But there are a lot of good people in both those countries, people who don't deserve to die for the sake of US soldiers.
I always thought this is the REAL reason we went into Iraq. Bush was worried about the possibility of facing reelection during a recession, so he fabricated an excuse to deficit-spend on a phony war effort. His ego and greed have caused America GREAT harm... Terrible a president as he was, he's still not as bad as Odumba. (We probably wouldn't have Odumba now had the country not been so pissed at Bush.. a "backlash against Bush" vote likely being the election-deciding factor.)
So does rebuilding efforts. For stimulus it doesn't matter what you spend it on as long as you spend it. As for some idiot's idea of nuking the whole country, nobody likes radioactive gas and oil....
Not when you are paying $800 per gallon for fuel. This fuel money is going to companies in Pakistan. The cost of a gallon of gas delivered to USA units in Afghanistan has risen to $800. Eighty percent of the supplies of the US-led forces in Afghanistan come up this long, difficult route. Along the way, the USA pays large bribes to Pakistani officials, local warlords, and to Taliban. Last week, Pakistan temporarily closed the main US/NATO supply route from Karachi to the Afghan border at Torkham after the killing of three Pakistani soldiers by US helicopter gunships. Three US/NATO fuel supply convoys were burned by anti-American militants. http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis208.html
Parents sending/allowing their kids to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan are dummies. Why would you let your kids go fight for a corrupt government, greedy and crooked Wall St, and a society of zero morals? Yes, these terrorists/Taliban are worse. But are Wall Streeters and Politicos sending their kids there? They send their kids to private school at $40K/year while the middle class dummies send their kids to the army. The rich get an education while the poor get a missing limb. No wonder Washington gives out a tax credit for having kids. Gotta have somebody manning that machine gun.
the war in iraq and afghanistan is to me like poor and uneducated killing each other My problem is why am I paying for this? Let them kill each other for free
That's a myth. The Romans did it all the time for centuries, so did the Brits, the USA did it after WWII in Germany and Japan where there were several years of violent insurgency by reactionary Nazis/Imperial Japanese loyalists. Hitler was even more effective, he simply killed lots of civilians any time a resistance attack succeeded. Thus, any resistance was futile as it did not remove the occupiers and just led to more of your own people dying. The Afghanistan resistance would end in 3 months if the US did that. The coalition can either adopt Hitler tactics, or the more lengthy but less brutal tactics of the Roman and British Empires, or it can lose. Simple choice, but the American government and people still haven't realised it, or made up their mind whether they would prefer to win brutally, or lose semi-honourably.
But that is the case in all wars - innocent people always die en masse. Unless you are a total pacifist who is willing to be invaded, occupied, and enslaved by any foreign power willing to go to war with your country, rather than risk the death of 1 innocent person in self-defence, then this approach makes no sense. You have to decide if a war must be fought. If it must be fought, then you have to decide what is necessary to win it, and then you must do that. Moral considerations only come after that - survival and victory is always more important than morality. Morals only dictate not killing any more innocent people than you need to, in the course of winning the war. If you need to kill 2 million people to win, then you have to do it, or you will lose. Morality just says don't kill another 1 million unnecessarily (e.g. out of revenge, or bloodthirstiness).
The war in Southeast Asia would have been over within a year, had Nixon continued carpet bombing North Vietnamese cities and cut the supply routes off. Eradicating the Viet Cong completely would have been a more formidible task with China watching over their shoulder. Instead of jungle and tunnels, Afghanistan is covered with mountains and caves. If Russia left, I doubt US will make any headway until a full-scale assault is mounted and for what purpose? How did Rome end up? British Empire?