Wow, it would be nice if our leaders had the wisdom needed to confront these issues. The only compliant
radical muslim is a dead radical muslim. Expecting them to change just illustrates the definition of insanity.

World war 2 was the last war that the west fought with a determination to win. Even Israel who vowed, "never again" are walking blindly to another holocaust. We are now so intoxicated with easy living and having it all, that we can not even begin to make the sacrifices needed to guarantee our survival. Our enemies have control of our economic survival and could crush us economically at will. Just shut off the oil and we are pretty much done. Just imagine if 3-5 american carriers were destroyed in fairly short order. With the amount of enemies with increasing numbers of submarines, someone is bound to get lucky. Our western ROE's hamstring us. Look at the recent Russian dealing with the Somali pirates. "We let them go as there was no way to prosecute them. We don't know what happened to them but they died after we let them go" We prosecute our soldiers for killing the enemy, (Cpt. Semrau). oh well not much I can do about it. Rant off.

mike

The last century was notable for the massive bloodshed by Europeans fighting other Europeans . . . euro on euro violence.

This century is shaping up to be notable for excessive muslim on muslim violence, with centuries old tribal conflicts erupting but now fought with modern weapons, shia killing sunni, persian slaughtering arab.

Since the decadence and internal liberal rot of the western democracies continues to reduce their ability to actively defend themselves, they should instead encourage their muslim enemies to turn against each other, to expend their murderous tribal or imperial energies killing each other and not us.

The brutal reality of the Clash of Civilizations. The Great Game always continues, whether we like it or not. We play the game, whether we like it or not. To cede the game to our enemies is to ensure western civilization will be overcome and fade away.

You know, if you asked any front-line plug in the Canadian Forces about this issue, they'd tell you -exactly- what Glavin said. I've heard enough soldiers gassing off to know that.

Their officers, off the record, would say the same things. On the record, they would make noises similar to those of the UN boffins responsible for this freak show.

Everybody knows what needs to happen. No one is going to -do- it. Because it isn't politically feasible. It is better for The Powers That Be in our Western countries to allow two million Afghans to die than to allow OUR armies to kill a few thousand Taliban murderers.

If Amrullah Saleh is correct, liberals are about to allow -another- megadeath event. Its only been 16 years since Rwanda, but that's so far down the memory hole its out of sight. For the UN anyway.

Liberalism is a death cult.

Yeah, we have the Liberal/NDP Left and the Bloc Separatists and whatever else they encompass, all steamed up over accusations of torture from the Taliban "detainees", killers of our troops, cruel to the core bastards. They simply don't get it, we fight them there or fight them here, Muslim extremists will continue their lifestyle of constant conflict among themselves in their theocracies and anywhere else they can get to as terrorists.

Fine bunch of Canadians to be dissing our troops fighting and dying at the hands of these creeps of humanity. The entire opposition in this country are perfect examples of the inability of the Leftist brain to process a reasoned thought.

Meanwhile the world sits by while Iran continues barbaric stoning women to death....

From Glavin's post:

"The best and clearest articulation of the nature of the war in Afghanistan as it specifically relates to humanitarianism, can be found in an urgent declaration that has come our way, signed by several dozen Afghan intellectuals, poets, journalists, and academics. " (Italics mine)

Er, wouldn't that normally be enough to disqualify any statement as valid here? Or are Afghan intellectuals, poets, journalists, and academics somehow superior to Canadian ones?

Will we ever learn? Why can't we learn from history, from past mistakes? Of course, Barak Obama is not concerned with history, he is beyond that, these were the wars of our fathers, crusaders, all. History ends with him. (and of course that's why we worry!)

Like the Romans, we will wile our way through various pleasures and political intrigues while our world will collapse and be taken over by the barbarians.

Hey Kevvie, unlike Canadian intellectuals the Afghan ones are anti-Taliban and thus on our side. Plus they run the risk of actual physical harm for asserting their views, unlike Canadian intellectuals, who only run the risk of mild heartburn from eating too many hors d'oeuvres at fetes in their honour.

"...the cost for you will be bigger".

If we were not in Afganistan, and if we had sensibly banned all Islamic immigration to Canada, the cost to us would be zero, zilch, nada, nothing.

