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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (532022)	11/24/2009 1:44:06 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574450

I didn't say it was small, I said it was a much smaller part of our economy than the cold war was. The cold war went on much longer, but when your measuring compared to the economy, more years for the war just gives you more years for the economy, so you can compare different length time periods without having to make an adjustment. The cost (again in comparison to the economy) for the cold war was much lower toward the end than it was in its earlier or middle parts, but it was still noticeably higher than the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan. In other words, as I've already stated, the peace dividend would be smaller. I see Afghanistan as something we can deal with at a much lower casualty cost (or dollar cost as a percentage of our economy) than Vietnam. But if you want to look at Vietnam as an example, the insurgency in Vietnam had been marginalized before we left. South Vietnam fell to a conventional invasion after we abandoned it (not just pulled out, which we had done earlier, but dropped air support and even just resupply). There is no communist North Afghanistan with a large army ready to take over.