From: "Los, Ralph" <rlos@EnvestNet.com>
if you gave me an unlimited supply of rockets, and a lot of killing power, I'd point it at Afganistan and say....'Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out
Let me state a couple of things. First of all, a direct attack on DC couldn't be any less a declaration of war. We must respond. We must also respond for NY lest it happen again. There is no question in my mind that we will soon be at war and I am supportive of that effort as the only viable option for keeping my family alive and safe. BUT, keep in mind that the majority of the people in Afghanistan are caught between armed factions in an internal conflict. They are simple farmers, peasents at best, suffering under the oppression of a fundamentalist regime on the left and warlords on the right. "Kill them all and let $DEITY sort them out" is the wrong thing to do, as it will bite us in the butt later. What we *should* do is crush the warlords who would give us the longest term grief in any occupation, decimate the leadership, and then bring in the Corp of Engineers and the Peace Corps to help the peasentry build a functional democracy for themselves. A modernized version of the Marshall Plan is about the only thing we haven't tried, and it would be much more rewarding in the long-term than killing them all. Rinse and repeat.