We never needed to deal with these people, in the past or present.

So maybe we should bring millions of Afghans to Canada? (just the moderates of course) Put them in Toronto, they got social justice there and they would show well in the International Diversity Olympics.

"It is better for The Powers That Be in our Western countries to allow two million Afghans to die than to allow OUR armies to kill a few thousand Taliban murderers."

So your solution in Afghanistan is to 'kill a few thousand Taliban' and presto...everything is ok?

"We never needed to deal with these people, in the past or present."

Ignoring the billions of dollars in trade of course.

Jane Fonda would be proud.

And if we killed 10,000 Taliban today tomorrow we would face 10,000 Taliban. We're not fighting an army we are fighting an ideology which we are thoroughly unwilling to fight let alone destroy. So far all our fighting has done is further entrench that repugnant ideology.

"We're not fighting an army we are fighting an ideology which we are thoroughly unwilling to fight let alone destroy"

Agreed. However, the ME ideology that the US and its allies have been fighting for decades is nationalization. The interests that be do not want oil rich nations to take control of their own resources. Radical Islam is an expression of the frustration of decades of suppression.

Rubbish, BTJ. Saudi Arabia has plenty of control of its resources and still funds terrorism. Invest in the Alberta oilsands and screw the Saudis.
It is an ideological battle, though, and it still stands that the Taliban should be destroyed. If you were an Afghan widow, would you side up with charity workers who treat you kindly or the Taliban who throw acid in girls' faces?

It will be Cambodia all over again.

Let Afghan women and young children immigrate to Canada. The men can stay there and play out their feudal games. Remove their ability to reproduce.

John Galt at August 21, 2010 9:38 PM Let Afghan women and young children immigrate to Canada.

______________

Surely you jest.

The main reason Canada needs to get the heck out of Afstan is that when that country inevitably collapses we have little to do with it as possible, so that we have as few obligations to take refugees here as possible.

We cannot save these people because they don't really want to be saved, the protestation of several dozen "intellectuals, poets, journalists, and academics" notwithstanding.

Imagine 100,000, 200,000 or even 1/2 million Afghans coming to Canada.

Osumashi Kinyobe at August 21, 2010 9:22 PM

You said it!

Not to mention oil for food programs. Why are we giving billions of dollars to these tribal butchers, then our own resources for pennies on the dollar if not an outright handout?

We have the food & medicine they need, It's time to start using it as the trade resource that it is.

Stop all Islamic immigration and ban Sharia in all western countries! We have allot to trade.

Knight99 - spot on :D

Kinyobe - No offense but no one cares about an Afghan widow. What difference does it make whose side she's on? She can produce nothing to aid either side...well...children but that's basically it.

To be honest we're wasting our time in Afghanistan. We don't need literate female voters in the country. We need militarized young men, children even to fight the taliban, defend their cities and prevent pakistani meddling. Child soldiers are immeasurably more useful than some literate afghan feminista.

The few countries that are actually willing to go out and fight cannot handhold Afghanistan into the 21st century. They speak so proudly about being the graveyard of empires and resisting the Soviets. If the peasants of Afghanistan aren't willing to stand up and fight then just leave them to die.

There is much merit to M's post, knight's and phantom.

BJT and Galt not so much. The Taliban to not respecty the Geneva Protocols, the UN or the Red Cross....Despite bitter resistance these animals have been crushed many times by many players.....Alexander, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane to just name a few.

These "intellectuals, poets, journalists, and academics" are doomed marked men and know it....you know it.

The Mujaheddin wore the Russians down with extermal support...from Pakistan. This is the current source of the Taliban support......Iran as well.

Winning is do-able but not with defeatism here....much like Viet Nam. The Russians lost the ability to support the war....much like the US they were not defeated but withdrew in good order.

The key to Afghanistn is to round up the "Taliban Jacks" here....a policy which would resolve many of OUR problems here.

I'm not always going to judge someone by what they can do for me, M. Maybe I'm a softie but the idea of some Taliban animal throwing acid in a widow's face turns my stomach.
Tie in to eliminating the Taliban: make no deals with them and give them nothing. Even if young men willing to fight the Taliban could be turned out, it still leaves the necessity for an intelligentsia to educate the masses, hopefully in ideologies that aren't rooted in complete lunacy.
Just my thoughts.

