sranion/ozzany and hoho - Afghanistan chose itself, when they hosted terrorist training camps, then refused to hand over Binny after the 9/11 attacks.

it's "self inflicted" as much as you all want to reinvent how we got into Afghania ..

they were irrelevant .. no they made themselves relevant, and we just won't let them slide back .. it will be decades if ever before we let them out of our sight again, it's what they deserve, not as individuals but as a society - we can't tolerate primitive tribal societies who behave this way .. we used to, but that's changed, it changed when they attacked the most powerful nation in the world, in their own backyard and this is the result - so no amount of whining will fix it. you pull the tail of the tiger at your own risk

It's like having some hopeless relative, you know the type, that you have to look after all their lives just to be humane or they self harm.

It's the same with countries like Afghanistan .. think of them as the idiot cousin or uncle, (well, like some of their supporters really who are likely on government support as well, centrelink, university grants, you know), and society has to look after them or they harm themselves or turn into hysterical idiots .. oh

we will add others to this list over time, we have the Solomon islands, ETimor, there will be others who we just cannot leave on their own. Think of it like taking children away from incompetent parents, or I'm sure you'll all prefer the "stealing" analogy, so in time these will be the "stolen countries", but they will be betetr for it and the ones around them

"These posts read like paid for terrorism apologist tripe"

now it looks right, more so after reading the terrorist supporting US hating tripe .. which quite frankly seems to overcome wanting to actually help people to hating the US more and anything they do, you froth at the mouth for the exact opposite

Spindoc,
Withdraw all Australian troops, advisers, helpers call them what you want. There will be carnage at first until the top dog whichever group it is, gains ascendancy. It will not matter if it is done now or years down the track, the result will be the same, and there will be civil war again until equilibrium is reached. It will save a lot of lives if it done now, our troops and civilians.
For a tutorial on this: see Viet Nam after the US had pulled out leaving the South Vietnamese in control. It did not last long.
Of course the CIA will have to source a new supply of heroin.
Now that was not too hard , was it? Even you can understand that?
By the way the time is: time to get out.

Amicus: the Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden before the invasion but the US did not want to know. That would not have solved their pipeline problem. See
http://www.hermes-press.com/Taliban_Oil.htm
http://www.guidetoaction.org/magazine/pipeline.html
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2114585

What possesses OLO to publish this rubbish. It is nothing more than an apologia for perpetual war by and on behalf of America.
In all the hype about the "killing" of bin Laden nobody is asking the obvious questions: for example, where is the proof the man they claim to have killed and buried at sea was bin Laden? No DNA, no visual identification, absolutely nothing. We are expected to just believe the Americans. If you do that you have an attention span shorter than a gnat.
There is a significant body of evidence to suggest that bin Laden died of renal failure in December 2001. He was buried in Pakistan according to a number of reliable sources. Of course, unless that body is disinterred we will never know because the Americans have hastily buried the body they claim in bin Laden at sea where presumably it is irrecoverable.
Doesn't the lack of DNA and the quick disposal at sea raise at least some questions? Apparently not, certainly not in the corporate media. I expected better of OLO rather than the rightwing claptrap that pleases Amicus and his ilk but hardly resolves the central issues.

sranio - yep, 3 conspiracy sites, really good sources of "truth" (/sarc) .. oh, how could I have been so wrong .. what is wrong with you, how do you even find these sites with their whacky theories. Do you think the UN supported the invasion, NATO all the rest?

jim .. go and google dna bin laden proof, and see what turns up - people are asking but probably not on the sites you inhabit, which I suspect are the "OMG some has been killed by Americans!" outrage sites.

it's in their interests to "prove it"

none of the prevous deaths were supported by official evidence, this one is .. and who would believe the Paki government on anything

oh and on OLO posting "claptrap" .. they publish your comments

Interesting discussion.
I agree that the original article is a defence of America's right to maintain its global supremacy by military might. OLO has every right to run this along with the other think pieces expressing other views.
One key factor to have emerged from this discussion has been constructive – that the US presence in the Middle East is primarily to ‘secure’ cheap petroleum products. I think this is critical to our understanding of this complex matter.
Other observations – some made in other articles here on OLO on this topic – include:
1. The fight between Al Qaeda and US security forces did not start with 9/11 in 2001. Barrack Obama claiming it did does not make it so.
2. America’s foreign policy as defended in the article is just not working. The USA today is close to a failed state, both economically and in terms of moral authority. The murder of bin Laden has hastened the demise of the latter.
3. If the US has no inclination to abandon its destructive foreign policy of military interventions to secure its economic interests, then at least Australia should abandon its slavish role as deputy sheriff.

Amicus, your ad hominen attacks are becoming tiresome. If you don't have the courage to come out from behind your nom de plume might I respectfully suggest you take a holiday from inflicting your views upon the rest of us.