quote:

ORIGINAL: susan34B

You never learn,do you?You went into Vietnam....to protect them from Communism...and lost.Now it's Afganistan...nobody has ever won against Afganistan...ever.It's a lost cause;they don't want Western ways,leave them to their own devices.It's time we all faced the truth...we've lost...let's get out now.
All the so called War on Terrorism is achieving is creating more hate against the Western countries involved and fueling the terrorists hate.
Too many people have died already and the loony pastor has just made things worse by his stupid actions...i wonder what his feelings would be if they burnt the Bible?/the American flag?
The politicians(of all countries involved) should realise that they've lost and that getting out now might just be a vote winner.
The days of the US making other countries conform to their way of thinking are as long past as the British Empire...at least we realised the truth and learnt to live with it.

quote:

ORIGINAL: rulemylife

quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

So you support "Dubya's" nation building strategy then, RML?

Did I not just answer this?

Scroll up a bit Richie so we don't get repetitive.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Aneirin

Governments only listen to the electorate when they want to be elected and even that is only feigned listening for they have other ideas that is why they want to be in government and when they are complete in government they join their buddies and tell the electorate what to do.

Governments do not serve the people, they exist to police us.

SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.

In order to gain a clear and just idea of the design and end of government, let us suppose a small number of persons settled in some sequestered part of the earth, unconnected with the rest; they will then represent the first peopling of any country, or of the world. In this state of natural liberty, society will be their first thought. A thousand motives will excite them thereto; the strength of one man is so unequal to his wants, and his mind so unfitted for perpetual solitude, that he is soon obliged to seek assistance and relief of another, who in his turn requires the same. Four or five united would be able to raise a tolerable dwelling in the midst of a wilderness, but one man might labour out the common period of life without accomplishing any thing; when he had felled his timber he could not remove it, nor erect it after it was removed; hunger in the mean time would urge him to quit his work, and every different want would call him a different way. Disease, nay even misfortune, would be death; for, though neither might be mortal, yet either would disable him from living, and reduce him to a state in which he might rather be said to perish than to die.

An excerpt from the pamphlet Common Sense by Thomas Paine

quote:

ORIGINAL: hlen5

quote:

ORIGINAL: popeye1250

....We'd have much better results using chemical and biological weapons, find their water supplies and poison them, ...... poison gas, subterfuge, that way they don't know where and when it's comming from like they do with large concentrations of Troops. ....

Popeye you have GOT TO be kidding.

We have posts around the world for a reason, the quicker to deploy as needed.

I won't argue it's time to leave Afghanistan but I DO believe Powell, If you break it, you bought it.

It was all well and good to arm the mujahadeen against those pinko commies. Then we abandoned then to the tender mercies of the Taliban. There should have been a Marshall Plan for Afg. 40 years ago. Funny how the dominoes keep falling.