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Originally Posted by Martina
I know that most Muslims do not hate Americans. But I do think we have a very questionable history in the regions -- North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. There are reasons that some ordinary people support Al Qaeda and other extremist organizations.
I want us out of Iraq and Afghanistan. I understand that Al-Qaeda has infiltrated -- deliberately -- the Afghan police force, and that the murders of U.S. service men and women are not an expression of Afghan popular sentiment. I also respect the efforts of Afghani civil servants to re-vet police and armed service recruits. I KNOW that there are efforts being made on the part of Afghan nationals, Egyptian nationals and others to keep citizens of other nations safe.
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My son's last overseas term, before he got out of the Army, was in Afghanistan. It will be a good day when we leave that nation. I once read that Afghanistan is where imperial powers go to learn humility. I hope our foreign policy elites are more circumscribed after our experiences there. I supported the invasion of Afghanistan because they harbored people who attacked us instead of turning them over. I did not support our decade long occupation of that nation and I am convinced that the Iraq war will go down as one of the truly spectacular blunders of foreign policy ever.
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NEVERTHELESS, I am tired of hearing of the senseless deaths. And I truly think they are senseless. I no longer think that U.S. influence in Afghanistan is salutary in any respect. It's time to go.
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Past time. We should have gone in on '01, found Bin Laden and his followers, captured or killed them, and then left. Instead we did the stupid thing.
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I am happy that both Obama and Romney have agreed to the 2014 deadline. It can't be too soon as far as I am concerned.
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Given that the GOP has gone insane and Romney's general fecklessness I don't know that he would abide by the 2014 timeline. Keep in mind that his party has gone *so* insane that they disagreed with the 2011 timeline Bush the Younger negotiated with the Maliki government in Iraq. I mean, there are GOP foreign policy hacks who are saying that SOFA (Status Of Forces Agreement) or no SOFA we should have stayed in Iraq. That this would be an act of aggressive war appears to make no difference to them. Since the Afghanistan SOFA requires us to leave in 2014 I fear that a Romney presidency (which, blessedly, I think is safely in the improbable column) could see us trying to hang on when we no longer have any buy-in from the local government for us to stay.
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Re Libya, of course we should continue to have a diplomatic presence there. Also in Egypt and Yemen. But we need to provide better security for our people. When the risk is too great, we need to pull them out, as we have in the past in a number of different circumstances.
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Agreed. I think we have a window of opportunity with Libya and, quite honestly, I'm rather pleased with how Obama has handled Egypt. Instead of doing the normal thing and propping up Mubarak, he recognized it was time to make good our claims to care about democracy and that it was time for the dictator to go. Then, when the Egyptian people did what anyone familiar with the region might have predicted and voted in a populist government in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood, instead of saying that the election was rigged because we didn't like the outcome, simply said that the Egyptian people had made their choice. That was the harder tack. I know that he has taken heat for that but really, that's how it works. Democracy is responsiveness to the popular will and if that popular will brings forth a government that is antithetical to our values or has geopolitical interests that conflict with ours, so be it.
Cheers
Aj