Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
ah... that selective historical memory again.

Obama called it "Refocusing on the Threat from al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan". Further from the White House: "In addition to the new troops the President has chosen to deploy, the strategy calls for significantly more resources..."

So what I'm saying his decision to stay on and expand operations in Afghanistan had nothing to do with what you allege being: "We had to stay around and try to bring truth, justice, and the American way."

You were wrong.
My comment was a somewhat tongue-in-cheek reference to our prolonged and futile effort to install and sustain an Afghan government that suits American criteria for "good governance", an integral part of whatever the hell we're trying to do in Afghanistan. The point was simply that the US has a hard time with undertaking military action simply to stop somebody from doing something. We have to turn it into an noble effort to install democracy and western style governance, and that gets us into trouble, since we generally can't do it. Since we've already got more of that trouble than we can manage, there's little to no inclination to bite off more of it in Somalia, or anywhere else.

Whoever called it what, I don't see how anything was "cover" for anything else, and I'm not sure what you think I'm "wrong" about. Certainly I don't see how the quotes you cite contradict what I said.