[ExI] riots again

[John Clark]

On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 7:00 AM, Omar Rahman <rahmans at me.com> wrote:

> Astounding! How exactly is US policy in Afghanistan noble? Propping up
> the corrupt 'mayor of Kabul' is noble?
>

Yes. The government in Afghanistan has been brutal and corrupt since....
since forever, nobody thought that was going to change anytime soon, but in
the immediate aftermath of 911 many, including me, thought that replacing a
brutal and corrupt administration that was openly protecting Osama bin
Laden with a brutal and corrupt administration that was not was a noble
thing to do. And it is just untenable to expect the USA to allow Osama bin
Laden and the Taliban to thumb his nose at them indefinitely.

> Perhaps the nobility is in the enabling of the drug trade?
>

As a libertarian and a Extropian I have nothing against the drug trade.

> In the end it was intelligence gathering that got to Bin Laden.
>

Yes and that intelligence was gathered by interrogating Al-Qaeda members
captured in military actions; and in the actual raid that killed Bin Laden
more intelligence was obtained about Al-Qaeda than in the last 10 years, so
much stuff the helicopters nearly weren't able  to fly it all out.

> as a clandestine terrorist organisation, it is almost impossible to
> defeat by direct military action.
>

Tell that to the leaders of  Al-Qaeda, oh wait you can't, most of then have
been turned into mush by drone attacks. So tell it to all the people that
right after 911 said we could expect a attack of similar scale in a matter
of weeks if not days; its been over 11 years and still nothing.

> Unless we can find some means of growing our resource base faster than
> both the growth of population and our growing basic 'needs' how can we
> avoid Malthusian collapse and/or war?
>

A keen grasp of the obvious. And by the way, I counted 10 rhetorical
questions in your short post, and that's just too many.

  John K Clark
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