[...] First Tweet: 34 minutes ago editor_mcj Christopher Johnson President announces new war strategy retweet [...]

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

I say, wasn’t it Slick Willie Clinton that got us embroiled in this Afghanistan? Does anyone remember why? UN approval was had, IIRC.

No, it was Bush and it started not all that long after 9/11.

When one goes to war, one MUST GO TO WIN!!! Anything less, and it’s better NOT to go at all!!!!

Also, one MUST NEVER go with the idea of negotiating with the enemy at any point for anything short of their unconditional and total SURRENDER!!!!!

Anything less is a tool of the Commies (and also the Muslims)! THEY and their tools can temporise, pretend, hold back – knowing that they have Man’s Folly, Self-Destructive Instinct, and their “Education” – and consequently also time!!! – ON THEIR SIDE!!!

We DON’T HAVE ANYTHING with which to play such silly games – a fight to the death against the twin foes of Communism (known also as “secularism”!!) and Islâm requires our TOTAL commitment!!!

One of the Commies own propagandists – Maksjím Górjkiy – put it best: “If the enemy does not surrender, he must be annihilated.”

If THAT’S what our enemies intend for us, it’s ours to do as much to them beforehand!!

Slick Willie confined himself to shooting the occasional missile at camels.

Not to mention the occasional aspirin factory, Katherine!

One last part to the above rambling: sacrificing human LIVES for anything less than TOTAL VICTORY is in itself outright BLASPHEMY!!!!!

Abraham Lincoln knew better than to do as much, so did Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and apparently even Richard Milhous Nixon (with the last-named I *could* be wrong)!!

Clinton, Bush (both of them!) and Obama all fail this test most MISERABLY!!!

[Vietnam fell under a Gerald Ford hamstrung by a pacifist Congress already sucked down by the Commie-bought press and youth-movement which should have been mowed down a heck of a lot more - and without ANY pity whatsoever!! - than just happened with the "Kent-State Four" (2 of which - alas! - were innocents who were walking by at the worst possible moment while going about their business - how one wishes they'd stayed indoors and out of the line of fire...). Otherwise, the LAST people ANYBODY should listen to when it's a question of life or death nowadays ought to be students, the most easily-bought and formed by the Commie-academics!!!]

[...] After months of what his opponents called weakness and indecision, President Abraham Lincoln announc…  [...]

Hmm, you seem to be drawing a parallel between a war to reassert sovereignty over separatist states, and the war in Afghanistan. Are you implying that the US has sovereignty ambitions in Afghanistan? Some Afghan’s might misinterpret and mis-quote you thusly.

Personally, I think the US “learned” (if generalizing from a single case can be called “learning”) in Iraq that a big military push before departure can provide for good optics (and give your in-country Iraqi allies a bit a breathing room to establish control after you go). I suspect this may be an early phase of Obama’s exit strategy.

What I want to know is: have we got a better replacement strategy for dealing with fundamentalist Taliban/Islam? Do we have a moral obligation to protect Afghans who, under our protection have started doing crazy things like educating women and building water supply systems?

Switzerland just got crapped on for restricting the insertion of more minarets on their cityscapes. I think they should be encouraged to be no more restrictive on minarets than the Saudis are on cathedrals.

You know…

the more I talk with my Southern friends, the more I’m convinced that the North “losing” the Civil War might not have been such a bad thing.

The two different ways of American life could have developed independently, and perhaps the two countries could have reached a more mutually amiable and beneficial relationship than exists now.

Maybe. I’m a Westerner, so what do I know?

Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike. You’re WAY too literal, partner. I was comparing presidents, not wars. My point here was that if President Lincoln had handled that war the same way that Obama’s handling this one, there would currently be three North American nations rather than two.

Um, Chris, the last time I looked there are currently three North American nations!

D’oh!! Fine. Four, then. Cut me some slack, I was on my second vodka blogging the LA thing.

Kathleen Lundquist, are you suggesting that states splitting off to retain slavery was a moral thing for Americans to do?
I don’t know how someone could believe that “all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inaliable rights” and also believe that this did not apply to certain men who had the misfortune to be born slaves, or into a society where debts were satisfied by slavery.

As Lincoln believed, I believe that the American Civil War, the War Between the States, was necessary to remove the stain of slavery from America. That it was done with much shedding of blood was necessary as the Slave-owning states attempted to retain their ownership of other human beings. Great Britain abolished slavery peacefully, as did Brazil, but the slave-owners there (to my knowledge) did not attempt to take up arms to defend the indefensible (Citations to contrary evidence of this are welcome).

The American Civil War did more than establish that the United States “is” rather than “are”, it established that to be an American meant your life, liberty and property went to ensuring that life liberty and the pursuit of happiness applied to all Americans.