The troll asks: "So your solution in Afghanistan is to 'kill a few thousand Taliban' and presto...everything is ok?"

Yep, pretty much. Basically drive around the country looking after the women and children like humanitarian aid NGOs want to, but with big f-ing guns. While out tooling around delivering aid, you kill anybody that shoots at you. Eventually all the peckerheads dumb enough to shoot at soldiers and NGO aid types will be dead, and it'll stop. Particularly if we blow up a whole bunch of Iranian ships delivering arms to the Taliban. And maybe a few N. Korean and Chinese ones too.

Its called war, troll boy. It works pretty good when done properly.

Or we could do what you leftist morons want, which is leave. Then if the ex head of Afghanistan security forces is right, a couple million innocent people are going to die real soon.

I know this is a hard concept for you, so I'll explain it this way: a couple thousand is less than a couple million, and people who don't shoot at you are nicer than people who do.

Thems are your choices. Shoot back, or run away and abandon people to murderers. Choose.

"Saudi Arabia has plenty of control of its resources and still funds terrorism."

What!? Saudi Arabia has as much control over their oil as the US will allow them to have. As long as they fall in line with US interests they have control, but only if.

"Invest in the Alberta oilsands and screw the Saudis."

ME oil and Alberta oil are not comparable. Oilsands is an incredibly inferior source of petroleum. The EROI is 2-4:1 for oilsands, ME oil is 35+:1. Oilsands has a low maximum daily production too, due to the nature of extraction.

That aside, concentrating on Alberta oil will not make ME oil disappear. The Saudi's will have not trouble finding other buyers. The US's concerns are about control over what is one of the greatest prizes in the world, not just satisfying one's energy needs.

"We need militarized young men, children even to...prevent pakistani meddling."

Halting funding might be a good start.

"Child soldiers are immeasurably more useful than some literate afghan feminista"

Useful for what? This is a pretty sick statement.

"There is much merit to M's post, knight's and phantom.

BJT and Galt not so much."

Haha, right, of course! Let me guess, cause you agree with them?

"The Taliban to not respecty the Geneva Protocols"

You mean like the one that forbids wars of aggression? I see, so everyone EXCEPT the US should respect Geneva...right, got it.

"Winning is do-able but not with defeatism here....much like Viet Nam."

You don't really know too much about either wars do you? No need to answer, you already have.

"The key to Afghanistn is to round up the "Taliban Jacks" here....a policy which would resolve many of OUR problems here."

Right, easy as that! You're genius! :S

The solution to Afganisthan is to pull out and close our borders to all Islamic immigration.

We need to round up all heroin addicts in western countries and drop them in some Afgani poppy fields. Problems solved, everyones happy.

Well anyone that matters that is.

"Yep, pretty much. Basically drive around the country looking after the women and children like humanitarian aid NGOs want to, but with big f-ing guns. While out tooling around delivering aid, you kill anybody that shoots at you. Eventually all the peckerheads dumb enough to shoot at soldiers and NGO aid types will be dead, and it'll stop. Particularly if we blow up a whole bunch of Iranian ships delivering arms to the Taliban. And maybe a few N. Korean and Chinese ones too."

Wow, give this guy a medal, an absolutely remarkable plan...just one thing, tell me, what do we do once WWIII has broken out?

"Thems are your choices. Shoot back, or run away and abandon people to murderers. Choose."

If only life were that simple, I apologize, I can't have a conversation with someone who dulls down everything into the realm of grade two math.

" The solution to Afganisthan is to pull out and close our borders to all Islamic immigration.

We need to round up all heroin addicts in western countries and drop them in some Afgani poppy fields. Problems solved, everyones happy."

So you are taking the stance opposite of most others here, to leave...and on top of that, we should close our boarders and open up Afghanistan's for immigration of Canadian citizens...in the form of say a yearly round up of drug addicts?

Wow, the reasoning in here just keeps getting better...venturing into the realm of that of a, well, small dead animal. :)

Give drug addicts free drugs, as much as they want. Crime will significantly reduce and they'll OD themselves out of the population.

