How can all you fucking brainiacs read this blog for years and still not understand the Golden Rule? Don't you have a bunch of sources to prove why the principle of "treat others as you wish to be treated" is so important when it comes to torture but can be completely ignored when it comes to our "worse than occupation" in Afghanistan?

Thanks again, Amity.

The irony for me is that I'm far closer to your vision of the world than that of ondelette, though in addition to having the U.S, pull its troops out immediately, I'd also have it pay massive, massive reparations to the people of Afghanistan. But I cringe to see your arguments - if your multiple sequential "and another thing" ad hominem comments are worthy of the name.

The problem, of course, is that you can't make an intelligent critique of American empire, because you're not intellectually curious enough to do any study on the subject. Reading is for "super smart" eggheads like ondelette. You've figured out that it sounds good to say "America is bad," and then nothing's left to do but attack, ad hominem, anyone who says differently. I can understand the choice: it's easy, convenient, and you can name-drop people like Chomsky and Tariq Ali as if you understood their critiques.

I believe the U.S. can't unshit the bed, and that pretty much every choice going forward will cause great death and destruction. On balance, I think America's only moral choice is to exit immediately, and make herculean efforts to ameliorate what devastation may follow. But I don't say this blithely, because any deaths that follow will also be on America's butcher's bill. I just think that staying involved is more morally perilous.

I personally think that this isolationism - while couched in anti-war terms to make it palatable - masks a form of racism. :)

Of course you do, because you're an exceptional moron. Let me guess, your "save the world from itself" mentality and the Imperial Hubris that enables it, backed by the most powerful military in the world, isn't a form of bigotry, but the desire to change our foreign policy so that we no longer mass-murder civilians for fascists is. Amazing logical reasoning skills you have on display there.

You people and your intellectually bankrupt "ideas" are something else. We've been overthrowing Governments for over 50 years and installing puppets to pay ball with big business, and anyone who opposes it is a "racist isolationist" and we need to focus on bullshit fairy tales about the shiny city on the hill, the burdens that come with being the arbiter of freedom, and how the word might really be sorry if the great Pax Americana weren't there to maintain "Law and Order". Absurd.

Most of the readers here can evaluate comments posted by others, and don't need you to interpret for us.

Why not tell us what you are doing to "change our foreign policy so that we no longer mass-murder civilians for fascists"?

The problem, of course, is that you can't make an intelligent critique of American empire, because you're not intellectually curious enough to do any study on the subject.

That's total bullshit, I've read and studied more than your sorry ass probably ever will. Would you like me to drop more names? Maybe I can take some lessons from your hero omooex on how to constantly brag about myself on the Internet?

You don't think I've studied the American Empire and don't offer a critique? Whatever, I've backed up my "critique" many many many times, asshole.

And here I thought I was the one that engaged in all the ad hominem attacks around here. It sounds like you don't do enough reading, dumbfuck. Go cry more about pathetic and powerless you feel, you fucking coward.

Why do you even try? Wouldn't it be more fruitful to get onto the redstate forum, or the free republic forum? That is true even if you are into masochism. But you might actually educate some minds over there.

I probably should find another forum. I thought, given how much time it took to compile a lot of this, that it would be of interest. Besides, if the goal is eventually to bring the troops home from Afghanistan, something stable is going to have to be created there, the international community will not countenance a failed state continuing there, nor will Europe or Iran or the Gulf States countenance the sky high levels of heroin production.

I was very proud that when I read the introduction to Ahmed Rashid's book, which he titled, "Imperial Overreach and Nation Building". I had managed to piece together everything that was said there, drawn every conclusion myself. Not bad for someone still struggling with first year Hindi, whose sources are limited to years of document reading and contacts from Pakistan and in India and hasn't had the chance to go to Pakistan and Afghanistan to document for myself.

But this isn't the place, I agree. I can't even get a few sentences of what I have learned out without getting attacked by fact-free know-it-alls. I'd even be willing to see others take what I've put together and use it to argue a completely different point of view. But if even the facts just get cat called and insulted, what's the point? There won't be any end to the prison practices in Afghanistan. These anti-war people would pull the troops out and leave the prisons and torture there, totally blissfully unaware that there's anything below the surface. And the pro-war people, everyone here knows they fully approve of the prisons and tortures. And if we pull out and leave? Twenty years will go by, and someone from the West will have cause to go there again. And they'll write cute little stories on antiwar.com about how those prisons are part of their culture, and have been like that for these simple tribal people for thousands of years. I agree, it's racism.

The irony for me is that I'm far closer to your vision of the world than that of ondelette, though in addition to having the U.S, pull its troops out immediately, I'd also have it pay massive, massive reparations to the people of Afghanistan.

Too right. And they could make a start offering useful practical reparations by having ondelette and other war supporters like him rendered down for axle grease and for weather proofing Hessian sheeting very useful in Afghanistan. That would help wouldn't it?