Sen. Lindsey Graham Is Right! We can't say we won this war if an Ayatollah is left in charge.

@JPWhoo Absurd.

@JPWhoo

And when a mushroom cloud appears over a U.S. city because of vengeful radicals, what then?

The inevitable retaliation of nuking the Iranian capital and 16.8 million people in the metropolitan area?

@beckyromero How are you going to force the Iranian people to accept a moderate leader they don’t want? Have a war that quite literally never ends?

Because last time the US installed a leader in Iran it was the Shah, and he got overthrown in the 1979 revolution that brought the first Ayatollah to power. More recently, we’ve seen in Afghanistan what happens when we try to establish democracy in the Middle East and then we leave and let it “stand” on its own. The only way to ensure a US-friendly government in Iran is to shove it down the Iranian people’s throats with a constant military occupation.

@JPWhoo

The Iranian people have had a taste of what that revolution wrought.

We should have never pulled out of Afghanistan. We missed two opportunities to save that country from the chaos and darkness after the Soviet withdrawal. Not befriending the Afghan people with aid then was mistake number one. Pulling out in 2021 was the other.

Ever since the end of World War II, we have a mindset that wars can be one on the cheap, both militarily and economically. We haven't learned yet that they cannot be.

@JPWhoo My friend, you seem to have a very low - and ill-informed - opinion of the Iranian people. You should consider the possibility that the Iranian people may, in fact, not want to be ruled by thugs but that they cannot defeat the institutions and organized security forces that stand between them and freedom without the aid of the US-Israeli combined force.

@beckyromero Well said.

@beckyromero On the cheap?!? 20 years, 2,456 casualties, 20,700 injured, and $2.2 trillion isn’t enough? Bullshit, the problem was not that we didn’t stay long enough or invest enough in Afghanistan, it’s that we had no business being there in the first place, and I bet you more Americans agree with me than agree with you on that question.

@JPWhoo
Yes, on the cheap ... going all the war back to the Korean War.

Look back at the U.S. defense cuts after World War II - and what that resulted in.

Look back at the timid use of naval gun fire in Vietnam, when something like 80% of strategic targets were within range of our battleships, except that we had to recall two of our last four at the time from mothballs because we had scrapped all the others due to the worries about their cost. As a result, we often resorted to bombing, risking expensive aircraft and pilots' lives.

Look back at the Gulf War in 1991 - with Dick Cheney and Colin Powell getting all squeamish about the so-called "Highway of Death" - with the result of leaving Saddam Hussein in power.

Look back at the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and Paul Bremer's idiotic decision to disband the Iraqi Army rather than pay them. Resulting in a million armed men without pay. How'd that work out?

Look back at the initial response in Afghanistan after 9/11 - and Donald Rumsfeld's mistaken belief that the Afghan Northern Alliance could rout Al-Qaeda and cut off bin Laden's escape route to Pakistan.


And as far as Afghanistan is concerned, there were plenty of Americans who wanted a "glow" of Afghanistan to be seen from the moon after what happened on 9/11. But I guess there are some people who would have had no problem leaving bin Laden alone.

But we could have saved that country from falling into the hands of the Taliban with just a fraction of the money we spent to help the Mujahideen rout the Soviets. That was done covertly. But once the Soviets were out, there was nothing stopping us to send in millions in HUMANITARIAN aid. Build some schools. Build some hospitals. Nothing except the Bush 41 administration and the Democrat Congress being so cheap they squeaked!

As Richard Nixon said:

@beckyromero How do you even write these posts this fast? It’s insane 😂