So, which devil has rained more death and destruction down upon upon the mideast, the Taliban or the United States of America?

More importantly for us Americans, which devil has caused more harm to OUR economy?

So what if a nuclear armed Pakistan plummets into anarchy and becomes the next Taliban state. It's bound to happen anyway so we might as well embrace it and mitigate the damage elsewhere. Odds are they'd be limited to local nuclear attacks or selling it off to Iran, which as we all agree is not such a bad thing anyway. We'll just redraw our maps to label the whole region "Smokingcraterstan". Hey if they play their cards right they could free the world of the evil zionist menace and win big prizes with the liberals in the west.

...is because it was the Pashtuns that prevented them from taking Afghanistan. It was also mostly the Pashtuns that prevented the Soviets from successfully occupying Afghanistan. And it will likely be the Pashtuns that will prevent the US from doing the same. Will anybody ever learn not to mess with the Pashtuns? When left alone they spar with and kill each other. When attacked, they're given a reason to unite. They are a warring people and their way of life and reason for living has always been found in fighting.

As for the Pakis, they deserve what they get from the Pashtuns. They have always been and continue to be a double-headed snake when it comes to their meddling in Afghan issues. The British learned early on during their attempts to conquer Afghanistan that the Pakis are a bunch of untrustworthy scoundrels. Just about every account of the Afghan campaign written by a British soldier confirms this.

The Pakis created the Taliban so as to possess influence over Afghan politics after the Soviet withdrawal. But now that the US is waging a war against the Taliban, they have distanced themselves, at least on the surface. No doubt, they continue to support the Taliban on some level because without them they have no influence whatsoever in Afghanistan.

The vast majority of Afghans, including many Pashtuns, detest Pakistan precisely for their unscrupulous meddling in the affairs of Afghanistan. Witness most recently the bombing in front of the Indian embassy in Kabul. If not orchestrated by Pakistan itself, this move is obviously an attempt by the Taliban to curry favor from Pakistan as India just happens to be Pakistan's arch enemy.

Furthermore, the Taliban are not radicals unless you consider defending your homeland and your way of life (however repugnant that may be to outsiders) as something radical. Take a lesson from history and just leave the buggers alone.

rupert_c,

"So, which devil has rained more death and destruction down upon upon the mideast, the Taliban or the United States of America? More importantly for us Americans, which devil has caused more harm to OUR economy?"

So what...we should just stick our heads in the sand and hope they don't do anything HERE? That didn't work on 9/11. Makes me nervous when unstable individuals who preach a religion that can't wait to see God (or Allah) and that the infidel should be taken out, get their hands on WMD. Maybe you're ok with that but when someone doesn't value their lives (much less OURS) and can destroy on that level, I get really nervous.

BTW, I did see something where they found 550 metric tons of uranium yellow cake in Iraq, according to the AP. So at least we found something worth going in there to get anyway.

Well it's a toss up between the Russians, the Iraqis and the Iranians actually. With the Egyptians coming in a distant second place. If we look west from there the Algerians and Libyans have definitely killed their share. And let's not forget Sudan.

James T. Kirk

"Well it's a toss up between the Russians, the Iraqis and the Iranians actually. With the Egyptians coming in a distant second place. If we look west from there the Algerians and Libyans have definitely killed their share. And let's not forget Sudan.

There are numerous countries that hate the US. I don't worry about most of them because the sane ones KNOW we can tear them a new one, if need be. It's the insane ones who don't give a rip about living or dying that worry me.

Let us see....Pakis create Taliban in order to control Afghanistan in order to gain strategic depth against India (and be a major player in Central Asian energy game). They also create jihadi vermin like the Lashkar-e-toiba, Harkat-ul-mujahideen etc. to terrorise and kill Indians in order to gain control over Indian Kashmir and also to wage a low-intensity proxy war in the rest of India. They also plan and finance operations like highjacking of the Indian Airlines flight IC 814 in order to have three terrorists released. One of the three - Omar Sheikh- goes on to murder Daniel Pearl. The other forms another terror organization which, post 9-11, tries to murder Musharraf, their former paymaster (ha ha,the irony).A majority of Pakistanis support this approach, loooove the idea of jihad agaisnt the infidels in India, Afghanistan and the world, and donate generously for the cause. Now, that their chickens have come home to roost, pakis are justly reaping the whirlwind and are getting what they were dishing out to their neighbours. They haven't however given up on jihad as a tool of foreign policy, as evinced by yesterday's bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul where the Indian military attache was specifically targeted by a suicide bomber. I have the least sympathy for these pakis...may they be dammed!

If there were no USA and all the Saloniks had a drug fueled naked love-in as a result, those north Africans, middle easterners and west Asians would still be shooting, chopping, starving, raping one another.

For Pakistan's part - giving in to the Taliban keeps their own religious nutters off kilter and fuels a great deal of contempt away from the government and towards these other groups. Plus Afghans and Pakistanis have always hated and mistrusted one another. The Pakistanis see the Afghans as being more closely allied with the even more hated Indians.