<story><title>U.S. Embassy in Kabul Tells Staff to Destroy Sensitive Material and Evacuate</title><url>https://text.npr.org/1027390545</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Alupis</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not certain there&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;nothing&lt;/i&gt; to show for it.&lt;p&gt;For starters... any group thinking about attacking the US on it&amp;#x27;s homeland will have to contemplate a 20+ year conflict afterwards.&lt;p&gt;We also did educate a lot of people there, many of which are leaving the country right now for obvious reasons - but still, we did help a lot of people there.&lt;p&gt;Lastly, the way we&amp;#x27;re throwing money around these days, $2 Trillion is practically nothing when spread out over a 20 year period anyway.&lt;p&gt;Maybe I&amp;#x27;m just searching for the silver lining...</text></item><item><author>BitwiseFool</author><text>I remember the sentiment right after 9&amp;#x2F;11 and the country was baying for blood.&lt;p&gt;It seems like the most prudent thing to have done was to adopt a kind of Fabian Strategy where we don&amp;#x27;t invade a nation halfway around the globe and hope to change a culture that has stubbornly been able to avoid being conquered by the major empires in world history. When you &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; look at it, no major act of terrorism of the same scale was going to happen anyways. I mean really, mass shootings end up killing more people. And it&amp;#x27;s not like the hijack an airliner strategy is going to work again.&lt;p&gt;But here we are, 2+ Trillion burned and nothing to show for it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>BitwiseFool</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;quot;any group thinking about attacking the US on it&amp;#x27;s homeland will have to contemplate a 20+ year conflict afterwards.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know how true this is, but I heard that Bin Laden&amp;#x27;s goal was to get the US mired in an extremely expensive and prolonged war of attrition. It&amp;#x27;s the same strategy that helped bring down the Soviet Union. It makes sense, at face value, to get a vastly more powerful adversary bogged down in such a war.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;&amp;quot;Maybe I&amp;#x27;m just searching for the silver lining...&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I feel you. It&amp;#x27;s pretty disheartening.</text></comment>
<story><title>U.S. Embassy in Kabul Tells Staff to Destroy Sensitive Material and Evacuate</title><url>https://text.npr.org/1027390545</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Alupis</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not certain there&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;nothing&lt;/i&gt; to show for it.&lt;p&gt;For starters... any group thinking about attacking the US on it&amp;#x27;s homeland will have to contemplate a 20+ year conflict afterwards.&lt;p&gt;We also did educate a lot of people there, many of which are leaving the country right now for obvious reasons - but still, we did help a lot of people there.&lt;p&gt;Lastly, the way we&amp;#x27;re throwing money around these days, $2 Trillion is practically nothing when spread out over a 20 year period anyway.&lt;p&gt;Maybe I&amp;#x27;m just searching for the silver lining...</text></item><item><author>BitwiseFool</author><text>I remember the sentiment right after 9&amp;#x2F;11 and the country was baying for blood.&lt;p&gt;It seems like the most prudent thing to have done was to adopt a kind of Fabian Strategy where we don&amp;#x27;t invade a nation halfway around the globe and hope to change a culture that has stubbornly been able to avoid being conquered by the major empires in world history. When you &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; look at it, no major act of terrorism of the same scale was going to happen anyways. I mean really, mass shootings end up killing more people. And it&amp;#x27;s not like the hijack an airliner strategy is going to work again.&lt;p&gt;But here we are, 2+ Trillion burned and nothing to show for it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>heavyset_go</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;For starters... any group thinking about attacking the US on it&amp;#x27;s homeland will have to contemplate a 20+ year conflict afterwards.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The US didn&amp;#x27;t invade Saudi Arabia.</text></comment>