Brad Shepard said:
Just saw the news, Bin Laden is dead, check any news channel, its true. So, what now, will the US pull out? or what?
To be blunt, whether we pull out or not has a lot to do with the future of the country.
A lot of liberals and peace at any price types who have been wanting to cut and run since almost the very beginning are going to want to say that this means it's over, and we can pull out with dignity. In reality we've accomplished very little since Bin Ladin is more a symptom than the cause of the problems we're dealing with. As I point out all the time, the issue is the regional culture, not a tiny minority of people lead by a handfull of whack jobs. If it was a small group of extemists this would have been over with long before now.
While popular with a lot of people, Obama pulling out of the region would be a very bad move, and I think there are a lot of people concerned that this is what he will do.
It's important to note that beyond all cultural conflict and war related reasons that right now "The War On Terror" is really one of the only things holding the US together right now. Our economy is in rough shape. If we bring the troops back to the US right now, all of those troops are entitled to take their old jobs back at their old rates of pay. Unfortunatly we're having problems employing the people here in the US right now. What's more a lot of the jobs held by those soldiers probably don't exist anymore, not to mention the cost in benefits all the soldiers coming out of the service are going to hit the system with.
This is of course to say nothing of the cost of a troop muster and all the threats the US is facing right now, putting all of the troops back into civilian life, only to yank them back out in a couple of years probably isn't the wisest course as well.
The point here being is that while people might make excuses for it, and hate the realities of the situation, pulling the troops back is pretty much going to lead to a massive unemployment surge as people are either booted to make room for returning soldiers, or soldiers are put back into a society with no place for them. Probably what we'll see is an excuse being made to lay a lot of people off for the troops, followed by a layoff of the troops down the road as a lot of companies use this as an excuse to "optimize". The fact that nearly every state is running a deficit doesn't help matters much either.
It's not a matter of right and wrong, it's a situation where ending the war isn't actually going to benefit many people, either the troops or the people currently here in the US. Even if you start making arguements about moral responsibility, collapsing the system trying to meet it means nobody gets what they should be getting anyway.
Getting Bin Ladin really is going to be a major test for Obama, because I imagine he's going to have to wind up going against a lot of his supporters. Within the Bin Ladin name to put on the threat, he's got less steam to justify to all the liberals and peace at any price supporters why he's not keeping his empty campaign promise to end the war and pull our troops out.
Simply put the war doesn't exist in a vaccum at the moment, and isn't something that can be viewed in of itself. Irregardless of who you blame for the current situation, the point remains that I very much doubt we'll see any radical changes.
I expect the only way we're going to be bringing out troops home en-masse is going to be if we manage to fix the economy to the point of being able to support their return.
While "evil and heartless", especially when you consider how pro-military I am, ask yourself if you really want to deal with a bunch of angry, traumatized, well trained soldiers that are probably going to be living on the streets literallty in a lot of cases.
& think... "yep, there's hope".
