I have never responded to one of your posts for good reason. And this is the only one I will ever respond to.

Definition of a troll.

“1c. Noun
A member of an internet forum who continually harangues and harasses others. Someone with nothing worthwhile to add to a certain conversation, but rather continually threadjacks or changes the subject, as well as thinks every member of the forum is talking about them and only them. Trolls often go by multiple names to circumvent getting banned. ”

Please take a look at the reasoned discussion in this thread. Please observe the total lack of ill will and attacks, please see the worthwhile conversation taking place. Note that not all the participant agree with each other but can still discuss the subject in a sensible manner. Not all are of the same political makeup though you lump everyone together.

Now take a look at your contribution to the discussion. What do you see there. I see the definition of a troll.

You need to take a long hard look in the mirror.

“Biden’s solution was to accept reality and recognize that there are three distinct countries in Iraq. It’s going to happen eventually. In my opinion Biden has a very intelligent way of looking at things, he is exactly right on Afghanistan and the next 5 years of that war will prove it.”

I couldn’t agree more. Biden was really the only candidate in 2008 (R or D) who had a realistic, credible plan, which is why I was an early supporter.

And you’re right, too, about Iran and the Shah. We’re still seeing the consequences of that today, three decades after his death.

“What you really mean to say is that the far Left democrat activist trolls…”

I wondered how long a run we could manage without input from Frum Forum’s Drama Queen In Residence.

Do you think he gets paid for every use of the word “troll”?

What you really mean to say is that the far Left democrat activist trolls have had a thread almost all to themselves and –well, lookie here– that makes for sane discussion? LOL. No, what it does makes is an echo chamber that only JimmeyJunkyardDawgCarville would find seductive. And the DailyKos achieves every day. You guys are so transparent & facetious you make WH communication hack Robert Gibbs look enlightening by comparison.

Hey BarryS, I don’t recall you from earlier threads… are you another manufactured character in the TrollTribe? The real people here are having problems keeping up with all the new faux-names in the Tribe.

Biden’s solution was to accept reality and recognize that there are three distinct countries in Iraq. It’s going to happen eventually.

In my opinion Biden has a very intelligent way of looking at things, he is exactly right on Afghanistan and the next 5 years of that war will prove it.

I accept hat historically the USA has not been an empire builder in the British mold. However it has far too often stuck it’s fingers in where they just don’t belong. Iraq and the Shah comes to mind.

The Brits and French hold a lot of blame and we are well in the mix as well. And we are still doing it.

I don’t accept that we are in the same category as the Brits or French.

America has rarely attempted to redraw borders for its own aggrandizement. Except where our own borders were concerned, we usually worked with national borders as we found them. We granted independence to the Philippines, rather than keeping it indefinitely as a U.S. colony. And we rejected Biden’s “solution” of breaking up Iraq.

The fact that we emerged from World War II as the dominant nation on Earth, and the fact that we were faced with facing down an aggressive USSR which was truly bent on imperialism in the style of the Brits and French, does NOT mean that we were becoming an empire ourselves. We didn’t want colonies. We didn’t try to redraw national borders all over the world. We were simply defending our position as top dog on the planet.

In December 2001, when I heard that Osama bin Laden had escaped, my heart sank.

Because then I knew that instead of a quick and relatively straightforward counterterrorist mission, we were now letting ourselves in for a long, difficult, counterinsurgency struggle as Osama’s forces regrouped.

And on a personal note: That’s when investing in hard assets (gold, oil, etc.) began to look better and better to me.

Sinz we should have gone in there, got Bin Laden and as many of his associates as practical……..shot a few hundred Taliban and got out of there

EXACTLY!!!

But we tried something like that and FAILED.

You got me all wrong. I don’t want to do nation-building in Afghanistan. Time was when we conservatives used to OPPOSE nation-building by armed force.

In November 2001, we had Osama bin Laden in our sights at Tora Bora. But due to some major tactical errors on our part, he escaped.

The escape of Osama bin Laden and his henchmen to Pakistan left us with Afghanistan as a kind of plug, to keep Osama from ever breaking back out of the Pakistan badlands. What’s done is done.

And now Obama is going to rationalize defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan as a way to maintain this plug, so that al-Qaeda can be forced to fight a two-front war between our forces on the Afghan side of the border and the Pak forces in Pakistan.

That’s a viable strategy, but MUCH LESS cost-effective than if we had done the job right in 2001.

A whole lot of the problems in the world today are the direct cause of empire making. The Brits and French hold a lot of blame and we are well in the mix as well. And we are still doing it.