Do you think we should withdraw combat troops from Afghanistan and leave training forces there?

George Bush was an idiot and had no idea what he was doing. So he let Cheney tell him what to do, and Cheney was worse than an idiot—he was an ideological idiot. They live in the times when war meant killing people. Kill enough, and you win. They did not understand the nuanced world of today where you can’t just kill everyone in sight and expect to win anything meaningful.

Bush declared war on a matter that should have been taken care of with a police action and diplomacy. Like I said. Bush was an idiot.

Our troops are serving no constructive purpose in Afghanistan and they should be brought home. We don’t need to leave “training” forces there either. That’s just a bunch of CIA troops and as you say, they are asking for trouble.

What we need is a whole new kind of service that can win hearts and minds. These troops need to be trained in culture, psychology and economy. They need to be able to work with and gain the trust of people. These troops don’t exist and will never exist so forget that idea. Just pull everyone out. Let the NGOs do the job.

Oh. And legalize heroin. That will take care of the biggest issue economically speaking, in Afghanistan. Afghanistan could have a legal trade, and prices would drop significantly, and they’d have to start turning to other things to make money. As long as we aren’t worried about the poppy crop, it seems to me Afghanistan isn’t going to hurt us for the most part.

They probably would still be a haven for terrorists, but as I said, that needs to be taken care of with police actions, not with an invasion. Drones and CIA raids should be sufficient to keep the terrorist activity to a minimum.

I am from the old school anti-war hippie generation. I don’t think we should be fighting in foreign countries. And apparently we don’t have the balls to go in and obliterate other countries who attack us, either, so we just continue playing these footsie games with hostile countries.

I would like to see us not get involved in foreign wars at all, but conserve our energy, men and equipment for the event that some other country threatens or attacks us. Then we should blow them off the face of the earth, and then go back to minding our own business.

What’s this we?

I, for one, don’t have any combat troops in Afghanistan.

I don’t even know where to acquire combat troops.

With no disrespect meant to other jellies. We truly do not know or juggle all the intelligence (data, not necessarily intellect) the responsibilities, and the information that the people in office do. No matter how up to the minute the reporting on the news network of your choice is, the fact of the matter is that only a few have access, and so only a few carry the weight of making the decisions.

Our every attempt to guess what factors are at play in Afghanistan, for instance, what really got us there, what will really get us out, etc. are only frustrated attempts to realize and express that we dont know these truths.

I have been to Afghanistan, I have sat at the table with Generals as they decided what to do, where to go, based on the latest intelligence. They captured and killed a lot of terrorists, but really they are basically chasing their tales the same as the rest of us, waiting for the order to come home.

Money is definitely a factor, presidential election is as well, a military that wants to be put to the test is another. For these few theories we can form, there is a layer of information that we can’t even guess at with our theories. I don’t have access to the information, but logic dictates it is there.

I think our economy is more dependent on this war than most people realize. I think that is why the President is scaling back after this next election year. Talk about recession? Wait till the hundreds of contractors come back to a $40K/year job, which paid $120K/year in Afghanistan! There is a ripple effect that I am not going to insult the intelligence of other jellies by tracking.

Bush had his weaknesses, but he knew that War has always been good for American economy. It isn’t about killing people, it is about money….if the economy is doing good, then everything else falls into place…in a broken, sleight of hand sort of way.

I would like to see the troops come home from 12 years of war abroad. I am a troop for goodness sakes. I just hope the government will be able to survive it.

Sorry @noraasnave , but I don’t think you know much about the economics of war. Ending the war will be a huge boom for the US. Already we are seeing the impact of the the end of our engagement in Iraq. The economy is really starting to turn around now. There are so many reasons for this. But one is that the govt no longer has to waste so much money on war, and it can either reduce spending or reduce borrowing or spend more on domestic programs or stimulating the economy, and on and on. Not to mention the multiplier effect for peace spending is so much higher than that for war spending.

If you look at the Bush recession and say that war was good for the economy, I don’t know what to say. But it is hard to see how you could draw that conclusion unless you have some kind of voodoo economics going on.

Economic concerns dictate that we end the war now. But history dictates otherwise. We can’t just abandon the effort without losing a lot of clout in the world. Now I think that doesn’t matter, but other people don’t agree and they are the ones in power.

As to sitting at the table with generals—that’s all well and good. But unless I hear those conversations, I’m not going to trust anyone else’s word that they were smart. Military folks tend to be trained to think one way, and that way isn’t usually good for anything except waging war, and it’s not always very good at that, either.

@wundayatta Thanks for a thoughtful answer.

@Skaggfacemutt Well, to be fair, we were attacked by people based in Afghanistan and the Taliban government in power there at the time insisted they would continue, despite the attack, to offer Al Qaeda safe haven. That said, we could have taken out Al Qaeda without a 10 year land war.

@HungryGuy Ha! Nor do I now how to acquire my own combat troops.

@noraasnave First, thanks for your service. My son got back from his first Afghan tour this fall.

No, gloves off. War good for the economy? You could have fooled me. Bush inherited the largest budget surplus in history and took over a nation that had just enjoyed an unprecedented spurt of prosperity and job growth with no war. Bush got us into two wars, racked up the worst job creation record since the Herbert Hoover administration, and not only blew through the budget surplus he inherited but managed to double the national debt, to say nothing of driving the economy over the brink into the worst downturn since the Great Depression. If that’s a good economy, I’d sure hate to live through a bad one.

I take your point on intelligence. But I’m with @wundayatta on this. Having lived through the Vietnam era and seen the farcical results the “intelligence” yielded there, I reserve the right to form an opinion without having a CIA briefing.

@ETpro I agree wholeheartedly. Of course we should defend ourselves, but we don’t go over to fight anymore. We play these politically-correct games and instead of getting the job done, we turn it into a 10 year land war. That is exactly what I am talking about.

@Skaggfacemutt Then amen!