- Joined
- Dec 16, 2011
- Messages
- 74,403
- Reaction score
- 32,640
- Location
- Florida
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Liberal
The Middle East, with it's secular strife, has been a cluster**** for thousands of years. I agree that it may not have been the best of decisions to go in their militarily, however, once 9/11 happened, would couldn't afford to NOT go in there militarily in a substantive way.
The US didn't have a substantive response to our African embassies being bombed prior, and this lack of response begat the 9/11 attack. I shudder to think what a lack of response to 9/11 would have begat.
And you could go further back. Had not the tragedy of Black Hawk down in Somalia never happened, and the subsequent withdraw in the face of the Somali war lord's opposition, the perception of the US being weak may never have been started.
So 20/20 hindsight is always a losing game, and the situation is now what it is. Do we wait for major western countries to fall and / or come into major conflict with ISIS before we intervene? When ISIS's power is greater? Or do we try to preempt and thwart ISIS before they gain too much power? A difficult choice to make.
Fundamental tactics is to not fight on the ground and time of your enemy's choosing, but on the ground and timing of your choosing.
The only thing that gave the perception that we were weak was GW Bush who dropped the ball on Bin Laden and his plot. We even caught one of the hijackers training to fly 2 weeks before 911 and Bush did nothing to warn the airlines. There will always be people who want to hurt us no matter what we do. The key is intelligence that can stop the attacks before they happen. Terrorist thrive on conflict and death, normal people not so much. We can't keep on playing "whack a mole" with the world. It is a very dangerous game.