Reply #14: Good questions, all. These questions transcend US political parties and international borders.

[iconicgnom]

Sometimes, when we're not flopped on the couch drinking beer and watching the telly, Canadians ask WTF our military is doing there as well. Not often of course, since it's really such little concern :sarcasm:

It was one thing going in there over the objections of the Afghan gov't to take out al Qaeda bases. It's another thing to apply "regime change" logic and force a so-called "western" system down the throats of the general population.

al Qaeda wasn't Afghanistan's gov't, however objectionable we might've found the Taliban fundamentalist regime, how offensive it was to women, in particular. A way to put it in context is, how much more offensive is the Taliban than the despotic Islamic monarchy of Saudi Arabia? Is it more offensive that the Taliban leadership actually practices the religion they enforce whereas King Saud and playboy Prince Bandar and other Bush personal friends don't, but just enforce the extreme fundamentalist Wahhabi religion to oppress the people? Was Afghanistan ever more a hotbed of al Qaeda activity or cells than Saudi Arabia? Is Pakistan *really* an al Qaeda threat, or is it just that in the general war, the general invasion of the occupying powers, the Pashtun people indiginous to that large transnational region tend to stand together in their resistance - having family, economic, social, religious and political ties from time immemorial?

Should we not redefine Bush's bloody war, fine tune it just a LITTLE EFFING BIT, so it actually does target a threat to the "west", rather than the entire religious culture of the middle east?

Oh hell, and bloooeey on the entire mess of an interminable mid-east ideological war based entirely on lies from the get go and which continues to gain support from lie after lie. It's too early in the morning, and I wouldn't want to offend a DUer by indicating that I'm actually concerned about the direction the US might take re. escalating the bloody thing in coming years, taking their sidekick Canada down the trip to Bagram along with it.