[jt1]

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That's all you get cause WWII is off topic. And despite your caveat, you then went on and spouted the terrorists' rationale.

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Wrong! 1) History is never off topic and 2) understanding your enemy is one of the fundamental principles to competition.

FACTS AND CONTEXT ARE PREREQUISITES FOR SUCCESS. I am sorry if that offends you.

But let me throw another angle at you. After Afghanistan , The War on Terror need not be fought militarily. We can continue to support Israel and honor our other Mutual Protection Pacts with South Korea and Taiwan while " increasing the stakes and most importantly, inducing our enemies to go too far with their hand. " How? By spending the 200 Billion already spent in strengthing the Democracies already in the region. Algeria, Morrocco, Turkey, Afghanistan, and I think Bhrain??. Imagine that those 5 countries are first world stable democracies and compare that scenario with the current model which would have the region at 6 third world struggling democracies.

Now think of how the moslems would think of us then and compare to how they think of us now. Our biggest allies are first world democratic nations, the envy of the entire region, and their neighbors are still poor and authoritarian. The terrorists are doing everything they can to destablize these prosperous and democratic countries including killing innocent moslems, " prompting a backlash that will doom them, especially if their flow of financial backing is also imperilled, which seems likely. So our enemies will be forced to drop down in stakes and most likely won't be able to rebuild their roll, either financially or most importantly in good will in the Islamic world."


Man I'm good!!! Now after 9/11 we had 5 choices. Of course, the choices weren't presented so coherently, because, our leaders, both Democratic and Republicans as well as the media, are generally dumber than intellectuals like me and many of us on this forum, possibly including you BluffThis!. The choices were,

1)Withdraw from the UN Security Council, gradually bringing our troops back home and annulling our mutual protection pacts.

2)Invade Iran after over throwing the Taliban in Afghanistan.

3) Invade Iraq after overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan.

4) Overthrow the Taliban and initiate the Marshal Plan in the 5 already mentioned Middle Eastern Countries.

5) Overthrow the Taliban in response to 9/11 and then initiate plan 1 on this list.

In a referendum, I'd have voted for plan 5 as option 1 followed by, in order, plan 1, plan 4, plan 3, & plan 2. Invading Iraq was the worst of all of our options.

But after having decided to invade Iraq, we could have, at least, planned for a persistent insurgency.