So apparently a prison in Wisconsin has banned Dungeons & Dragons for it’s inmates. First off, someone will say that they are convicts so they don’t have a ‘right’ to anything but that is a debate for another time. What I find interesting is the rational given for the decision. Via the article:

Dungeons & Dragons players create fictional characters and carry out their adventures, often working together as a group, with the help of complicated rules.

Ah yes, sounds frightening indeed.

Singer, 33, has been a devoted player of the fantasy role-playing game since he was a child, according to the court ruling. After the ban went into effect, prison officials confiscated dozens of Dungeons & Dragons books and magazines in his cell as well as a 96-page manuscript he had written detailing a potential scenario for the game that players could act out.

Prison officials enacted the ban in 2004 after an inmate sent an anonymous letter expressing concern about Singer and three other inmates forming a ”gang” focused around playing the game.

Singer was told by prison officials that he could not keep the materials because Dungeons & Dragons ”promotes fantasy role playing, competitive hostility, violence, addictive escape behaviors, and possible gambling,” according to the ruling. The prison later developed a more comprehensive policy against all types of fantasy games, the court said.

So, I assume the prison will also ban any Christian groups and confiscate bibles shortly as well correct? After all prisoners form ‘groups’ around the bible and the bible encourages animal and child sacrifice, misguided salvation delusions, and slavery among other things.

Of course the judge ruling on the matter takes the cop-out I tried to head off at the beginning.

”After all, punishment is a fundamental aspect of imprisonment, and prisons may choose to punish inmates by preventing them from participating in some of their favorite recreations,” the court said.

If indeed the role of prisons is to make the prisoners miserable shouldn’t they also be denied their religious texts, practices, and groups as well? Just wondering…

via Ed Brayton apparently some silly woman got her children’s school to pull the dictionaries, yes dictionaries from it’s library because it contained “sexually graphic” definitions. I really hate when adults, and in particular parents, freak out like this. It is absurd. Do the majority of adults cuss? Do the majority of adults engage in sex? Of course they do. What exactly are parents hoping to accomplish by shielding children from such things? It is a natural part of life, get over it. There is nothing ‘yucky’ or ‘wrong’ about it.

Given the fact that everyone learns about these things eventually let me ask you this. Would you rather have them learn about it from a factually correct, responsible source or from hear-say and rumors? More knowledge and teaching only enables kids to make better, informed decisions rather then stupid misinformed ones. Like kids that think that you can’t get diseases from oral sex and then end up with AIDS. Or they think they can’t get pregnant when the moon is in the right phase. Such nonsense, and it’s far more serious consequences, come about because parents deny their children decent education and make a big todo over the fact that their kids might *gasp* learn about perfectly normal human behavior that pretty much the entire human population engages in.

I mean if we are worried that merely knowing of such things will compel kids to go out and try it then we might want to remove the words ‘murder’ and ‘fraud’ and all the rest from the dictionary too. Apparently learning about killing someone is okay but learning about sex is an evil corrupting influence. Time to grow up a little adults.

Kind of a follow up on the previous post. I was reading a Christian review of the movie The Book of Eli here. While the review itself is about what you might expect I wanted to address some of the religious arguments that arose in it’s comments section. One comment basically said “On what philosophical basis can our culture believe in one supernatural being and yet condemn another?” and another replied that the reason to condemn one and not the other was to look at what each faith teaches. (the two faiths in question being Islam and Christianity) Commenter Francis W. Porretto claims:

We have some written evidence of the life, teachings, and works of Jesus of Nazareth, whom Christians believe to be the Son of God. Those records are not conclusive, but nothing in them has ever been shown to be fallacious.

I assume he is talking about the bible which has been shown to be a very erroneous book. Of course it could be argued that he wasn’t really referring the bible here, it is difficult to tell given the context so we can give a minor pass on this one but then he goes on to say:

If the scriptural records are correct, this is what Jesus of Nazareth actually said and did:
1. He preached a message of Divine love and forgiveness, and a greatly reduced set of Divine requirements for human conduct;
2. He offered hope to the downtrodden of Judea for their perseverance in faith and humility;
3. He counseled those who followed Him to love, charity, forbearance in the face of insult and oppression, and trust in the goodness of God;
4. He performed miracle after miracle, healing the sick and raising the dead;
5. At the last, He accepted a horrible death, in testimony to the truth of His message and to redeem Mankind from its sins;
6. He rose from the dead and commissioned His Apostles to “Go and teach all nations” of His message of Divine love and redemption.

