake, and again, our point would have been made. At least it would have been made much more effectively than our blundering around in Iraq has accomplished.
Kitchener did just fine with this sort of lesson, and he didn't have the weapons we have today.