Geoff of Perth
<every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed - Dwight D. Eisenhower">

Why are these people hungry and not fed in the first place? Is it America and the western nations fault as is insinuated in these posts. No. It is the fault of their own corrupt and fundamentalist religious and centuries-old thinking, leaders.

Why? have the leaders from these starving and deprived countries who are members of the United Nations, (where incidentally they now have more numbers than the Western Countries)never stood up in decades past or even in the present to ask for the one thing that would have turned the fortunes of their countries around (like China's birth control policies)to ask the rich nations for family planning and medical supply clinics for the women. This would have helped insure the survival of the babies they did have and helped limit over large families thus preventing the situation where there are just too many mouths to feed.

Answer- These male leaders simply do not want to empower women. Had they done this even 2 or 3 decades ago the population of the world would now more likely be at maybe 3billion instead of 7billion and rising.

The pressure of too many mouths to feed and people to sustain for a lifetime is simply overwhelming the planet and these fools still won't change their mind-set..
The population pressure also drives all the wars we see happening at the moment. Like the territorial dog fight we are witnessing in Palestine and everywhere else where there is conflict.

Stop blaming Western countries for the problems in other countries. We are not their nanny, having to pick them up and look after them because their leaders are too stupid to do it themselves

Rexw
<of course, we all know from reading Murdoch that we are fighting those evil Taliban (natives of Afghanistan...they live there...it is their country) with the al Qaeda myth is no longer fashionable>

I was under the impression the Taliban come from Pakistan. They overran Afghanistan and took control. They imposed such a cruel regime of Moslim fundamentalist law that even though the Afghanistan people themselves are Moslem they were glad when the Americans released them from the tyranny of the Taliban.

The Taliban from Pakistan and religious nuts who have joined them are hell bent on taking control of the Afghanistan people.

As to this article, I agree that it hasn't done America and Australia much good to be involved in this war. The death count is too high.

One good thing however is that while the Americans have been in charge the girls of Pakistan have been going to school for the last 6-8years. So by the time the Americans do pull out at least they will have had some education. And as is well documented, when you educate only the boys of a country nothing much changes for the better, but when you educate the girls of a country everything changes for the better.
So maybe there is some brighter future for Afghanistan there. But these religious Pakistani Taliban thugs with guns, may destroy even that small gain if they can not be kept at bay. Of course when the Taliban stronghold of priests or Imans was first captured by the Americans they had Pornography sites all over their computers. Holy Men. Right!

Rexw
<Whether you naively believe Afghanistan was involved in 9/11 or are a part of the intelligent majority who view 9/11 as a Bush conspiracy, one fact is inexorable. >

I am not seeing the writings of any intelligent majority here.

In fact I am reading a lot of things I see as factually lacking, showing no insight and nieve.

Maybe it is a case of we are the only sane people in our street syndrome.

sorry should have typed the Afghanistani girls are going to school in my second last post.

I said it ten years ago I still say cit today.

What should hav happened was for the allies to form a syndicate and hire 200 crack pot soldiers, pay them all $1 million up front, then another one mill when both th leaders were captured or killed.

Just think how much better off we would be now, both financially and, how many lives would have been saved.

The truth is slowly emerging even though the presstitutes continue to spin the official lies.

Afghanistan is on an important route for oil and gas piplines from Turkmenistan.It also has over a $ trillion in Lithium deposits needed for the battery industry.In 2001 the Taliban had stopped the production of poppy seeds and there was a world wide heronine shortage.Now Afghanistan producues 90% of the world's heroine.The local Taliban produce it to buy weapons from the arms dealers.They get a pittance as primary producers while the middle men make enormous profits.

There is no intention to end the wars since money can be made in arms,uniforms,drugs,medicine for injured soldiers/civilians and even coffins when they die.There is also the profits from the theft of energy and resources.Then of course for countries that have their own independant banking system,that creates new money debt free,there is the ability to replace it with this international cartel of central banks that milk countries dry.

The criminals now control our Western De-mock-racies.What are we going to do about it?