Just wanted to second Sky Dogg's response. I can't really put it any better myself and didn't intend to ruffle anyones feathers in here, was just including my two-cents/view of the state of the world.
It helps to know your perspective. I do appreciate the selflessness it takes to put yourself in harms way to protect the people and rights you value. I just don't know that we have a well defined enough enemy or victory conditions in the current case for there to a positive outcome to the "war on terror". For what we should have done I guess my best answer is gather more information and not take a knee jerk reaction of we must bomb people because we have been attacked (or lets go invade Iraq when the people who attacked us aren't even there or tied to the terrorist groups there), I realize the PR for "we're getting more info on who attacked us, why, and what we can do to reduce the risk of it happening again", isn't something the public really wants to hear, but think it would have been a better response.
Also I'm not trying to say the US is the big bad wolf and Iraq (middle east in general) is such a pleasant place to live before the soldiers got there (I know nothing of the region outside of visiting Pakistan once when I was in grade school). Also also, I acknowledge the US foreign aid and going to train and fight on behalf of those who are oppressed by dictators or other highly oppressive regimes can be overall greatly beneficial to the people in a region and the world as a whole. Also also also, the money spent on defense in part gets funneled through DARPA which allows researchers the time and equipment to make advances in technology so I realize money spent isn't necessarily without a financial return or benefit to the public at large.
So apologies if you were only getting the devils advocate version of my view originally, but also have to say none of this is black and white, reality is continuous and gray not discrete. In my view there isn't any good and evil, there is nothing pure and absolute (except that there is nothing pure and absolute
).
"The other side, they're just like me in a way. They just don't want be like me in a way, so I guess they're just like me in a way"