Not one of Jesus’s teachings conflicts with the dictates of secular justice as Americans understand them. By contrast, this is what Muhammad, the Prophet and Founder of Islam, actually said and did:
1. He claimed to have been granted a revelation of the Immutable Word of God, whose prescriptions and proscriptions apply to everyone but him;
2. He dismissed all other faiths and their adherents as “infidels,” inherently inferior to Muslims, and to be subjugated by Muslims as it became possible;
3. He advocated conversion by the sword;
4. He personally led several bloody campaigns of conquest and loot, including against communities with which he had negotiated truces;
5. He commanded the killing of prisoners of war and the enslavement of the women and children of conquered districts;
6. He counseled the use of deceit and dissimulation in the advancement of Islam.

Anyone who still can’t see which of these creeds is superior is not quite anchored in reality.

Ah, cherry picking at it’s finest. Of course I can compile an equally accurate list that shows exactly the opposite:

Christianity Teaches:
Animal Sacrifice (Genesis 8:20-21, Exodus 20:24, Exodus 29:11-37, etc)
Selling your children into slavery is okay (Exodus 21:7) and slavery in general (Ephesians 6:5 and too many to count)
That women who are not virgin on their wedding night be put to death (Deuteronomy 22:13-21)
That women should be subservient to their husbands (1 Peter 3:1, Colossians 3:18, Ephesians 5:22-24)

Islam Teaches:
You should give your wealth to family and poor people and set slaves free (2:177)
A person should respond to evil acts with good ones (28:54)
Don’t lie. (2:42, 22:30, etc)
Feed poor and unfortunate people (22:28)
That men and women should live together in “love and mercy” (30:21)

So… anyone who still can’t see which of these creeds is superior is not quite anchored in reality. Right? Objectively speaking neither faith shows any kind of moral superiority to the other. They are both a mix of good, bad, and indifferent as you might expect from ancient fables written by a privileged class.

Going down through the comments discourse descends even further into religious quackery. Honestly I don’t know how these people can consider such obviously flawed arguments persuasive at all. I have seen more compelling and logical debate among 8 year olds about which Pokemon is best.

Went to the movies and saw The Book of Eli recently. (major spoilers below) For those that don’t know it is basically a post-apocalyptic story about a guy, Eli, who is on a mission to deliver that last remaining King James Bible to a place where it can be reprinted. Before seeing the movie I read some reviews and viewer comments and ran across a few that said that atheists would hate it because of its pro-religious message. I was dubious of those claims and saw it anyways because 1) The claims were all made by believers, not atheists, 2) It’s just a movie after all, I don’t feel I have to shun something just because I don’t agree with it and 3) I felt the best way to find out if their claims are true is to go see it and find out.

Read the rest of the entry »

So Ken Ham is crying about a joke someone made using Jesus. Other then the whole free speech thing ,nobody is obligated to suck up to your silly beliefs Ken. Christians like to pretend they are the most oppressed group in the world when in reality they are easily the most pampered and protected. They have been so pampered and protected they they assume it is their RIGHT to not be offended and everyone must follow their beliefs in order to not offend them.

Ken also trots out the old “he wouldn’t say that to a Muslim” gambit.

Can you imagine what would happen if Krauss dared mock Mohammed or Allah, or the Islamic religion in some way?! He would probably be fired from the university, let alone face all the other problems he would have in any backlash—yet secular universities seem to allow Christianity to be mocked and for God to be blasphemed—political correctness obviously applies to how people treat other religions, but not to how one treats Christianity.

The whole notion that people only pick on Christians and not Muslims is ridiculous. People criticize and mock Islam all the time. P.Z Meyers does it on a regular basis and has yet to be fired from his university for it. And when people do skirt Islam it is usually out of fear of some psycho reacting with violence, not out of ‘political correctness’ where people are just being respectful of Islam.

The Christian Anti-defamation commission recently published their list of “top ten incidents of anti-Christian defamation, bigotry and discrimination in the US from last year.” The EthicalHedonist has an excellent debunking of their foolishness here. Most are of a similar vein, that if a person is associated with a group thye hate then it is an attack on Christianity. For example:

7. The Claim: The overt homosexual participation in Obama’s presidential inaugural events by “Bishop” Vickie Eugene Robinson, the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington D. C., and a homosexual marching band.

