When somebody shoots up a school, the usual police response is to capture the shooter. A trial generally follows.

Our response to 9/11 should have been to capture bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri by whatever means were necessary, bring them back here and put them on trial, preferably in New York City.

But the Pentagon never misses an opportunity to invade somebody, set up a fort, and start awarding contracts. War is a business; invest your kids.

From the Nov 8, 2010 edition of "The Nation" magazine:

Forgetting Afghanistan

The American people, it seems, are bored with war. Like a reality show that's gone on too long, it ceases to shock, shame or even interest.

It is not difficult to understand why Americans would want to forget Afghanistan. This, remember, was the "smart war." The war the entire political class agreed about. Both Bush's war and Obama's war. A war of necessity. A war for which no excuses of poor intelligence or poor planning were needed. The war that only apologists for Islamic terrorism, anti-Americans and self-hating Americans opposed. The war in which Afghan casualties are not only not counted but actively discounted, and US fatalities have doubled since Obama came to power. The war that only one Representative, Barbara Lee, dared vote against.

Remembering that war and all that has happened in it, and placing it in a political and electoral context, would demand a reckoning with US militaristic impulses and affections, not to mention a recalibration of America's self-image as a force for unalloyed good in the world. It would force a recognition that although US military strength may be unrivaled, US power and influence are limited, and there were other options after 9/11. It would force Americans to remember what Afghans cannot forget—the sheer brutality, incompetence, futility and recklessness of an invasion and occupation that have achieved neither peace nor democracy nor security.

This situation was not only entirely predictable but was actually predicted. In her speech to the House on September 14, 2001, after which she received numerous death threats, Barbara Lee said, "We are not dealing with a conventional war. We cannot respond in a conventional manner. I do not want to see this spiral out of control.... If we rush to launch a counterattack, we run too great a risk that women, children and other noncombatants will be caught in the cross-fire.... Finally, we must be careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target. We cannot repeat past mistakes."

And to bring the point home:

...In written and videotaped evidence to Army investigators, a member of his brigade described (Staff Sat Calvin) Gibbs as harboring "pure hatred for all Afghanis," saying he "constantly referred to them as savages." So to prove his Western-style sophistication, Gibbs would allegedly order civilians to be "waxed" for sport. Then he and his fellow soldiers would pose with the corpses and, sometimes, keep skulls and other body parts as trophies.

This, of course, should not be confused with the raid in February that killed two pregnant women, a teenage girl and a police commander (all innocent) or the execution-style murder of eight teens and preteens in Kunar province just after Christmas—both of which were originally covered up. Or any other atrocities that we have not yet heard about or may never hear about.

Bless you, Barbara Lee

Dostojevsky, by latest news I suppose you mean the Pentagon and/or State Dept's latest revision of reality. Or maybe that creepy-ass MF Gen Petraeus is mixed up with re-jiggering the architecture of the universe. That guy's so overendowed with hubris that soon he'll be rearranging the planetary orbits.

Anyway, I hadn't heard about that. I only know what I hear from truth-tellers, on the rare occasion I can find one. I heard one last night on NPR, Jeremy Scahill being interviewed by Terry Gross about the war in Yemen.

It would be funny, if it wasn't so tragic, to hear terrorists like Obama and Petraeus talking about "terrorism."

I left the US years ago, and now, thanks to the endless and perpetual war and roadshow, currently appearing in Afghanistan, Yemen, and other select locations in the Middle East and North Africa, I'm never going back. The US is a violent, out-of-control psychotic, spreading mayhem throughout the world, and it is NOT my country, and these are NOT my people.

It's not hard to see where this is leading, and it's not the so-called "terrorists" the US needs to concrn itself with. If either Obama or the Romney-bot was willing to use the brains God gave to them, they'd know that Napoleon and Hitler both reached the point where the rest of the world realized "Hey, we can't live with this crazy son of a MF," and did what was necessary to take them out.

What makes them think the US is any different?