One perspective

I meant to point to these a few days ago and just didn't get around to finishing it.

In the first, Juan Cole offers an interesting perspective on the intentions of al-Qaeda in the September 11 attacks with a bit of 20^th century history for justification. I was initially interested because it filled in some blanks in a conversation I had last week with some friends.

And then Harold Cole jumped off the original article with a commentary tying together previous missteps. I've always felt that we botched the job badly in Afghanistan. Hell, we're still dealing with issues there and likely will be for many years to come.

Am I right in my antipathy toward our war in Iraq? That's impossible to say today, only history will tell. While we'd squandered our chance to wrap up al-Qaeda, we still had a significant set of problems to deal with in Afghanistan. Even from a military perspective (assuming a significant real threat exists), you don't move forward until you've secured the current location. Of course, modern battle made it possible to relocate the position of the war without actually doing all the hard stuff like advancing and protecting supply lines. Perhaps that along with the modern corporate motto of "do more with less" is what really got us into this mess. In wars, you don't get to sell your stock after an early IPO party onboard an aircraft carrier and walk away. It's a long term proposition, one with long term implications.

For good or bad, it is what it is. We can not unwind the clock nor ask for a mulligan. It's a quagmire, one likely to capture a significant chunk of our political attention and will for the next decade. When asking people (mostly the very young) to serve and die our goals must be continually and clearly articulated (or already so obvious that nearly everyone agrees). Today, no one has any clear or well defined ideas on how to make it all go away. That makes me sad when I think about it.