Quote Originally Posted by tmleadr03 View Post
You can not fight a birth count. Can you tell me with your studying of the area what nation was able to tame, successfully, Afghanistan?

Here is what we have actually done in the middle east. Created a power vacuum. For all his evils, and yes Saddam was an evil dictator, he stabilized the area.

As to what we should have done in Afghanistan? Go in, blow up every training camp we found, kill every terrorist we could find, salt the land and declare victory with a warning to every other nation out there. Harbor people who would attack the US and we will come rape your land and walk away.

Honestly, I don't care if there were WMDs (and I think there were probably some there) we should have let Saddam be. We got rid of him and now we have a power vacuum which all the other nations in the area are wanting to fill. So we are stuck there because as soon as we leave they will fill the void and be more powerful then before.
I know exactly what you're saying, I'm simply stating the reasons we're there and some of the good that comes from fighting there. As far as "taming" the nation, I can name one- themselves. That's the point, by defeating the taliban we weren't trying to conquer Afghanistan (history shows that no one has done this, ever, not even Alexander), we were only trying to liberate them from tyranny- in theory. I agree that we should have kicked their ass and walked away, but we haven't really done that since WWI. Nation building (not a fan because we then become beat cops) has been the name of the game, rebuilding and trying to make friends with our vanquished foes (See: Germany and Japan). It doesn't always work out, but it seems to be policy now. And the devil's advocate answer to the Saddam thing (Again, not disagreeing at all with you, just providing another view point to consider)- you'd be singing a different tune on Iraq if he had used WMDs on someone other than his own people, or sold chemical weapons to Al Qaeda.