Your very premise is offensive and odious: this idea that we can nation build with an invading army, and all “civilized” conversation has to revolve around weighing the pros and cons and engage in some morally detached chin scratching like the good Sensible people that we are. This sort of, “Oh I'm not one of those nasty neocons, devaluing human life. I opposed the invasion, but we're there now and aw shucks whatcha gonna do?” You're providing intellectual safeguard to the idea that we can continue to slaughter these people under the auspices of good intentions. I hate to break it to you, but many of us think anything short of an immediate, unequivocal withdrawal of all U.S. troops is an indefensible position. You want to “help them stabilize and rebuild the rudiments of civil society”? Great, get the U.S. Army the fuck out and Amnesty International in. I'm not sitting here weighing risks with you like we're starting a business venture, dick. And really? The man calling shots on the feasibility of an army sticking around in a country where the overwhelming majority of people just want us out is accusing others of armchair foreign policy? Project much? I'm so very sorry my tone was off-putting, but I suspect mostly put off because you don't like getting called on your bullshit.

“When the Soviets pulled out, we pulled out, leaving the guerrilla armies we backed as the only thing to fill the power vacuum.” Yes, so let's stay and continue backing the guerrilla armies. What awful, circular logic. Listen, we've irreparably, colossally fucked up Afghanistan, yet again. Your first mistake is assuming we (the invading army) had the Afghans best interests at heart. We don't. They're pawns to us just as every other Middle Eastern (or while we're on the subject South American) nation is a pawn in our quest for neoliberal hegemony. All we're after is a power structure favoring U.S. economic/foreign policy, the people's will be damned. While we speak the U.S. has resumed funding the violently oppressive Bahraini regime to crack down on the democratic uprising we claim to love and support so darn much. But hell, let's assume for the sake of your argument we're the “good guys.” Even pragmatically speaking there's no making this right, and certainly no making it right through a military occupation fueling the very same tribal insurgency you want to avoid. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy and self-justifying philosophy of a military power stoking the flames of chaos and using that fire as an excuse to remain and “put it out.” And if by some miraculous chance things settle down over a short period, the “surge” is working and we need to stick around. Heads I win, tails you lose. Is it any fucking wonder this is the longest war in U.S. history?

It's really going to be problematic to argue that harboring terrorists makes you “the enemy,” given that the U.S. Government openly and defiantly harbors known terrorists to this day:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_Bosch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Posada_Carriles Now I'm guessing none of you are in favor of Cuba invading Miami, launching drone strike on Washington D.C., and calling it collateral damage when they kill dozens of U.S. civilians for a couple of alleged terrorist conspirators. Moral relativity is a remarkable thing, ain't it? No, the problem with Biden isn't that he's wrong, it's that he's full of shit. Al-Qaeda is practically nonoperational in Afghanistan, a couple hundred members left, tops. We're fighting the insurgency (aka, a bunch of Afghans who want us to get the fuck out of their country), including the Taliban. We are most certainly using drone strike to specifically target alleged Taliban leaders. So it's understandable why these soldiers are angry and confused with the double talk. None of this is to say that the Taliban aren't a destructive, awful force in the region, but let's stop pretending the U.S. has any problem with tyrannical elements in the Middle East. Shit, we materially support most of them. And maybe if we got the hell out of the region, Afghan civilians would stop flocking to the largest group of armed militants fighting our presence out of a very understandable survivalist impulse.

This was also an act of activist theater in solidarity with the impending raid on Occupy Boston. No, it's not “doing” anything tangible (not like Occupy Our Homes giving families back their foreclosed houses), but we can have some harmless fun and demonstrate the absurdity of the police state. Plus it generates headlines and keeps the movement going.

Full quote is “Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top al Qaeda leaders who have been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement or WHOEVER ELSE IS OUT THERE. Ask them about that.” And by appeasement, I can only assume he means due process. I know we all get raging freedom-ons when someone shouts terrorist, but if you had a problem with Bush merely tapping your phone calls without a warrant, how do you justify extrajudicial assassination of an American citizen (Anwar Aw-Alaki) without so much as presenting a shred of evidence before the American public? Also, I thought we all hated this cowboy bullshit posturing when Bush did it.

Sigh…fine, I'm gonna be the overserious jerk: The observation Daily Show and Sam Bee made was very much true, and was a real problem we were trying and continue to try and address. But the underlying premise of the joke was flawed. She suggests that Liberty Square was recreating the flaws of the larger society, as opposed to the class divisions created outside naturally manifesting in the park. The key difference between Liberty Square and the outside world? Every single person in that park REGARDLESS OF SOCIOECONOMIC BACKGROUND was given free meals, free healthcare (physical and mental health workers), free education (library/teach-ins), and free internet/electricity (powered by 14 bike generators before NYPD trashed them). Petty factionalisms aside, that one block by one block patch of land is the greatest community I've ever been a part of, or at least it was until some rich prick got his hired goons to tear it down.