Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
The world is changing, and we are not . . . . It happens. Plot a new location, shoot a new azimuth, and move out.
Hear, Hear

Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
No moral obligation incurred in Afghanistan outweighs the moral obligations to our nation at home. To knowingly put the latter at risk in pursuit of the former is misplaced honor; to unwittingly do so is misplaced pride at best.

No number of tactical victories in Afg or Pak by US forces will stabilize either country; nor will they alleviate the strategic risk to the homeland that brought us here in the first place.
I'd like someone to help me out here.

I'm not clear what moral obligation the USA has incurred in Afghanistan. I'd like to see some argumentation that identifies what moral duty we've saddled ourselves with by being stupid with the decision to "get even" for 9/11, followed up with the decisions to be missionaries for American democracy and forcibly baptize the Afghan people with a "democraticly elected" government. What the country's leadership did was to exacerbate an already existing poor international relations situation. I submit that America finds itself in this predicament because of what Bob describes in the quoted excerpt above as "misplaced pride" and what I prefer to consider as extreme hubris by those who ostensibly lead this nation. What ever happened America's espousal of the principle of self-determination as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Monroe Doctrine?

I'd also like Bob or someone else to cash out for me what grave strategic risk to the homeland necessitated US involvement in Afghanistan. It isn't clear to me that the Taliban or some AQ training camps in Afghanistan from which apparently were spawned the 9/11 activities and the prior attempt to blow up the WTC towers constitute grave threats to the US's territorial integrity or its ability to exercise political sovereignty within that territory. But, I don't think Pancho Villa's incursions crossed that threshold either. Maybe I just have a higher tolerance for risk .