Fionn:

Sure, I agree with you. But I think it ought to be stressed that acts of wanton violence laid on a foreign land resulting in mass murder are different in qualityy and nature from the deaths of children for want of clean water supplies. America did not provide the water supplies of Uganda. The fact that we have managed with a lot of sweat to more or less manage our own does not make us the perpetrators of that offense.

To a certain degree it is in incumbent on local residents of an area to improve it to make life better, or at least sustainable. If they don't get organized enough to do that, they can walk over the mountains or suffer where they are. I don't see how expecting the US to fix the planet on all fronts is a solution.

If the "war" takes a lifetime it will not be the war in Afghanistan; it will be the "war against terrorism". Slavery, as has been pointed out, took a century to eradicate in the west. If terrorism as a practice is to be eradicated, much as piracy once almost was, it will take decades of extended program, not just a pissant bombing campaign.

A