Which essentially is saying that the existence of gay people is an attack on Christianity. This really gets on my nerves when Christians play the persecution angle like this. I’m sorry but the rest of the world is NOT obligated to follow your ethos and the simple existence of people unwilling to share your views and join in your cult isn’t an ‘attack’.

The truth is that Christianity is the most coddled religion of all time and gets the biggest free pass of anything. If a politician or celebrity claims to be a Christian nobody blinks, nobody questions him on it, nobody cares. If a they claim to be an atheist or Buddhist or Muslim they immediately draw scrutiny and usually come under fire. Christians have their religious symbols plastered all over government buildings, currency, in anthems and just about every place imaginable and yet they are the poor oppressed ones? They have churches on every street corner and have their holidays celebrated throughout the year and I am supposed to believe that they are getting the short end of the stick?

The fact that you are allowed to practice your rituals and preach your religion means you are free. Christianity is owed nothing more then that. Not respect, not acceptance, and not deference.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.
- Albert Einstein

So the basic story is that a woman was raped and imprisoned by her co-workers/employers and for the longest time couldn’t take legal recourse against them because part of her employment contract basically said that you couldn’t take “workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.” Yeah, stupid that it could even be a stipulation, I mean since when can you override criminal law with an employment clause? Anyways Senator Franken sends out a bill that says that is BS and that the government won’t hire contractors that engage in those kind of shenanigans. Pretty common sense eh?

Now the twist is that when the billed passed, all 30 ‘no’ votes against it were Republican men and as you might expect people were questioning them saying WTF is up with that guys? You voting to say raping your employees is okay? Then the funny thing is that Republicans accuse Franken of essentially tricking them, of setting them up to look bad and he hence can’t be trusted among the good ‘ole boys. I mean seriously guys, did you even read the bill? I mean if you spent 10 seconds reading it you should have realized that A) this makes sense and B) we are going to look like major assholes if we vote against this. It is almost like Republicans see a bill and go ‘Oh, a Democrat proposed it, guess we should vote no’ without ever actually looking at it. And they are the ones that crow about lack of good faith bipartisanship? Give me a break.

They say things like:

“Trying to tap into the natural sympathy that we have for this victim of this rape — and use that as a justification to frankly misrepresent and embarrass his colleagues, I don’t think it’s a very constructive thing,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said in an interview.

“I think it’s going to make a lot of senators leery and start looking at things he’s doing earlier on, because I don’t think it got appropriate attention ahead of time.”

In a chamber where relationship-building is seen as critical, some GOP senators question whether Franken’s handling of the amendment could damage his ability to work across the aisle.

….

“I don’t know what his motivation was for taking us on, but I would hope that we won’t see a lot of Daily Kos-inspired amendments in the future coming from him,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, No. 4 in the Senate Republican leadership. “I think hopefully he’ll settle down and do kind of the serious work of legislating that’s important to Minnesota.”

Really? So telling companies that no you can’t bypass the law and rape your employees because of a contract isn’t serious business and is “Daily-Kos inspired”? And someone needs to tell Senator Cornyn that Franken didn’t embarrass you guys, you embarrassed yourselves. I know the current Republican party is a bunch of maladjusted morons but this is truly the apex of idiocy.

Myself, like most sane people I think, consider the civil rights movement a good thing. I also happen to be against a lot of these ‘hate speech’ laws that are going around, especially overseas and in the UN in regards in particular to criticizing religion. People should have the freedom to say what they will, even if it makes them out to be a jerk. Interestingly though these tend to be polar opposite positions and brings up an interesting conundrum. Some Libertarians are against civil rights, not because they are racist or anything, but simply because they hold that people’s freedom of choice should trump all. That if a business owner doesn’t want to serve someone, for whatever reason, it is within their rights to do so. I can sympathize with this in spirit but can’t bring myself to support it in practice for two important reasons.

First, and most obviously for both the situation of civil rights and for hate speech there is a difference between criticism / denial of service to a person for something they choose (ideology, religion, etc), rather then something they are (race, gender, etc). While refusing service to someone because they are say, Arabic strikes me as wrong, refusing service to a KKK clansmen strikes me as sending a good message. Likewise with so called hate-speech. I am not in favor of regulating criticism, especially of things people choose, but limiting hate directed at what people are seems reasonable to me. This is where the ‘religious tolerance’ laws fall off the track in my opinion. Even though religion is something people choose, it tends to be so much of a persons identity that they conflate it with something they are, which is not the case. This is the strongest and most clear delineation to me but I wast recently thinking about it in another way.

