On the Downed Navy SEALS, plus.

Sad thing is, if we'd have fought the 9-11 war the way we should -- Achievable Goal: In, Out, Before They Knew What Hit Them ... -- it would have been a clear victory in our "getting" bin Laden.

But we didn't.
We went after a new way of remaking the world, or the region at least. A new way of painfully lingering warfare.

Instead of playing basic defense: figure out who did this to us, and go administer some fast and effective good old American ass-whuppin ... instead we wasted a lot of our passion on Iraq (wave those purple fingers ladies!), and by the time we finally got bin Laden some years and years later, much of the passion had dissipated, on receiving the overblown bill for such military justice.

Now, we sit in the region, still chasing bin Laden's henchmen. (some who were perhaps children when the American attack took place.)

So yes, what happened over the weekend indeed diminishes the magnificent victory crowing over the SEALS work in getting him. Instead of a "clean getaway", we left others committed there in the region, and then 30 of them were taken in one hit.

That's war, surely. But it makes one nostalgic for the "Get In, Get Out... Cleanly" days, when the cleanup and nation-building wasn't on the warriors plates, and we weren't so all-consumed with the bad guys over there, knowing they simply couldn't touch us -- long term -- over here.

The emotionalism of 9-11 sadly changed all that calculating though. Still, you have to look back and remember...


"You never count your money,
when you're sitting at the table.
There'll be time enough for counting...
when the dealings done."

Trust me: there will never come a day when Afghanistan is "cleaned up enough", by our standards, to justify our leaving. So why not just get them all back home already, with their babies and wives and policeman jobs back here at home, now that the veil has been lifted and it seems these men are plenty mortal after all?