All things Middle East related

[That Guy]

wow, there is just soo much wrong with what you've said here.

first, i'm glad you feel like you're the sole arbiter of whether we are or are not at war, but you're wrong. 100% wrong. we are at war and have been since 2001, and that's just facts.

now, when you declare a war against an abstract like terrorism, it's not like declaring a war on a state actor. there's no actual victory condition, which is why it was and still is a bad idea.

2nd you're line of thinking is part of why we're still fooling around aimlessly in the middle east. we can take ground and kill people all day every day, if the population doesn't want us there interfering, it's just inviting more unrest. everything you're talking about has already been done in iraq and it hasn't solved shit. most of that was due to bush/rumsfeld/et al deciding to unemploy the entire iraqi military and every organization involved with running iraq's day to day.

the vacuum was self created and then filled with a very sectarian ex-pat leader that basically did everything he could to destabilize the country.

I agree that you should never start a war without very clear/concise objectives and a viable exit strategy. that's what happens when people without any military leadership or general knowledge thereof are put in charge though. they have a hammer and everything looks like a nail, but dropping US forces in a place doesn't magically make all the ethnic and political divisions on the ground go away. and a foreign military that's conducting night raids and walking around in body armor and carrying automatic rifles isn't the best instrument to use if you want to win hearts and minds.