A seriously overlooked fact. In addition, the attack on Pearl was by a credible *national* threat. The Japanese war machine was thoroughly capable of defeating the US in 1941. Al Qaeda *never* was. They had to use our technology against us as a weapon because they had nothing in their arsenal that could do the job. Al Qaeda's potential to inflict any sort of *lasting* damage on us just doesn't exist. They are criminal terrorists, not national actors. Confusing the seriousness of the threat that a nation like 1941 Japan, was with the threat from Islamic terrorist plane hijackers was a serious error. Japan at that time had world-class armies and navies that did the US serious damage well beyond Pearl Harbor. Many people still conflate the two threats as if they were remotely similar.
When have they NOT turned on us? Yet we never learn.
Bush really had no choice. Revenge fever was upon the US as a nation. There was clearly a very vigorous effort to protect the Saudis since the US is so closely bound to them for a number of reasons. The Iraqis AND the Afghanistanis ended up paying the price for America's desire to protect our allies and still punish *someone* for 9/11. "Denying terrorists a place to train" was a stupid and impossible goal. For one thing, we would have to burn all our flight schools. That's where the Saudis who brought down the WTC towers trained to fly jets.
Colin Powell said, prophetically, "You break it, you own it." Whatever alleged economic interest we were trying to protect has come at a very steep price. Think of how many solar cells (and oil independence) one to four trillion dollars would have bought.
He learned very little from the Sovs and Bush's failure to "pacify" Afghanistan. We still, as a nation, don't understand how civilized behavior has to evolve from the ground up, it can't be forced on a population of mostly goat herders living a tribal life in remote villages by external means.
Pulls out? We're going to get THROWN out by the very people we shed blood and treasure to protect. If that doesn't prove it was a foolish endeavor, I don't know what would convince the die-hards the Afghan war was a senseless debacle that achieved very little and cost very dearly.
Agreed. We almost always get sucked in by mission creep. Look at the Israelis. In and out, with the mission *really* accomplished in days or hours, not months or years. It does NOT enhance our reputation as a powerful military force to have to withdraw from two fronts after 10 years of stalemate under both Republican and Democratic leaders. Obama had the problem of dealing with the war that Bush had started and wasn't the first president to face such issues. Pull out and you're pilloried. Surge and you're seen as a war-monger and escalator.
To Obama's credit, he has resisted repeated and shrill calls to get into some of the many simmering conflicts spread around the world. I suspect that's mostly because polls show that Americans are getting pretty tired of being the world's premier and *unpaid* police force. We can only speculate what might have happened if 9/11 occurred under his watch. I doubt he would have done what Bush did.
Best choice? Stay out of conflicts and when you can't, get in and out as FAST as you can. The US has the world's fastest and most powerful "quick reaction" forces yet we invariably get involved in overlong local slugfests that are not winnable. People now realize wars cost real money, and real money is scarce. What scares me is that Americans may be so tired of war and what it cost us that we will be reluctant to get involved in any situation that might lead to an extended conflict, even if it's essential to national security. AFAIK there are at least a dozen trouble spots in the world that qualify.