John Wayne and Snakes

"A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do." Supposedly that was said by John Wayne in a movie. I don't know what movie and I really don't know if he ever said it but I believe the basic premise of the statement to be true. What's this got to do with snakes? Ever since 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan I've been trying to come up with a way to demonstrate how I view the situations and why I believe one to be right and one to be wrong.
Let's suppose you buy a house and move in and shortly after moving in you discover that the house is inhabited by a couple of snakes. What kind? Whatever. What snake scares you the most? Rattlers, Black Mambas, whatever. For the sake of argument we'll just use the general descriptor "snake" but with the understanding that these are venomous, nasty critters. You think about this development and come to the realization that you're a fairly liberal minded person. You realize the snakes were actually there first and you're a live and let live kind of person so you resolve to live together in peace and harmony with some other of nature's creatures.
This goes along fairly well for a while, but nature being nature your family increases in size and so do the snakes. Now you see them more often in the house and as time goes by the house is getting crowded and its difficult to move without encountering each other and one night it finally happens. You get bitten. You call the ambulance, you get to the hospital and treatment is successful this time but now you have to make a decision. Its you or the snakes. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do and so do snakes. A snake will bite you eventually. Its what they do. The snakes have to go. Period. They have to go.
That's how I see the situation with Afghanistan. Osama and his people are snakes, they're multiplying at an alarming rate, they're living HERE in our "house" and they have to go. Afghanistan is their main nest. Its where the snake leaders are and that's why we need to be there cleaning out all the nests of snakes we can find, mercilessly, swiftly and surely. We didn't do that though. George W. Bush wasn't happy with cleaning up the snake pit that is Afghanistan.
Which brings us to Iraq. Iraq is full of snakes as well. Saddam Hussein was one of the worst snakes you'd ever encounter in your lifetime. There's one problem and one major difference, though. All of Saddam's snakes were in one place. They were not living in "our house" and they really were not going anywhere. All we had to do was take care of the snakes in Afghanistan while keeping an eye on the snakes in Iraq. If some of Saddam's snakes had done something that indicated they were going to be more of a problem we could have acted against them, but they didn't. We spent so much time, money, energy......and lives in Iraq that we lost sight of the snake nests in Afghanistan, we didn't kill the snake leader there, Osama, and now things there are out of hand. The war in Afghanistan was NECESSARY. The war in Iraq was OPTIONAL and we spent way too much on the wrong one and not enough on the right one.
My son is now in Afghanistan. I believe in him, his mission and the need for the mission but I can't help but wonder: If George W. Bush hadn't been such a lying asshole and done what should have been done from the start maybe my son wouldn't have to be there now.
Gotta go. There's a John Wayne movie coming on AMC.
That's the View From The Mountain. What do YOU think?