I do understand where your coming from, but if I have to choose between leaving an American influence in an area on for the next thousand years or America existing for the next three hundred years I'm going to pick the latter.

Some conquests, good or mis intentioned are just not fiscally and emotionally sustainable.

I'm also not suggesting that THIS one conflict will destroy us, but it has divided folks along with a host of other home grown issues, and we wouldn't be able to afford the next twenty years or so it would take to un fuck things.

That is a separate argument.

At the outset of the war Bush announced that the war would cost $50 to $60 billion.

his own first financial adviser said it would be $100 to $200M and was ousted by Bush for saying so.

this is not secret, it was in the newspapers

you know everything in the whole wide world...

about name calling and sneering

kudos

works good for you, stick with it

the turkey is happier if he doesn't know about the thanksgiving day feast


we live in  pretend society

the liberals pretend that big government and welfare works great

the "conservatives" pretend that we have a capitalist economy and that the iraq war was a swell idea

all of it funded by unpayable doomsday debt


To me it's like looking at a car wreck with fire leaping up out of the smashed cars and blood trickling down the gutter

and some guy calling me a traitor or a racist because I refuse to see the wreckage as a huge success

after the battle of the Alamo, the commanding mexican general was congratulated on his victory

He said, "If we have another victory like this one we will be destroyed."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

Wow.

I just asked what you would do.

I don't necessarily disagree with you about the debt...the problem is that inaction IS a decision. Choices must be made. Unless you believe that 9/11 was Karl Rove's Reichstag Fire, the greater world does affect us.

Exactly the American civilian population does not have a fraction of the intestinal fortitude that our Enemies population has...

If there is a zero sum game in the international relations field, its the "will to power" analysis.

Are the civilians in this country that unworthy of any sacrifice? Have we pissed away our youth on cur? Or is it just a tiny segment of GD? Have we pissed away our youth on cur?

Edited to read bettererly

Arfcom GD laughs at people who ring up a $150K debt to get a master's in modern art and then end up working at starbucks

It's not a criticism of art, its a criticism of tunnel vision.  The knowledge gained is not worth the life-ruining debt.  Not even close.


But anyone who questions this nation building swindle is considered to be a traitor

Explain that

You seem too smart to not be able to understand the ruinous cost of what we did.

That's forgetting about the human cost and the fact that changing a stone age culture into a modern nation is an impossible mission for the military  


To answer your question: I'm a structural engineer.