"It’s circular: we are there to fight the people who are fighting us because we are there."

http://blogs.reuters.com/gregg-easterbrook/2010/07/08/why-we-let-our-young-soldiers-die-in-iraq-and-afghanistan

Why we let our young soldiers die in Iraq and Afghanistan
JUL 8, 2010 10:03 EDT

- snip -

Shameful, too, is the lack of concern for civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq. In most cases, the killing of civilians by U.S. forces in these nations has been by error, not by intent. But to the dead it’s all the same. U.S.-caused civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq are barely mentioned in American political debate . The civilians being killed by Western forces in these nations are anonymous members of strange societies that America doesn’t like, so America doesn’t care about them. Small wonder, especially in Afghanistan, that no matter how many bad guys our side kills, the following day there are more.

- snip -

Officially the continuing U.S. presence is to stabilize the country – the real reason we stay is to postpone the sectarian bloodbath that may occur when the United States withdraws. Yet U.S. departure has always been inevitable. Whatever is going to happen in Iraq when the United States leaves, will happen when the United States leaves. Postponing that moment only raises the death toll.

In Afghanistan, U.S. forces are now staging a “counter-insurgency” campaign. What are the insurgents doing? Resisting our occupation. It’s circular: we are there to fight the people who are fighting us because we are there. The Afghanistan government may be the most corrupt on Earth; that U.S. soldiers are dying to defend a corrupt government is a horror. If we left Afghanistan, would the Taliban take over? Perhaps, and that would be a dark day.

- snip -

Senator McCain, a Vietnam veteran, knows his generation of warriors was denied its victory parade through Times Square, and other forms of recognition — there was never a moment when the Vietnam War was won, and the tickertape fell. But United States forces could have fought in Vietnam for many years more and that war never would have been “won.” That was not the fault of those who served in Vietnam, it was just the reality. What was happening in Vietnam was fundamentally political, and military organizations cannot solve political problems.

- snip -

On the day he died, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was polishing a speech he planned to deliver that week. The speech contained this remarkable line: “More than an end to war, we want… an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method” of settling differences. The key word in Roosevelt’s speech is impractical...

and pushing us to more and more fighting. If we continue these tactics it will eventually result in our destruction. We will have to devote more and more resources as we create more and more enemies.

What's the chance that two former superpowers would crash their ships-of-state on the rocky crags of such an out of the way place. The news of the sinking of the "unsinkable" ship hadn't reached the successive captains of the Titantic No. 2 (some 20 years later, no less)? It's not credible.

is a difficult task indeed. Why don't those natives just accept our divine rule? :sarcasm:

It does us no service to posit some meta-physical reasoning for this addiction to blood-letting when the stacks of bills are on the table for all to see.