Just like Somalia was Clinton’s war.

The problem isn’t that Republicans are the party of bull—-, the problem is 45% of the country is buying it.

Morally, if not technically speaking, Afghanistan attacked us on September 11, 2001.

So, if I understand Steele, we shouldn’t have responded to the attacks, because no one has successfully responded to the attacks in the past.

I think that assessment is not correct. Plenty of powers have succeeded in Afghanistan. Alexander the Great succeeded there, contrary to public discussion, but it took a long and intensive commitment of his. After his death an independent Greek successor state emerged there, and Bactria, as it was called then, remained in the Hellenistic world for a couple of centuries (until the rise of the Parthians).

The Arabs had success there too. As did certain Turks and Mongols.

The war was winnable, as was the peace, in 2002 and 2003 if we had stuck to pragmatics and common sense. The biggest flubs by Bush were:

(1) Not forging a global anti-terrorism alliance patterned on NATO to globally contain terrorism and extremism. (He didn’t do this, because he was never interested in saving the world, just helping out the top .01%, the plutocracy, of the U.S. towards which flub #2 was implemented)

(2) Taking the eye off the ball and going into Iraq. Letting Bin Laden loose at Tora Bora. Bush will forever be known as the fool for that one.

(3) Not relying on indigenous institutions and grafting on to them to rebuild a new Afghanistan. (a) They had a King in exile. He had immense moral authority and perceived legitimacy because Afghanistan’s last civil period was when he last ruled. He was a point of nostalgia for the people. (b) they had a functional, constitutional, traditional indigenous assembly, the loya jurga, upon which to build. (c) They had warlords a plenty who could have been coopted into a feudalistic arrangement as fiefs to the king, with American power, initially, as the guarantor of the feudal contract.

(4) Encourage Islamic scholars to develop a legal frame work that allows for separation of church and state (the fusion of the two not necessary if the state can guarantee freedom of religion – something that the Islamic memory of Mohammed would probably agreed to), and dormancy of lessor jihad (warfare against non-muslims) in preference to elevation of greater jihad (war against the individuals inner evil, most especially hate and anger, the manifestation of which is a sign of an individuals defeat and surrender to evil) – (in short, a sort of Sufism) as the religious norm for developing and developed islamic countries.

Instead the corporatist put up a petro-industry lackey, Karzai, as president, and ended the monarchy, spent a trillion dollars in resources in Iraq, and let Bin Laden, Omar and the Taliban live to fight another day.

The attempted sale of the management of our ports to Dubai, was perhaps the most demonstrable fact that Republicans don’t give a damn about fighting terrorism or protecting the country. That and the failure to invest heavily in protection of chemical factories.

Even the 9/11 event is suspect. People who live east of the 98th meridian and South of the 42nd parallel pretty much have the same climate. That climate suffers from persistent summer climate pattern of heat, humidity and haze until it is somehow broken up in early or mid September by a autumn pattern Canadian cold front. The haze makes flying airplanes dangerous for all but the most experienced pilots: it’s part of what killed JFK jr. as he lost the horizon. September 11th was the first clear pattern weather day in 2001 for the entire region east of the 98th meridian – I know because my car died, for good, at 9pm the night before and I struggled to push it in the heat and humidity. The next morning I waited for my sister-in-law in front of my apartment, in clear, dry, cool weather, so the front came overnight. The thing is, even people who live in this climate zone pay little attention to this phenomina. Only kids who go to school in un-air conditioned buildings, which I did for 12 years. You suffer and wait until that cold front comes, and even if it warms up again, it’s never so insufferable after that. Some how, those terrorist knew all about that, and waited for it, and were able to organize their flight around the weather. I’m not sure if that means anything, but no one ever mentioned this phenomina, and I’d like to know how this happened or worked out.

For developmental states, the sophistication of a presidential system is inherently

Oh I didn’t finish:

For developmental states, the sophistication of a presidential system is inherently unintuitive. Feudalism and its evolution into constitutional monarchy is intuitive to even the most primitive of people. We should have turned the warlords into fiefs of the Afghan crown, and foster the development of a federation of fiefs, loyal to the crown, and slowly introduce representative assemblies inside the fiefs.

The local fiefs, call them Sultans or Emirs or whatever, would be responsible for policing and developing their fiefs, with anywaywordness subject to a visit by forces of the King, supplemented by American/Allied forces.

Allied aid, in the billions of dollars, Korean and Japanese economic planners, all could have gone towards the development of civil institutions and a civil society, including roads, schools, education, and economic development etc…

“Some how, those terrorist knew all about that, and waited for it, and were able to organize their flight around the weather. I’m not sure if that means anything, but no one ever mentioned this phenomina, and I’d like to know how this happened or worked out.”

Chemtrail woo-woo land. There’s no profit in spinning conspiracy theory stuff, just makes you sound like a nutball.

As for screwing with the Afghans, we shouldn’t have done anything at the state level. Osama is/was not some James Bond kingpin. The best strategy would have been simply be to penetrate AQ networks through intelligence and take people out the SMERSH/SAS/Mossad way with zero collateral damage.

Well, I agree with your assesment with the Afghans. In regard to the weather on 9/11, I’m not necessarily reading conspiracy into it. I just am interested in knowing to what extent, or to what evidence, the conspirators took weather patterns into consideration. The thing is, most people living in that climate, don’t really notice the weather pattern a great deal. Because I loved Geography since the age of 9, I have a mild interest in climate and weather patterns, and I paid attention to the patterns. Most people know that the weather is better in the fall than in the summer – July and August being “the dog days” of summer and all that. But they don’t really pay much minute attention to it. Summer haze became a big issue when JFK jr. died. It doesn’t really go away until some time in September. Of course, they could have just ‘gotten lucky’ but I think the planners took the weather pattern into consideration and planned around it (whomever they were) which means that they didn’t buy their plane tickets until they saw a weather forecast. Next time I see the book by the 9/11 commission in the book store, I’m going to take a look and see if it says anything about when the tickets were bought and how they paid for it. Anyway, they couldn’t have picked a better day. The weather was simply marvelous that day from Kansas City to the East Coast. I’ll never forget that.

Steele is an idiot, but he was criticized even more by other Republicans than by Democrats. This is not news–he’s so prone to gaffes that he’s practically Joe Biden (ok–not *that* bad…)

Your argument seems to be “This Republican appears stupid. Therefore all Republicans are stupid.” For some reason, I’m not buying that reasoning, logically.