OT
the world sits by while Iran continues barbaric stoning women to death....
Not only that, they also cut the thieves hands when the main thieves sit comfortably on their government's jobs.

Yeah, our corruption isn't as blatant. We hide it behind lawyers and lobbyists.

@ Osumashi Kinyobe

You know to hear women who need to self-immolate to get out of bad relationships is awful. So are acid attacks, and gang rapes, and stonings. The question is what can we do about it? What exactly is our strategy there? How are we going to end all those awful things?

A woman in Canada can be a mother, a CEO, a tradesman, a soldier, basically anything she wants to be but a stay at home mom. A woman in Afghanistan is worthless unless she's willing to pick up a gun. Which she won't do on account of that whole barely seen and never heard thing. The whole '60s era liberated woman bs isn't gonna work there. It didn't even work in Iran, protesters aren't treated with kid's gloves like they are here. What good is pro-democracy rally if the whole movement gets curb-stomped in a weekend? The whole girls-going-to-school crap is just so that we in the west can all give ourselves a collective pat on the back.

The thing is is that they have a primitive backwards economy and a formative nation at best. They really have no history of unification the way we do except for tribal council meetings that loya jirga or whatever. They have to either fight for the formation of their state because only with the pooled resources can they resist foreign well funded enemies like the Pakistani ISI or Taliban and maybe not even then.

Right now it's not about democracy and helping people read and understand various plebiscites. It's about forming the basic aspects of a nation. I just don't get the sense that they want to do that. Yeah they want us there, at our expense, throwing them free swag from our APCs then watching them drive into a buried artillery shell. We're so very lucky in the sense that our nations went through this stuff centuries ago but that's the deal. AK-47s all round or start honing those acid dodging matrix ninja skills.

Elle>

Check out the recent Saudi story about medically severing a guys spinal cord so that he becomes a parapaligic as punishment for a fight he was in. Apperently he used a cleaver during the fight, to paralyze his accuser, and Sharia allows his "victim" to pick the punishment. An eye for an eye.

Personally I could give a rats behind about this idiot, but realize this is what's coming our way for justice. Not that the punishment dosen't fit the crime, it's about all the crazy Liberals in the west who accuse and finger point over nothing.

"Useful for what? This is a pretty sick statement."

You know, for some odd reason this comment makes me genuinely....hmm....happy? Yes I do believe it does! So I just had to say that! :D

If i could +rep you I would! Thanks buddy!

Phantom>

Don't get me wrong about pulling out our troops statement. I have no issue whatsoever with rolling over the country with galactic battle ships vaporizing anything that runs. Just the way god intended war to be.

My point is in agreement, that you don't fight a "war" on half measures. The loony Liberals want our troops there as some adrogonuse

Phantom>

Don't get me wrong about pulling out our troops statement. I have no issue whatsoever with rolling over the country with galactic battle ships vaporizing anything that runs. Just the way god intended war to be.

My point is in agreement, that you don't fight a "war" on half measures. The loony Liberals want our troops there as some androgynous sissy girls, to hand out flowers and take it up the ........ from these filthy cave dwelling pedophiles..

Why are we there if not to kill them? Worse they want to bring them here to give our kids and communities some one on one "cultural enrichment".

So as I said - pull them out and close our borders.

Knight ... splain ...
adrogonuse - no dictionary results

Otherwise, let me get this straight ...

If all western countries stop fighting the Islamic lunatics and come home ... Muslims will then proceed to kill millions of themselves after we're gone?

Why are we still there? Really? ...

All kidding aside, this sounds like a stalemate of epic proportion ... like the two Lazarus' locked in eternal combat at the juncture point of two universes that will collapse if either enters the other ... you may or may not remember that Star Trek episode ... it was called "What of Lazarus".

I say "what of our troops"?

Abe>

Definition - Finger slippage on iPod, which creates premature SEND.

See follow up post directly below it for full comment.

M: " I just don't get the sense that they want to do that ."

Seldom, has a more ignorant statement been made. You really don't have a clue, do you?

BJT is limited to simplistic dismissal and ad hominum attacks.
He overlooks his ignorance of both Viet Nam and Afghanistan. Decades back his mentality condemned a $hit-load of Vietnamese to murder and torture.....

