US military death toll in Afghanistan reaches 2,000

[nikimcbee]

I've often thought, we could have spent the money better by building a huge wall around Afghanistan and kept all that scum in the country. Then they can have their islamic utopia w/o impacting the rest of the World.

[Platapus]

I think the US forces need to be separated from the AF forces.

About 6,000 miles sounds about right.

[Takeda Shingen]

Afghanistan is a picture of what is wrong with out foreign policy. What should have been a small-scale special teams operation to locate and eliminate those responsible for the September 11th attacks became a decade-long nation building operation using 60,000+ troops. All this and, as was pointed out earlier in the thread, we have nothing to show for it, just like Iraq. 2000 dead, trillions of dollars spent, and nothing to show for it. The bad guys are still there, and they will come right back into power once we leave.

[Jimbuna]

The picture gets decidedly worse for the US when you take Iraq into account they lost about 4,400 of their sons and daughters over there

I'm anything but an expert on the subject but when you consider the vast sums of expenditure might it not have been better spent on satellites and other forms of surveillance equipment to moniter this trash then use drones and missiles or whatever to attack the heart of the vipers nest and in so doing send a powerful message that attackes on whichever countries homeland would exact such a harsh price they (the trash) might come to their senses one day and learn to co-exist?

[eddie]

During the initial invasion, and we knew bin Laden was in Tora Bora area, we should have nuked that area and then left. Would have saved a lot of soldiers lives and our money that way.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

Afghanistan is a picture of what is wrong with out foreign policy. What should have been a small-scale special teams operation to locate and eliminate those responsible for the September 11th attacks became a decade-long nation building operation using 60,000+ troops. All this and, as was pointed out earlier in the thread, we have nothing to show for it, just like Iraq. 2000 dead, trillions of dollars spent, and nothing to show for it. The bad guys are still there, and they will come right back into power once we leave.

Hear hear. This has been a fiasco from the start. And meanwhile the Russians sit back and say "Tolja so."

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

Hear hear. This has been a fiasco from the start. And meanwhile the Russians sit back and say "Tolja so."

Yep. Although I think what should be even more disturbing is the fact that that barely more than a decade before going in, the US gave all those weapons, money and other sorts of help to the guys that have done most of that killing...

IMO, another awful example of the "our SOB" doctrine that, unfortunately, US foreign policy continues following and will continue getting stung by in the long run. Shamefully, 11 years in Afghanistan have done nothing to change that doctrine even in relations with that "country", let alone elsewhere. And the current SOB isn't that much of an improvement...

[em2nought]

We're either insane, or Ike was exactly right.

Cut and run?
lily livered cheese eating surrender monkeys the lot of ya