So if you choose to censor me or have an ignore feature

You wish!! In post after post you explicitly beg to be banned or censored.

Your form of “education” is to lecture and “convince” everyone that your point of view is the only right one.

FDL is a forum for an exchange of ideas, not a video game to see who “wins” and who “loses.”

This is how adults work, unlike late night dorm room debates.

In Afghanistan, surely we can learn something from history? The USSR invaded on Christmas Day 1979 but despite taking over the country quickly & installing a puppet government with overwhelming ground and air control it was unable to subdue the fiercely independent tribal peoples. Finally it was forced to withdraw almsot 10 years later in February ‘89. Ironically it was this failure – together a collapsing economy and imploding political ideology – at led to its total disintegration. We cannot ‘win’ on the ground any more than the soviets could, but are we really doomed to repeat their cycle of failure? Surely we learned enough of these lessons from McNamara and Rumsfeld between 1964 and 2006?

Obama appears to be a captive of the domestic political situation every bit as much as LBJ was during his presidency. He has no coherent strategy that has not been defeated by the reality on the ground either in the 1960’s in Vietnam or in Iraq between 2003 & 2008. Unfortunately Obama is shaping up was a far less formidable politican than LBJ, so this lack of vision may well have mst unfortunate consequences for all ‘change you can believe in’ on our key progressive reforms!

What is it you think we will accomplish in Afghanistan? Do you think we’ll eliminate the Taliban, war lords and turn the place into a liberal capitalist country (we don’t even have that here) Instead we’ve recognized a really corrupt government and are forced, like you, to excuse killing civilians with a “war is hell”. How much time must pass and blood must flow before you realize your expectations won’t happen? That’s always a tough one. I don’t have a statute of limitations on my expectations.

You say it’s about the next election. What if Obama’s strategy (assuming he has one) doesn’t work and Afghanistan turns into the same quagmire as Iraq. BTW were you against the Iraq war from the beginning? Can something wrong ab initio, as lawyers are wont to say, turn into something necessary? (i.e. we made the mess and we can’t leave until we clean it up?) If not now, when?

Rudy Giuliani was the supposed master of that.

Fortunately, the last election gave us a president and not a corrupt mayor.

Translation: “OOGA BOOGA!”

Moral victories of this kind are so hollow and naive.

I am here because I think when I presnt my positions I might possible make people think or even change a mind or two. If not, that’s ok as well.

So if you choose to censor me or have an ignore feature — please go right ahead. I think Bill O’Reilly has a “turn of their mike” button as well, you would be in good company.