The US lacked domestic support because of his ilk much like the Soviets lost domestic support/ability to continue.....Neither the Soviets nor the US were defeated militarily, they withdrew in good order.

The BJT, Galt axis condoned the slaughter of millions during the 20th century and are bent upon continuing that trend in this century.

The Taliban like the NVA and VC observe NO ROEs....but the loony lefties enforce ROEs upon our forces.
It is just as simple as that.

The Taliban/crazies talent pool is finite...the lefty policies may enhance it. Atrician limits the talent pool.....suicidal extremists are a minority.
Throughout history suicide attacks have been evidence of desperation.....the Japanese Kamakaze was a last ditch, desperate policy....as have other suicidal policies......

I recommend "The US Army *Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual" by Petraeus, Amos and Nagl...published by the Chicago University Press. While you may not agree with it's conclusions it is edifying to the uninitiated as to the many aspects of the subject.

It's may be like an atheist reading Thomas Aquinas perhaps but it will make you think...which is always good.

Just think of the reasons given as to why "we" went there in the first place:

Anti-American, anti-George Bush. Anti-Canada as we know it to be, in a nutshell. By Liberals and the NDP and the BLOC - all rainbow marxists hell-bent on destroying this country and it's institutions, any way they can.

Just look at those old photos of stick-out-like-sore-thumbs forest green camo and tell me that the Chretien Liberals didn't want to kill off our own troops, or the Iltis jeeps - sardine cans for transport and the sell-off of Chinooks to the Dutch - so our guys wlk down mainstreet, cannon-fodder for IED's.

They then agitated for "bring the troops home" after they lost the election, now it's "we gotta stay or there's gonna be a massacre". Well, make up your minds which is it?

Meanwhile they tie our troops hands with stupid, bureacrat-led Rules of Engagement and then accuse them of "war crimes", try and hang an officer for murdering somone who was already dead or just about to be and expect "us" to vote for their "compassion" to all things good - to a Marxist.

The Canadian elites in government, plus their pampered employees are at war with Canada the concept. They prove every day how much they HATE this country and what it stand's for.

Explain to me why boatloads of Tamils, Lebanese, Somalis or whomever, wash up on our shores with their hands out? They bought the ckoolaide of what we are, while our marixt elites wish to bankrupt this country and it's institutions so they can "rebuild" the place in their image. Hell on Earth a Gulag.

Well said, po'ed. The comments by the trolls here are the damning proof.

I take the liberty of quoting from a considerable and lengthly statement by Richard B. Fadden, Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

" So why then, I ask, are those accused of terrorist offences often portrayed in media as quasi-folk heroes, despite harsh statements of numerous judges? Why are they always photographed with their children, given tender-hearted profiles, and more or less taken at their word when they accuse CSIS or other government agencies of abusing them?

There are a number of telling points made on this subject, I can only add a few choice words of my own.

The media and it's knee-jerk reaction against authority. The very flabby jokers who scream blue murder if anyone dares appear to threaten THEM. Of course any definite and concise view that hits them hard is construed as a threat.

@ cjunk

Well I don't know, the Iraqis wanted it. They allied their own crazed islamic militias with the US and patrolled their own streets.

What kind of partnership do we have with the afghans? A corrupt government who is disliked by the populace and carries out election shenannigans. We have regional self-interested warlords with their own fiefdoms.

Lets face it it's been ten years Canada is pulling out and NATO was never particularly interested in fighting to begin with. Now under Obama the US is pretty halfheartedly in the war and may not be for longer. The fact of the matter is that time is moving against them, I think that if they don't start forming their own militias to defend their own towns they're screwed. We're running around building schools and putting out fires rather aimlessly. What was our definition of victory to begin with?

M:

1. Millions of Afghan children and their parents risk their lives daily to attend school; especially the girls. Thousands of teachers do the same. And, even after attacks, they go back. They, "want to do that."

2. Millions of Afghans cooperate and assist ISAF troops daily, knowing full well that they can be targetted and killed at anytime for their cooperation with our guys ... that cooperation includes disclosing the whereabouts of thousands of IEDs and Talib cells. They, "want to do that".

