Now I get to make some comments as a Ranter! It's interesting that I get to agree with comments from both sides - I believe that Annifey's original point is well made. The President has been urging patience throughout the process despite having mucked it up at every stage of the operation - from launching an ill-considered war to begin with. How long are we to have patience with his leadership (or lack thereof)? How many muckups can be tolerated?
On the other hand, I also agree with Hatrack's point that "the enemy" has been quite patient. If we focus on the real threat to the United States (and the Western World in general) (would that the President had done so), we are in a long-lasting conflict, if low-level. I would not go as far back as the Crusades to explain it, but I think the point that "Islamic fundamentalists have patiently sought to conquer the world for Allah. They have been at it for about 1400 years" is correct. The factions we are fighting now trace their philosphical roots to the origins of Islam and the original schism between Sunni and Shi'a. They may have a skewed worldview, but then, nearly every world religion has gone through similar periods of conflict.
Focusing just on recent history, the current conflict has been brewing for decades, and, unlike our leadership, the terrorist leadership has had a long-term goal since at least the 1980's. We have been sidetracked, in my view, by giving them far more credence than they deserved, since they were a ragtag, fringe, criminal group without significant resources. By treating them as some monolithic world-threatening enterprise, and by taking our own skewed perception to the extreme and invading a nation for ill-conceived reasons we have provided them with momentum that they had lost completely by the end of 2001. Had we not allowed our focus to turn from Afghanistan in the first place, and kept our energies directed to the real threat, we could have had it contained years ago.
I have patience for a longer-term conflict, and recognize that our generation will be suffering the ill effects of this conflict (both the bane of terrorism, and the Iraq war) for the foreseeable future. I have, however, lost patience with our feckless leadership long ago. How many times can someone demonstrate their complete incompetence before they get fired? Apparently, the President believes indefinitely.
