http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/psp.pdf

(IG Report on the President's Surveillance Program)

If your "goal" is to weaken non-Sharia governments, then I'd say you have no goal at all. Where would that stop? Which governments in what order? And according to what rubric?

That's a fair argument, but it's different from just "disorder for disorder's sake," which is what I thought you were asserting before.

I do understand the pitfalls it transliterating a non-Roman alphabet, but there's at least the common ways of writing al-Qa'ida. You hit most of them in your post, but random ones like Al Queda kind of irritate me. Al Queda is a Mexican-American used-car salesman, not a diffuse Islamist terror network.

Mainly I was just looking to start a conversation about something rather than watching the standard set-piece day-old-thread pissing contests.

YOu've obviously put a lot of thought into that response, and its obvious that you've put a lot of thought into your beliefs. So I'll read this a little later today and hopefully respond to it when the time that it deserves is available. Look in my archive at some point between today and tomorrow for the answer.

I appreciate when people do this, even if I don't necessarily agree with them, because any intelligent debate is constructive, even if it only makes an individual have to hone their own thoughts. Just keep in mind that that is not what you [or I] are engaging in when you engage some of the usual suspects here.

It is functionally "disorder for disorder's sake" if your stated goal is a mystical fantasy. But I didn't make that connection clear, so you're right. Listen to that lecture I included in Skiddo's post, its really thought provoking.

I admire your jumping in with an interesting debate. I have to go now though...

My specialty by training is complex and chaotic dynamical systems. In system after system, when the networking ties become too inevitable and strong (when the coupling between non-linear degrees of freedom becomes inevitable), the system moves to a complex system generically (generic means something that is true on a dense intersection of open, dense sets in a Baire space but never mind, here it means typically, and usually (but not always) it means close to almost always).

Beautiful, love it. So many words so little meaning. "but never mind, here it means typically, and usually (but not always) it means close to almost always)".

"the system moves to a complex system generically (generic means something that is true on a dense intersection of open, dense sets in a Baire space but never mind, you're too thick so don't you worry your pretty little heads about it. Leave all the thinking up to me. Because I've got a big large head filled with stuff.

More hubris from the humanitarian chickhawk.

Funny how nobody ever discusses how the Afghan Military "interacts" with American citizens, or how we would react if some other major power decided to "interact" with the United States the way the United States "interacts" with Afghanistan.

The good neoliberal chickenhawk must have forgotten that it is our military that is mass murdering Afghans, and not the other way around. It is us who do all the "interacting" in this relationship, whether they like it or not. They have no choice in the matter, it is all about what smart internationalists and neolibs perceive as a necessary step on the path to some tolerant utopia pipe dream: where the weather never changes, where one can hold a massive global government accountable for crimes, and where war is fought lawfully, by the rules. Houses will also be made of sustainable candy canes and gumdrops in this fantasy world of the future.

I don't see the Afghan Government "interacting" with American citizens in 1/1000th the degree the US Government is "interacting with", i.e. killing, Afghans, but if they were "interacting" with us in the same way, and therefore were dropping bombs on remote "villages" in TX, killing scores of Americans, ondelette would be cool with that because its a modern neoliberal world and that is how globalized countries "interact" with each other.

I agree with your clarification on Afghanistan. While Iraq was just a U.S. venture, our entry into the Afghanistan conflict was approved by the U.N and an agreement by NATO alliances. That is why many in the U.S. support the efforts in Afghanistan and not Iraq.

Then it seems, the U.S. intelligence is not alone in the capture of so-called terrorists in Afghanistan who were eventually sent to GITMO (sorry easier to spell). At what point the CIA got involved in all this is questionable, since The CIA operates on it's own.

Also the goals of the U.S new fores is different, but how effective is it going to be is questionable.

Beautiful, love it. So many words so little meaning.

How would you know what it means? You are the one who once bragged that he skipped school and hung out all day smoking, harassing those who would have been his school mates.

You are not qualified to say anything about math or physics, yet you believe you have a superior wisdom.

And we all know how you respond when anyone says you are wrong, contrary to how you wrote recently that you would respond if ever you might be.

Posted before:

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/AllDocsByUNID/d9fb1f92f03c0facc1256e3f003d4697

As of 2004, 3 million Afghans had returned home, 3 million still remaining outside Afghanistan.

The US and the Soviet Union, not having let Afghans muddle through their problems, but making it infinitely more lethal by arming one side or the other, over the 1970s and 80s, have a moral obligation to set things right there.

The US neglected to do that in 1990 and then neglected to do that in 2002. We can hope it does it right the third time.

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The obligation, for the libertarians among us, is as follows by analogy, if you've been profiting by slavery, then simply stopping slavery is not enough; you have to make up for it, and yes, that includes taxation.