Secondly, the war does not worth it. The war has killed numerous youth full of vision and dreams. While majority of your people are sitting by there computers or playing soccer, this americans that actually know what true freedom feels like are having their heads blown up by fighting their azz off against the crazed portion of your race. So why don’t the U.S. send you M-1 garandes and m-16s and your people fight your war. About the suicide bombers, fight fire with fire. Liberty and freedom comes at a price. Instead of U.S. paying the price. Why don’t u guys do so. If you guys get suicide bombed, then suicide bomb the Talibans and all the other azzholes. And also this War may be ended temporarily but never forever for those crazy people pops up everywhere like crazy. So if you guys really wanna get ride of those extremists, make a concentration camp (not the Nazi or the Stalin ones ) where they work and eat good meals and get payed fairly.aka make an excluded society of those maddened retards.

This might be best for everybody involved, since the harm is done and the Iraqi Government is corrupt and incapable to work as is.

Denise, some of the best minds in the world have grappled with this question for years now without coming to a clear and internationally acceptable understanding of what it means. I’d be curious to hear your definition.

While you’re at it, how does this “war” compare to other (metaphorical) wars, like the war on “drugs” and the war on “poverty” — two problems that have produced far more misery and suffering and deaths at home and around the globe than “terror”? Do you think it will be more successful in the end than those other vaunted American political projects? If so, why?

Also, how does the U.S. release of Luis Posada Carriles on bail, despite his being wanted for a crime of “terror” that took 73 lives in an airliner bombing, fit into your understanding of the US GWOT? Would you support a raid and kidnapping by the special forces of another country to whisk him from Texas to a closed detention centre in Cuba for interrogation for five years with no charges being laid, no visits from family or friends, no access to the protections of Cuban law?

This article of yours would be just perfect as a “Reader’s View” submission to a paper like the Idaho Statesman. idahostatesman.com

(1) I do, in fact, hold a U.S. passport in addition to my NZ one. My (Mormon genealogist) family traces its roots in North America back to before the colonial revolution. Like many early settler families, we also (claim) to have a spot of Amerindian blood connecting us to the indigenous population of “America” that was so nearly destroyed by Euro-American disease and genocidal policies. I also have Norwegian, Alsation, Lithuano-Prussian and Bavarian forebears who came to the US in the 1830s and 1840s, plus Irish immigrants from the 1870s. If you require a U.S. pedigree of anyone that you will discuss American history with, then I definitely qualify, however much I wish I didn’t.

(2) I am a teacher, not a cattle or sheep man, living in one of the most urbanised countries in the world. You should have at least a smidgen of knowledge about something before you use it as the basis for a racial/ethnic stereotype and slur.

(3) If you operate on the principle that only the citizens of a country have the right to talk about it, then I would expect you to have nothing to say about Iraq or Palestine or Venezuela… or New Zealand. But I’m sure that’s not how you think. You, as an American, seem to feel you have a right to speak authoritatively about any other people or place, despite the near total lack of relevant knowledge – historical, cultural, linguistic, religious, political….

(a) I assume that you have a healthy skepticism about “spin” – the self-serving way that government officials articulate and disseminate information/propaganda to us, the people. you may also harbour a deep distrust of the government as a matter of principle. if so, you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that the government always misrepresents the cost of american militarism in a few basic ways:

1. in arguments of this sort, they include social security in the overall budget, instead of excluding it as a “locked box” trust fund that stands outside the government’s budget (check your next payslip and you’ll see that FICA insurance and income taxes are separate – the government cannot touch SS, it is not part of the government’s operating budget, it is a self-paying public insurance deposit fund);

2. they exclude the cost of servicing the national debt, which is almost entirely the result of US wars and military expenses. you almost recognise this when you say that 70% of post-WW2 taxes have been spent on debt. ignoring the source of the debt reveals that your thinking about this point isn’t comprehensive enough;

3. the ancillary costs of US militarism must also be added to the military-related budget, including the on-going educational and life-long health costs that are given as special perquisites to those who are willing to fight and kill in america’s hegemonic project.

altogether, it is estimated by critics (and not just gore vidal) that in peacetime about two thirds of your income taxes go to the military machine and its debts.

(b) alaska and hawaii were late (white) settlement colonies of the united states; they were seized and colonised for security reasons related to control of the pacific and the expansionist aspirations of japan and russia/soviet union. in this they are analogous to south africa in british history, except that the indigenous populations were more thoroughly disenfranchised and/or exterminated in the cases of hawaii and alaska. the fact that you don’t think about america-the-colonial-empire playing catch-up by overpowering and destroying pre-existing nations and peoples during its last 200 years of imperial expansion once again suggests the propagandising power of the U.S. educational system and media. think “iraq invades and annexes kuwait”; now think “united states invades and annexes northern mexico/hawaii/alaska/cuba/philippines ” (so many, many examples to choose from).

(c) of course i am talking about income redistribution – it’s at the heart of any humanistic approach to the threats against freedom and fairness inherent in unrestricted wealth accumulation.

the other questions – your answers to which all sound as if they were written off the top of your head without any recourse to, or background in, scholarly literature or political-historical analysis – have similarly complex dimensions to them that “talking points” style answers don’t even begin to address.

I would like to ask: are you more interested in understanding historical and social processes that involve the united states, or are you really just wanting to defend america blindly because you love it?

May be Bush should ask the House and Senate to make a constitutional amendment so that he can run for a 3rd term and a 4thterm and keep this war going.

May be that will give enough time for your fucked up Iraqi parliament to come back from recess. Obviously they have been working real hard to do absolutely nothing.

Iraqi’s should fight for Iraq. Unfortunately there is no spirit in you people. The only people who have any fight in them are the terrorists and their Sunni supporters. And thats a shame. And the US should not be held responsible until all you morons fall in line.