3. The Afghan police, although often corrupt, have lost by far the most members of any organization to Taliban hits ... they have died in the many thousands. Yet, they come and volunteer and many run stable communities. They, "want to do that".

4. The Afghan military, although poorly run simply because most adults can't read, still is making slow strides, and this eventhough thousands of Afghan soldiers have been killed ... far more than ISAF soldiers killed or wounded. They, "want to do that".

5. Millions of ordinary Afghans cooperate daily with ISAF in establishing infrastructure, setting up informant networks, staffing ISAF organized community orgs, and especially NOT supporting the Taliban. Among these are many female run organizations whose members are regularily murdered, yet they continue to push on. They, "want to do that".

Further: For a country that doesn't even have enough educated adults (yet) to run a bureaucracy, great strides have been made ... not by the Afghan government, but by freedom and peace craving individuals who cooperate with ISAF; and they number in the millions.

Iraq, under Saddam, became a modern educated state with a middle class, modern military, and modern bureaucracy ... you can't compare Iraq and Afghanistan as a result.

My point is that Afghans, for the most part, are running as fast as they can to modernize ... and they do want peace and DO NOT want the Taliban. Most of them support ISAF, and especially Canadian forces in the South. Most of their organized movements are structured toward more personal freedom, not less; less fundamentalist Islam, not more.

Blaming the people by suggesting they don't want to modernize, is a game played by those who are ignorant of the facts, or just simply don't like dirty uneducated peasants, or hate all Muslims ... instead of hating Islam.

The nuke'm all attitude is the flip side of the liberal "hug'm all" mentality. Both are based on ignorance, the one hopelessly naive, the other almost psychopathic.

Knight 99, I think the biggest problem we are having is that we are not fighting in the right place. The war in Afghanistan is not with Afghans for the most part. Its really with the people who are arming and supporting the Taliban.

That would be the Saudis, the Iranians, North Korea and probably China. Maybe a bit of Syria in there too. Russians? Possibly.

Many of the enemy getting chopped over there are -foreign fighters-. They aren't Afghans. They're from Saudi, Pakistan and some are from Western countries... like Canada! Whee!

If NATO pulls out, those forces will do any damn thing they want. They'll be killing women in the market for not putting diapers on the tomatoes, or for putting a sheep next to a cucumber.

All bought and paid for by non-Afghan interests.

To my mind, it would be more effective to follow the money and blow up the place it comes from. During the Cold War there was some excuse for this kind of thing, but absent the Mutually Assured Destruction of Russian nukes I can't see a reason not to shoot some Arabs and Persians at home, instead of shooting them in Afghanistan.

Canada of course is pretty well useless in this scenario, we don't have proper armed forces. I can't really imagine what it would take to mobilize this country either, to build up what's been lost.

Tying up Western conventional military assets in a global backwater like Afghanistan in a futile nation building exercise is a good strategy when you are the Wahhabists, vying for the hearts and minds of (the most primitive) one quarter of humanity. The materialist West, mired in a depression for the next decade, bankrupted and under the thumb of ruling class elites who are busy hollowing-out their multi-culti nullity's of civilizations are laying a fertile cultural vacuum for the Islamists to infest. There is no stomach for the losses of Western forces from the required multi-decade supervision of civil life in a place where even the "democratically elected" leader cuts deals with the "invisible" enemy. These campaigns have morphed into politically directed boondoggles, similar but unlike Vietnam, where the ROE prevented a clearly winnable military war (one example: 85% of North Vietnam was within range of the Iowa class Battleships which were not allowed to sail North of the DMZ). The "military" (as opposed to nation building) war ended with the fall of Baghdad in Iraq and it never started in Afghanistan. The present (even worse than his predecessor) CoC isn't competent to read a teleprompter and yet there is faith in his abilities to correctly do the right things in the wrong place at the right time? But in the big picture, this is nothing. Wait for the nuclear ME war to break out under his watch.

Here's a few tidbits on Afghan sit:

- most of the Taliban fighters are not Afghan, many are Pakistani of course, and Chechyan, for example, too.

- humanitarian efforts are impossible without a robust military force to protect them. Even if we cease offensive military operations, that requirement remains. Or do we abandon the country altogether?

