We messed this up a long time ago
Staten Island: We invaded Afghanistan, the country responsible for 9/11, on Oct. 7, 2001. The end of the Taliban regime came with its collapse on Dec. 9, 2001, when the leadership surrendered at Kandahar. In March 2002, the Pentagon planners began shifting military and intelligence resources away from Afghanistan to Iraq because of bogus claims of weapons of mass destruction, which was the product of the neocon Project for the New American Century. Their goal was to get rid of Saddam Hussein. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said on Sept. 8, 2002: “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Remember that one? The “War on Terror” was on.
Gen. Colin Powell chimed in at the UN Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003. On March 21, 2003, we invaded Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. Now we were fighting two wars. President George W. Bush and Iraq’s prime minister signed the Status of Forces Agreement to get us out by Dec. 31, 2011. Our troops would have no immunity if they stayed. Under President Obama, our troops left on Dec. 16, 2011.
We lost the war in Afghanistan because of one of the worst foreign policy disasters since Vietnam, the unjustified war in Iraq. Put the blame where it belongs: the President George W. Bush administration.
A Taliban fighter once said: “You have the watches, but we have the time.” And our time has run out.
Michele Corelli