Op-Ed sort of...

HAT WORKS...

Nothing seems to work lately.  You're damned if you do and you're damned if  you don't.  Speaking of the current riff in this nation of ours.  Back when we went into Afghanistan I was not in favor and never grew in favor of being there.  I was not in favor of going to war with Iraq in the Gulf War.   That was Chaney's Oil War. 

What good could come from it if we did not in the beginning eliminate the enemy? If they had of gotten Bin Laden with a secret mission in the very beginning, then we would have gotten our pound of flesh for what happened on 9/11 BUT it took years to do that and the whole 20 year conflict was a failure but for some reason even with Vietnam the USA never accepts defeat...they will keep beating a dead horse.  

If the USA had gone in with the intent of destroying the Taliban,  lets lay our enemy useless, either use your sword to cut deep,  or put it away it may have made sense...but they did NOTHING all this time.   They played a war game and they lost. 

 Do not start a fight  unless you intend to kill your enemy, cause to me there is no "almost a war." It's either a war or it's just a Military Economy at work. One that Eisenhower warned us of.  The Military Machine...the contracts, the political gains, the almost but never really was a war but the TRILLION$$ spent went into the pockets of Defense Contractors. 

Now the GoP are using this withdrawal like  it was Biden's lost war.  EH?? Trump is the one who "had peace talks with the Taliban." I did not ever once hear the cries from the right of "let us fight till the death," or "why are we not hunting them all down and wiping them off the surface of the planet"...but now that the game is over they will accuse the game plan that never was about freeing the world of the Taliban.  They should have gone into Pakistan and got all of them if that was the case...or they should have just left longggg ago.  Obama wanted to pull out after he got Bin Laden, but he was convinced by the Military Machine that was not such a good idea...but what was the point?  They allowed al'Qaeda to hide in Pakistan and they simply waited and got more backing and grew stronger. 

There is NO WIN in this situation.  GO back and think....with the removal of Saddam Hussein who actually was of the Ba'athist party, an Arab Nationalist, a progressive leader, a secularist, who was anti Islamic the region has continued to destabilize.   He was an Arab....He was heavily involved in education for  his citizens and for was in favor of Arab Socialism not Islamism, things could have been different.  He was trying to  use the oil wealth to build an economy that would put Iraq in the world markets.  He was heavily involved in deals in the region to strengthen up alliances.  He dealt with Kohomeini, exiled him to France, He was actually fighting against the Islamic radicalism, he was not in favor of Muslims who were fighting a civil war, the Kurds and the Shi'a.  

This cost him his life, he used chemical weapons against them.   

I don't begin to understand the religious wars to me it is hogwash.  

 Bin Laden who tried to repel Saddam's forces in Kuwait was not in cohorts with Hussein as many world Leaders, and news media tried to say.  Hussein, altho a savage opponent and leader, was the type man who could have wiped al'Queda off the map.  He understood how to handle this type extremism more than any Western leaders could.  YES he was a bad man but he wanted stability in the region...and I guess he would have done it with a rain of fire. 

IN My opinion he would have squashed this regime long before it got to the point of what it is today and maybe 911 would never have happened...So George H Bush and George W Bush are the ones we can really blame for what is happening in the region today. 
In the end with one Bin Laden or Saddam were notorious killers, and that is the status quo for the region...my point is FIGHT to win or LET IT GO.