Two wars wind down

Looks like the dirty effin' hippies were right all along and that the Bush dead-enders were wrong.

Very few Americans see either the Iraq or Afghanistan Wars as a success. In my view, a view shared by many of my buddies, the problem didn't lie at all with America's armed services. Our fighting men and women did all that they were asked to do and frequently went well beyond the call of duty.

Is the blame with the Iraqis of Afghans? No, there were plenty of both who welcomed their respective US invasions and who worked with the "occupiers" to try and make their countrymen think of Americans as "liberators."

The problem, we hippies saw, was that even before the invasion of Iraq, it was clear that the reconstruction of Afghanistan was being pursued in a very casual, lackadaisical manner. G.W. Bush called for people to go to Iraq after the fall of Baghdad to assist in the reconstruction there, but the right wing couldn't muster it's own Lincoln Brigade of people who were willing to undergo the lack of luxuries that working in Iraq would entail.

Iraqis and Afghans saw that their lives had been made more difficult, not less, after their respective dictators had been tossed out. So here we are, over a decade later, with pretty much nothing to show for it.