Besides the moral reasoning above, I think some Libertarians get in wrong about the civil rights because while having one person making bigoted choices isn’t a problem, when a whole society adopts that bigotry it becomes an infringement of the rights of those being ostracized. If it was just a couple business owners being assholes and not allowing blacks in the south then it wouldn’t have been an issue, but the problem is that the racism was so rampant that became a cultural and societal constraint on a segment of the population. Racism, misogamy and such in an individual is just a minor annoyance, but such things in an entire society becomes oppression and that shouldn’t be acceptable under any system that truly values freedom.

Granted, probably over time the issue would have resolved itself naturally, but some population segments in some parts of the world have been warring and oppressing each other for centuries. It seems irresponsible and immoral to simply wait things out when we can take active steps to right this wrong immediately. And that is why civil rights and women’s suffrage were successes.

But I really do think it is as simple as what you are naturally is deserving of respect and should be protected from discriminatory practices, but what you choose to be of your own volition is fair game and hold no inherent claim to be respected or even tolerated. This is pretty clear when it comes to things like race/gender vs politics/religion but becomes more contentious is situations such as sexual orientation and such. There has been a growing body of evidence that people are either born straight or gay but of course one could argue that racists and bigots are born too. Obviously we know that people can change the way they think, as evidenced through things like CBT and it is debatable that people could be ‘cured’ of their homosexuality. This of course leads to the question of if they should be ‘cured’ if it was possible and I like I think most reasonable people I would say an empathic ‘NO’. I think when you get into these grey areas you have only a sense of morality to fall back on. While someones choice of sexual orientation has almost no effect on anyone else, their choice of bigotry could.

But without getting too much into the murky weeds of these grey areas I do think that the ‘what you are’ vs ‘what you choose’ paradigm is about as good a rule of thumb as you are going to find when it comes to the area of what should be protected and what is fair game.

There might be a reason a lot of the best science fiction authors have been Libertarians, because you truly do have to live in an imaginary world for Libertarianism to work. I don’t just say this in an attempt to make a cute comment but because so often when you listen to a Libertarian argue they make a bunch of base assumptions that have no resemblance to the world in which we live.

I brought up one of this in the previous post, the completely baseless assumption that in Libertopia wondrous charities will arise to take care of all of societies ’safety net’ type of needs. Never is any reason offered why this would happen and indeed there is no historical evidence to support it. All societies have developed some limited forms of charity but none have been even remotely robust enough to deal with a populations needs and yet Libertarians simply take it as fact that under Libertarianism that it will just ‘work’ with no rational explanation as to why it would be any different.

Same thing when you get into conversations about so called ‘protection agencies’ and mega corporations. When questioned on what is to prevent those groups from exercising unjust power they cop out usually with the argument that it would be bad for business and so these groups (all little Mr. Spocks I assume) will make rational decisions to avoid conflict and do what is best for their consumers and what is in their (assumed) best interests. I must have missed the memo about when the human race started thinking rationally because again, as history shows, the reality of the situation is very different. Looking back at all the wars in history probably 90% didn’t make rational sense and would have never occurred if the people in charge were making the best, most rational decision. But this is Earth, not planet Vulcan and people don’t make the best decisions. Fortunately, irrationality isn’t a problem in Libertopia. Seriously, if you think because the writing on the office door says ‘Blackwater Protection Agency CEO’ instead of ‘President’ that suddenly bad, stupid, cost-ineffective wars won’t be fought you need to wake up from dreamland and spend a little more time in the real world.

Same thing goes for evil. In Libertopia, when people aren’t busy making rational business decisions and giving to charity it is safe to say they aren’t acting in any underhanded, nefarious, self interested ways. Libertarianism requires sainthood to function, and hell, if everyone was a saint we wouldn’t need Libertarianism to begin with, simply anarchy would be fine.

Fact is, people will always form groups to consolidate power. Doesn’t matter if the name is government, the royal court, the board of directors, warlord, or high priest. It is all people seeking to enforce their will on society, and more importantly make out like bandits in the process. To think this wouldn’t happen in a Libertarian society is naive and absurd to the extreme. The question is, what kind of concentration of power is least damaging to society? Which is most easily fixed when there is a problem or abuses? Because make no mistake, these things will happen, but with a democratic government at least the people have some measure of control over this power group.

