I supported the invasion of Afghanistan and I believe we always have a moral obligation to see wars through. But right now I feel like we're just smashing sand castles over there.
A sand castle is made of nothing special. Smash it, and it can be easily remade.
Tanks, ships, jets, missiles, bridges, oil refineries... things like these must be manufactured at considerable cost of time, money, resources, and engineers. Destroy them, and they cannot be quickly or easily replaced.
On the other hand, there's IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), rifles and small arms, suicide bombers, spies, roadside bombs, etc. These things can be easily found or produced. The necessary resources are readily and cheaply available anywhere in the world. You can't cut off the supplies. Destroy these weapons, and replacements are almost inevitable.
What is Al Qaeda? Is it strictly an organization with finite members? Or is it an ideology with limitless recruitment and found in many nations? Terrorism does not require much knowledge or training, nor great resources. Al Qaeda has demonstrated that it can pull off relatively sophisticated attacks, but surely such capacity can be found in many other terrorist organizations. So how does eliminating Al Qaeda, if we can, protect us?
What are the goals of our military in Afghanistan? That's what I don't understand at the moment. Cutting off the head of the snake, removing the senior members of the terrorist group which attacked us repeatedly, is a definite and achievable goal. But ridding even one nation of terrorism is not.
My question is genuine. Are we pursuing realistic goals? Or are we smashing sand castles?
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