The war we should have fought in 2002?
The same war the Soviets fought. How'd that turn out?
We killed a bunch of people, spent a bunch of money, for what?
Just we where funding them at the time and the Soviets where telling us it was a bad idea.. Regardless, its a war we are already in.
It's a war we should be out of and a war that should not be escalated. Why are we over their fighting anyway, what does Afghanistan produce besides a lot of heroin and Hash. I think we've pretty much destroyed the training camps that we went over in the first place for.
Don't blame me, I voted for Ron Paul, we'd be out of there by now instead of escalating the war.
The additional $23 billion spent for teachers in this bill .. what does it have to do about military spending? This is the reason that there is talk of Repubs not signing .. which I am sure they will sign anyway. It is about 1/3 of the total bill and has nothing to do with military spending .. shouldn't have this been a bill that stood on it's own two legs instead of tacking on to this one? Throw in the foreign aid and it's about 1/2 of the bill.
The problem is that we did not fight the war as it should have been and we would have completed the mission years ago on both fronts.
Funny thing, when Bush was running the wars (badly) it was unpatriotic to vote against war funding. In fact he once said that Democrats don't care about the security of the US because some voted against his war funding.
Now that this mega-disaster has been shoved onto the next guy in office all of a sudden it isn't so important anymore.
I think the strategy all along was to stretch out the wars long enough so that the blame for them could be shifted to whomever came next.
Funny thing, now that Obama is the prez .. there are a lot of new war hawks out there .. the same folks that were chanting about neocons are now saying it is a war we must be in. 
I was in favor of the the initial bombings of the training camps and sending in a task force to clean them up. I wasn't a fan of sending more and more troops in there to keep a thumb on things .. and then we sent a lot of troops ... gish don't politicians know anything about history and the art of war that these people have developed in that region.
The problem is, without a stable government, the terrorists and training camps are guaranteed to reemerge in Afghanistan. It's not enough to simply temporarily remove the camps, you have to target the culture that enabled them to begin with.
why are we there? because there was and is a link from 9-11 to Afghanistan. Unlike Iraq.
There was a link ... what year is it now? Have the terrorist surrendered .. oh wait who is the general of the terrorists, what part of the country are they in, where is their army.
There was a link to Saudi Arabia too .. we did not go in and start busting that place up.
So when America is attacked by an organized force, a force who's leadership is centralized in one location, Afghanistan, we should either do nothing, or retaliate against that centralized locations border states?
And the reason we did not do anything to S.A. and nations akin is because we have too many corporations that make too much money working hand in hand with their gov's. Oil Money rules everything around me.
We attacked Afghanistan - I agree with that .. do we have to occupy it too - that part I don't agree upon - what is to gain from this? Why are we still there in such force .. and increasing the forces too? If we haven't shut down the opium output from this country then why no .. if we can't shut down the opium output, then what good are we doing there ... this is of course discounting that some people are controlling the output of heroin for whatever reasons.
I also agree that the reason we didn't attack SA is because of the financial impacts.
I would have liked to have seen the time money and effort we put into Iraq used to build Afghanistan roads, hospitals and infrastructure.
As for why we are still there, same reason H.W. Bush did not take out Sadam in the first Gulf War. No viable exit strategy. if we drop everything and leave we create a power vacuum that will produce another terrorist playground.
Sh!t situation all around.
This is what happens when the politicians fight the war.
How U.S. dollars disappear in Afghanistan: quickly and thoroughly
I had read an article some what recently of a person who had volunteered some time in Afghanistan through a European country ( I can't remember which country) and the article was talking about how so much of the US aid was for weapons or military or just lost in bribes or swindles. Most of the the foods and clothing type stuff that was actually getting to the people was coming through European countries. We are not doing to many favors to the locals over there .. that is the impression I got. You kind of wonder what in the heck is the US doing over there with all that money and resources and who is benefiting from it all. You can be sure that the soldiers aren't and the locals aren't ... well who is left?
I see this as turn-about is fair play! Dems didn't vote for porn, Repubs won't vote for Teachers! Not quite the same but whatever works to make them look bad and weak on defense!
That's why I think they repubs will vote for this .. even though 1/2 the money is not for war .. this is there way of showing how slimey the dems are
I think you are right and that is why they tacked this onto a defense bill! Republican incumbents are going to have a hard enough time getting re-elected without voting against a defense spending bill after 8 years of beating the Dems over the heads about the same thing!
Just like the dems can say they spent money for teachers .. and for several years they were beating GW about getting out of the war
Kick'em all out
Big_T
Obama's plan to increase U.S. troops in Afghanistan by 30,000 troops ... Change you can believe in.