- Europe has been doing the military mooch for far too long. Let them do the heavy lifting for a while, it is in their backyard after all, not ours. We (USA and Canada) are there because US was attacked and we are on the hitlist too. Europe has been attacked too, but prefers to live in denial (until a really big attack that is).

- When (not if IMO) we withdraw, we will have to resolve that zero tolerance of any terrorist formation, training, financing etc will be the order of march. Don't occupy, come in with force when necessary (oh, sorry about the collateral casualties but Taliban Jack wants us out), then leave.

- speaking of Taliban Jack, he and his ilk have done everything in their power to undermine any form of military mission in Afghanistan, including trumping up "war crimes" BS against our troops' meticulous handling of "detainees." They then trumpet "it's not working, it's a quagmire, bring the war criminals, er, troops, home," when the mission is starved of resources and eventually, resolve. Then they give themselves a big BZ, while righteously ignoring the coming slaughter.

- apparently it's wrong for US, Canadian troops to inflict casualties on the enemy, but OK for the "sovereignty" of Afghanistan if foreign players, enumerated abundantly, slaughter civilians by the hundreds of thousands.

There's alot of idiocy posing as argument on this issue; cherry picking argument doesn't change that.

"BJT is limited to simplistic dismissal and ad hominum attacks."

I'm guilty of ad hominum attacks? The guy who is constantly called a 'leftist', 'anti-Semite', and thus has his argument rejected is guilty of ad hominum attacks? HAHAHAHAHA! you're too much friend.

"He overlooks his ignorance of both Viet Nam and Afghanistan."

Please, show me the way oh great wise one, where was I wrong?

".Neither the Soviets nor the US were defeated militarily"

The US was up to its neck in the guerrilla war of Vietnam.

"The Taliban like the NVA and VC observe NO ROEs....but the loony lefties enforce ROEs upon our forces."

The US is an occupying national military force, the Taliban is a group of guerrilla's. Are you suggesting that the US should shoot anything that moves? If so you got your wish, the thousands of incoming private military contractors tend to do just that.

"Just think of the reasons given as to why "we" went there in the first place:

Anti-American, anti-George Bush. Anti-Canada as we know it to be, in a nutshell. By Liberals and the NDP and the BLOC - all rainbow marxists hell-bent on destroying this country and it's institutions, any way they can."

Huh? The US went to Afghanistan because of 'anti-American', 'anti-GB'? What are you talking about?

"tell me that the Chretien Liberals didn't want to kill off our own troops"

This is absolutely ridiculous...retarded...they didn't want to kill off our own troops.

"Well said, po'ed."

I would have asked po'ed if he suffers from a mental disability...his post was hardly legible and completely irrational.

"Europe has been doing the military mooch for far too long. Let them do the heavy lifting for a while, it is in their backyard after all, not ours. We (USA and Canada) are there because US was attacked and we are on the hitlist too. Europe has been attacked too, but prefers to live in denial (until a really big attack that is)."

Actually, it's because the US displaced Britain as the controlling nation in the ME after WWII.

Look cjunk Canada is out and the brits and dutch are wavering. How much longer will America go it alone? No one cares what risks any of them suffer to help us. Yeah little girls doing math warms our hearts but the mission isn't just killin taliban and handing out care packages is it? We basically need to build a nation where none existed while not occupying them. That's how we win and that is an insane herculean task when the Saudis and Iranians are far bigger threats. We shouldve just fired a few thousand cruise missiles at them while flipping them the bird. Now that we're in there we got all their hopes up for nothing. Even if we did have the gumption we don't have the cash let's face facts.

Also I don't disassociate muslims from islam because the problem is Mohammed himself. Islam is the history of mohammed without him you have a boring judeochristian sect. Ask a muslim to disavow himself of their founder yeah right. I'm not convinced that a reformation can even succeed in that light. Yeah its not fair to pass judgement but even a lot of non jihadis are caught up in idiotic identity politics. Israeli apartheid week anyone? So yeah we massage our sensibilities and fret about separating the chaff from the wheat while women in europe get raped, christians in turkey get murdered and jews get bullied and killed. That last part isn't new though. At least we can sit around sipping our bordeux and be ever so nuanced and sophisticated though

BTJ, you need to get a clue, your arguments are gibberish.