Actually, we are pursuing and destroying the enemy in Afghanistan. Again, this type of news seems to escape the notice of the mainstream media.

Obviously, it would not be a good idea to try and take over Pakistan. Other than that, the only thing we can do is keep back the Taliban and work with Pakistan on eliminating their hiding places over there.

Another issue that some people forget is that there were costs involved in "containing" Iraq as well. There were American lives lost, and billions of dollars spent in doing these things as well. Wolfowitz pointed this out in an interview:

Wolfowitz: Let me say a couple of things, Tim. People act as though the cost of containing Iraq is trivial. The cost of containing Iraq was enormous, 55 American lives lost, at least, in incidents like the Cole and Kobar Towers, which were part of the containment effort, billions of dollars of American money spent.

Russert: Was Iraq linked to those?

Wolfowitz: Absolutely. Not to the -- I don't know who did the attacks. I know that we would not have had Air Force people in Kobar Towers if we weren't conducting a containment policy. I know we wouldn't have had to have the Cole out there doing maritime intercept operations. And worst of all, if you go back and read Osama bin Laden's notorious fatwa from 1998, where he calls for killing Americans, the two principle grievances were the presence of those forces in Saudi Arabia, and out continuing attacks on Iraq, 12 years of containment was a terrible price for us, and for the Iraqi people it was an unbelievable price, Tim. I visited a village of Marsh Arabs, people who have been driven nearly to extinction by 12 years of Saddam's genocidal policies against them. They would not have survived another three years, much less another 12. We went to that mass grave, and the people who were buried in those mass graves, the people who were executed in this industrial style execution factory in Abugra (sp) prison, for them every year was a terrible cost, every year under sanctions was a terrible cost. So the question is, what did you gain by waiting? And I think one of the things that would have come by waiting, frankly, is more instability for the key countries in our coalition, including Arab countries, and unfortunately still prefer not to be named. But, we had the coalition we needed. We went to war. There was no knowing if six months later some of those countries would still be with us.

Doing this kind of thing for another ten or fifteen years would not have been cost-free, and the U.N. would never have the access they wanted unless our military was right behind them.