When you break down a lot of Libertarian arguments they tend to boil down to “If only the state would disappear and get out of the way wondrous, creative solutions to everything would just magically spring worth from the free market vacuum.” Why in the world they hold this magical thinking is baffling to me, especially considering the extreme lack of evidence of this being the case. I mean in the government-less anarchy that is large parts of Africa or remote areas of South America why doesn’t the magical invisible hand create this utopia? Why instead do we just see chaos and warring petty cabals? Libertarians like to demonize ‘the state’ but government didn’t just get dropped onto the world by some aliens from outer space, it evolved naturally from the ultimate free market of human existence.

It’s a shame too because Libertarians have a lot of good ideas in regards to individual freedoms and how markets could work, but their self imposed blindness to the necessity of some government and anti-statist absolutism keeps them from being able to see how those better principles could be applied to a democratic government to help improve things. Many Libertarians say that people are too closed minded to their ideas and like to claim a position of intellectual superiority but then sneer at anyone that supports any kind of government beyond the most minimalistic military/police force. How is that not just as closed minded, if not moreso? Libertarians, and Conservatives too for that matter, like to build up a straw man of Liberals as loving government just for the sake of government, that more is better and so on. This is silly of course, everyone supports minimal government involvement in peoples lives, just there are different ideas of what constitutes ‘minimal’.

People like to make government sound like some bogey-man from another world, disconnected from the human race. But government is made up and made by people. If it I gave a Libertarian a magic wand that poofed the government down to their preferred size then it, or something very much like it would simply rise again. Once again, it wasn’t dropped on us by aliens, it was created BY us. Now of course a democratic government due to it’s bureaucracy has a sort of ephemeral quality to it that almost gives it a life of it’s own beyond the human influences but this in my opinion is a good thing, and it’s strength. I say this because as I have argued before people like to abuse power, act in irrational and irresponsible ways and perhaps the best way to check those human faults is to create a system of governance that has a level of independence from human idiosyncrasies. Part of the whole purpose of the attempt at having a system of checks and balance was to essentially protect people from their own nature. Obviously it is not perfect and should continue to be refined and yes, even reigned in from time to time, but to do away with it entirely and revert back to survival of the fittest, or most corrupt and willing to employ force. That isn’t a very wise solution in my opinion.

This post by E.D. Kain got me thinking again about Libertarianism. Libertarianism has a lot of attractive components but like objectivism it has a fatal flaw that it always tends to ignore and gloss over. The free marketers say that everyone should be free of constraint to make whatever decisions they want so long as it doesn’t violate the core principle that people cannot use force, fraud, or coercion against each other. Of course there are a number of questions that this principle immediately brings to mind but the one I want to address in this post is one of the major crutches that libertarians and free marketers rely upon and that is the notion of choice.

The theory goes that if say a business or person demands unreasonable compensation for a product, service, or job that the individual always has a choice to opt out, basically say ‘No thanks.’ and therefore businesses and such will be forced to provide at reasonable terms in order to draw in the consumer/business partner/employee. The failure that Libertarians often make is in the implicit assumption that people have the ability to say ‘No’. People have basic requirements for survival, food, shelter and the like. Without those you die, this is simple and indisputable.

The problem with the free market game is that you enter it with no cards. You cannot guarantee your own basic survival. The person born tomorrow does not have right to any resource, any property, any thing under Libertarian principles. Every resource out there is divided up some way or another among the 6 billion people that were already here. When this new person comes to the table to make a deal they are under the constraint that they absolutely, without compromise, must find a way to provide basic food and shelter for themselves. And this is the very simple constraint that takes away their consumer ability to say ‘No’, to opt out of a bad deal. If you are starving and dying, saying ‘No’ to working 18 hours for $1.99 is not an option available to you. Coercive forces arise naturally because the player is coming into the game with no pieces, with no assets, with nothing with which to force a fair exchange in a free market.

If the persons basic survival needs are not met then they have lost all their bargaining power. This is actually why a true free market demands a basic welfare state. The only way to ensure the players in the free market game can bargain and operate freely is to eliminate the looming constraint of basic survival. Some Libertarians like to say that charity will provide a social safety net but this seems to be little more then wishful thinking. There exists basically no historical evidence of groups in power providing the poor and disadvantaged in society to any serious degree. Just looking to the feudal age for one quick example. The wealthy lords and landowners didn’t use their resources to provide any kind of social safety nets for the people of the time. To the contrary they used their power as leverage with brutal efficiency to create ridiculously oppressive arrangement with the poor. The charity gambit is unconvincing on the face and has no real evidence to support it.

