for no clear objective. We are certainly slowing them down, but it's very possible that if we leave many won't have a reason to join against us, as they do today. And when our folks return home we need to find something else to do with them other than staff police departments. We should have a national quota, that you can only live with war 3 years, then you must find another tool to use that isn't a gun, and we pay you for three years of work in something else. The Peace Corps, perhaps. Maybe building gardens and repairing houses for people with no money. Or give them some funding to learn engineering, biology, business and philosophy, and set them to work on solving future challenges with climate, agriculture, medicine, energy, jobsetc.
We obviously aren't winning anything, and while we are fighting here we had a terrorist attack on our embassy in another country. We owe it to ourselves to deescalate this.
You can't kill an idea with force, only with reason and persuasion. (Observe any 14 year old, and then wonder why we forgot that lesson). This enemy, just like the radical right, is bent on destroying this country, the world, in the process of remaking everything in the image they desire. And we are helping them fulfill their wish.
Outside of this country about all we can hope to do is prevent the attacks that we can, suffer those we must, and lob a missile or two in there periodically when we have credible threats (we are quite good at that, and mostly accurate). Inside, Americans need to prevent the radical right from holding any elected office, also a challenge. Especially when the corporations and the people they have purchased want to enslave all of us, and don't really care who wins, despite all the hype.
In the meantime perhaps the world can put its thinking cap on and figure out a way to change their beliefs, co-opt their support.
It's going to be difficult, because putting it behind us is our way, not theirs. One teaches by example, and we haven't exactly shown ourselves to be morally capable of making peace and prosperity for everyone our priority.
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