[AtomicLabMonkey]

I think really comitting our troops to a protracted, thorough fight in Afghanistan & its border regions instead of invading Iraq would have been a good start on what to do different. You know, to fight the people that actually attacked us on 9/11. I think the Iraq war has been a monumental waste of money, life, and political capital, and a distraction from the people we really should have been focusing on.

Instead, the Taliban & Al Qaeda have hidden out in the mountains & tribal areas of Pakistan and regrouped & rearmed. Pakistan hasn't done shit to really fight them. Now these assholes are coming out of the woodwork again, 4-5 years after the government told us that the Taliban was defeated. I heard the army commander in Afghanistan talking about the reasons why there were so many clashes with Taliban forces lately, and he said basically that it's because we have started deploying into areas where we've never gone before. Talk about a lie - we never defeated them at all, we just stopped really chasing them when they ran out of the populated regions.