<HTML>Do you realise what utter lunacy that would be? The USSR spent years trying to break Afghanistan.
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At the time, the Mojahadine were receiving arms and funding from the USA. Without funding, these folks are just Goat herders.
Moreover, the US still has relations with a friendly faction of Afganies, whom we are currently supplying in their war with the Taliban government.
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If you really think a land war is essential please explain just how the US forces will approach Afghanistan.
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I propose a joint invasion in tandum with the Russians. The Russian army can invade from the north - while American paratroopers are dropped onto Khabul. After the capital is secured, suppies can be flown directly into the airport while American and Allied land forces are assembled in Russia and then driven south along routes secured by the Russians.
As compensation, parts of Afganistan may be ceeded to the Russians to administer as they will (if they so chose). Furthermore, the Russian army will receive US military equipment and their soldiers receive the full pay of American GIs for the first six months of the occupation.
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5,000+ civilian lives may already have been cruelly lost but what you're saying would result in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of military casualties as well as untold numbers of Afghan civilians.
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Hundreds of thousands is an exageration. Military casualties may well be heavy however - but what's the damn point of a frikkin military if your afraid that soldiers might get shot?
Civilian casualites can be kept to a minimum but they will occur. Frenchmen died on D-day as well as germans. Its a fact of war.
But I am more disturbed by your "logic." It seems that the struggle against Japan in WWII mght well have been averted had you been president at the time. After all, why compound the 2500 lives lost at Pearl Harbor with the deaths of "Hundreds of thousands" of American soldiers in the pacific? Why not make peace with the Japanese right away and let them have their way in the Pacific?
It was my understanding that the US was "The Home of the Brave," not "the home of those who sit offshore in heavily armed battle cruisers and send missiles to do their dirty work."
Missiles and bombs kill MORE civilians and leave the enemy embittered, angered, and willing and able to fight again. Missiles and bombs will only make more terrorists and result in more attacks.
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If the US attacked Afghanistan we could well get the holy war that these extremists are seeking to ignite.
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The US did not shy away from war 50 years ago. The time has come again to make the same kind of sacrifice (though hopefully, not on the same scale). If we are serious about ending these terrorist threats against our country, we must do what is truly needed!!! Half measures will only kill more people and accomplish nothing in return.
An example MUST be made of Afganistan. We must ourselves become a greater terror to those who would assist terrorists than those terrorists are themselves. Only then might we *inspire* the rogue governemnts of the world to exterminate the "freedom fighters" they keep within their borders.
ISHMAEL</HTML>
