yup.

Pretty amazing infographics (courtesy of 'doks favorite ZeroHedge)

http://demonocracy.info//infographics/usa/cost_of_war/cost_of_war.html

'Sweet spot' for action identified as September-October
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/fe ... ary-action

we're still at war, folks:

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- An American soldier left his base in Afghanistan and went from house to house in two villages, killing 16 people in their homes, Afghan officials told CNN Sunday.

The dead include nine children and three women, plus five wounded, President Hamid Karzai said.


http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/11/world ... ?hpt=hp_t1

i just read that elsewhere, things are going well.

Burning books....killing civilians.....its time to get out of there

i blame wikileaks.

Or maybe this is just a good start.

Everyday I wonder why America is wasting time and soldiers on stabilizing a wasteland filled with cavemen. There are real problems in Africa we could be solving but instead we refuse to "lose face" and leave the world's shit hole.

oh the irony

Yeah, he should have strapped a bomb to them like the locals.

yes, because they're all terrorists

I think the war there has made thousands on both sides far more violent and mentally unstable then they would have been otherwise, so yeah, I think a lot of them are terrorists now, both 'Merican and Afghan.

that was fair enough

i'm failing to see it.

this statement is saying the american soldiers are cavemen?

yeah, i don't think this war's doing anyone much good anymore. not that the alternative isn't really bad too.

yeah, that's horrible and all, but its still going on in numerous other places... i'm really curious why this became a war against the taliban. we were after al qaeda, that should have been the only objective... and it would have fit our deployment numbers much better. not to mention, a smaller impact on the region (Afghanistan/Pakistan) might have made us some friends.

I really can't fault targeting the Taliban initially. They were harboring al-Qaeda, and it didn't make a lot of sense to risk them doing that again in the future. Now, the Taliban of a decade later is a different story. They've seen what happens if they let terrorists operate on their soil. Getting invaded, overthrown, and killed a lot might have changed their calculus by now. We should have deployed a larger force initially if we were going to try to do the whole 'overthrow the gov and set up a strong, new one' thing, but the Bush admin wasn't really into COIN until after re-election. Rumsfeld thought we could do everything with limited numbers, precision strikes, etc. (all that seemed adequate once they accepted the implicit 'they'll accept us' assumption, at least in Iraq).

was their "harboring" any worse (for lack of a better word) than other states/regimes that we've worked w/ (and w/o) to attack al aqaeda?

also, i was hoping you'd bring up Iraq, b/c i've noticed lately (as this massacre has brought Afghanistan into the news again), that whenever people talk about the afghan theater of this war they always end up talking about Iraq and how it impacted the objectives of Afghanistan. i just think it furthers the utter mistake this "war on terror" has been from 9/12 on.