This is manifest where you see the old joke about people starting as hippie youngsters and turning into middle aged Libertarians. Libertarianism looks great when you are an already established player. When you have a hand full of cards, but the problems is that new players enter the game with nothing and are at the mercy of the others. This is why the charity aspect must be institutionalized at a government level. Relying on the goodwill of a few will not provide the required safety net that guarantees the survival of everyone. Yes, I just said everyone. In order for free markets to truly function the basic survival of EVERYONE must be guaranteed by a welfare state. Without that guarantee of survival people enter the market at the mercy of the existing body and cannot function as honest brokers. They are subservient to their basic human needs above any lofty free market ideals, this is a rule that cannot be broken, but is often ignored by Libertarians.

PS – I realize the upon saying that everyone’s basic survival should be guaranteed that Libertarians will immediately jump on their ‘what about the free rider?’ horse and say that if people can survive and be lazy that it will be the end of production/innovation/the universe. Frankly I don’t find this argument very convincing. If this was true then people like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and the multitude of other wealthy businessmen simply would not exist today. These people long ago ensured their basic survival needs, they could have quit long ago and yet they continue to strive for more. If having your basic needs meet truly was the end of productivity then there would be no wealthy, no CEO, no huge corporate owners in existence today.

Okay, so the involvement in Afghanistan has been in the news lately, here is my take on this. First just a brief bit of background so you know where I am coming from. I was not pleased about the initial attacks on Afghanistan but I was marginally okay with it under the premise that if we indeed knew that the terrorists behind the world trade center attacks were being sheltered there and that the Afghan government was refusing to cooperate in bringing them to justice then action had to be taken. Now, Iraq I never understood and opposed from day one, going in there never made a lick of sense.

So that is my background on the two wars and so my question about the Afghan situation would be simply: Why are we there? There is currently no hot trail to be had for the al Qaeda leadership and if they are still in the country and we haven’t been able to find them after 6+ years there then why should I expect that to change over the next 3 or 5 or 10 years? So locating and bringing to justice al Qaeda seems to be a very weak reason at best at this stage of things.

So what is left? Building up a friendly Afghan government? It is dubious that any government setup would survive for long after the US leaves, the state is rife with warring factions and warlords. I hear talk of ‘building up Afghan security forces’ but to what end? They will never survive because the infrastructure just isn’t there to support it. A law and order security force of which politicians and pundits dream is only possible with the support of a stable and strong government behind it to provide direction and funding. That doesn’t exist in Afghanistan. A force like that requires and strong and vibrant justice system to provide accountability and prevent abuses. This is also absent in the country. The Afghan economy is all but non-existent, an at least functional economy is needed not only to provide resources for the government and security force but to provide stability for the populace.

Not to mention the cultural aspects, you might be able to rig up a shell of a democracy but governments like anything else are only as good as the people behind it and the people of that nation don’t have familiarity and expectations for operating in such an environment. Democracy isn’t something that you can switch on like a light switch, it has to be cultivated and grown. We are wanting a full blown 100′ tree when there aren’t even the seeds in the ground. I hope that this doesn’t sound like I am bashing Afghans as barbarians or something because that certainly isn’t the intention. The point I am trying to get across is simply that ideas, like democracy, is best spread through education and changes in attitudes and culture, that those are the foundation for all the rest. The actual government, the security forces and all that, they cannot exist without that foundation, and that foundation is still off in the horizon in Afghanistan. It is not that Afghans can’t have democracy, it is that they have to build it themselves for it to work. It isn’t a car where we can just put it together, hand over the keys, and say ‘Here ya go’.

When you break it all down, unless the US wants to attempt to build an entire country from the ground up in three years (which is crazy IMO) then what exactly are we expecting to gain from a continued military presence? The only decent reason for being there, the capture of al Qaeda leadership, has long since passed us by and all that is left is being mired in a war and sending people off to die for no other reason then we don’t really know what else to do about the situation. This is not a good reason to stay. So unless the administration has a hot tip on al Qaeda that it isn’t letting on about then it is pretty clear that we need to fold up the tents and bring everyone home.

As I have said about Iraq, you can’t give people freedom, any freedom that is ‘given’ can just as easily be taken away by the next warlord with the will to do so. The only real freedom is that which is demanded by the people themselves. There will be no functional democratic government in Afghanistan until the Afghans themselves demand it. Believing anything else is simply delusional.