You again have nothing to say about Afghanistan, preferring to focus on Communism.
I’m fairly sure that Das Kapital has nothing in it about torturing people, and you are right, communism as practised in the USSR and China and their sattellites is very bad indeed.
Consider what happened in your country in the first 100 years or so of unfettered capitalism post revolution. The native populations were butchered and harried into reservations (are these gulags?).

The fact is that a socialist can be a christian, and many are. I’m not sure a communist can be.
Sorry, I made the same mistake as yourself Frank, I said communist, when I meant Socialist. Siedel and Ziedler, both socialist, both mayor of Milwaukee. They didn’t form a breakaway state because, Frank, they were not communists, they were socialists. El Salvador was a democratically elected socialist (and not communist) government. Had they had a chance to do a bad job of it, they would have been kicked out at the next election, because socialists believe in open and honest elections.

As for Communists “elected to office in the USA”. Name one who professed to be a Communist, and claimed to support Communism as it behaves, rather than as it purports to be.

Millions dead in the Ukraine was not propaganda. hundreds of thousands dead in Soviet Gulags was not propaganda. What went on in Lubiyanka prison was no fiction. What has been done to Christian missionaries, nuns and priests and ministers is no propaganda. But I guess I’m just “hopped up.”

Read a copy of “Das Kapital”, and consider that while you are reading it, homosexuals in Cuba are in prison for no crime other being homosexual; children in North Korea are dying of starvation so North Korea can develop a nuclear progam; and babies are being aborted against the will of the pregnant women who bear them in China.

Good ol’ Communism — if only I knew the truth about it!

p.s. Why would the US feel it necessary to destabilise a piss-pot country like El-Salvador? Was it better to fund the Noriegas of this world? Methinks the USA is trying to build an empire.

As for this stuff about an oil pipeline, I thought there was a crackpot trying to sell the idea that the US was going to build an oil pipeline across Afghanistan.

And, Bryan, IMHO there is no such thing as a legitimate socialist or communist (e.g., the Sandinistas) government, because I seriously doubt they campaign honestly on a platform of repression, curtailment of freedom and persecution of Christians.

From Wikipedia:

President Ronald Reagan’s administration sold arms to Iran, an avowed enemy. At the time, Americans were being held hostage by Islamic terrorists in Lebanon, and it was hoped that Iran would influence the terrorists to release the hostages; at the same time, Iran, which was in the midst of the Iran-Iraq War, could find few nations willing to supply it with weapons. The U.S. diverted proceeds from the sale to the Contras, anti-Communist guerrillas engaged in an insurgency against the socialist Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

As far as I am (was?) concerned, it was win – win, and it didn’t bother me a bit.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/190144.asp?cp1=1

You’re the google king. Can’t you find a reference that doesn’t skip from 1979 to 1989? PBS makes no mention of CIA involvement.

Google Rummy and Bush 41 with Saddam and see what you get.

We weren’t in Afghanistan to help the Afghanis. It was payback to the Soviets for Viet Nam and to prevent the gas pipeline the USSR sought to build through Afghanistan from cutting into the free market UNOCAL and ENRON monopolized.

And NO, the end does not justify the means.

I guess we shouldn’t be driving German and Japanese cars, because they were at war with us — 65 years ago!

Leo: If you compare this biography:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/bio.html

With this history: (scroll down about a dozen paragraphs to “1979″)

http://www.afghangovernment.com/briefhistory.htm

You will notice absolutely no overlap. You must be reading The Democratic Underground Guide to History (the Classics Illustrated version).

Saddam was US backed and paid, as was Osama Bin Laden.

Now you’ve done it. You’ve gone and pissed off the zombies

Thanks for your past consideration. Your help in the thought realm is not necessary as we have enough assistance with banality from your compadres.

Happy Trails

What do you expect when you open your post with;

I tried to avoid this site, didn t really want to give the hitmeter any help. It is fun to come back and see the same thoughtless arguments meted out though.

Next time avoid the red meat. You might get a decent response to your desire for legitimate debate

The echo chamber remains rigidly intact, just one mental midget after another repeating the leftist talking points.

Thanks Semantic, you just reminded me why I stopped visiting!

We attacked Iraq because it violated about a dozen UN mandated regulations regarding disarmament. There is no question that Iraq HAD chemical weapons, the Iraqi’s were REQUIRED by the UN to DEMONSTRATE that they had destroyed them, and to prove it. It did not require that we go on a giant international game of scavenger hunt.

Saddam had no provable WMD’s by the time we invaded, we were wrong on that count. But we had international law on our side via the UN. The fact that the french, germans and russians wouldn’t go along with us, cause they were all to busy arguing over who was going to get “sloppy seconds” with Saddams oil money.

WMD’s were a small slice of the equation…not the whole enchilada. Let’s not let the leftists in the world succesfully cram that down the memory hole…..

Ther boy scout in me wants to stay so we can leave the place better than we found it but I think the truth is the longer we stay, the more likely things will get worse.

We’re standing between the Iraqis and their future. It may not be the future we’d wish for them and it may be hard to watch but our part in their recent past hasn’t covered us in glory either. That’s not the fault of the troops, but their commanders.

Midderpidge;

The die-hards want to paint everyone who has misgivings about this war as;

“Not supporting our troops”

“Not supporting democracy”

“Wanting to pull our troops out NOW!

It is much simpler for their argument to presuppose all fall into all three categories

We do support the troops. One could even say we support them more than those who wheedled and made excuses for the lack of proper equipment (armored Vees, improper body armor). Was it demoralizing for the troops that command and control for these issues required citizens to be more proactive than military leaders and raise funds to buy this equipment for our soldiers?

Stop with the suggestion that opposing the indefinite continuation of this war is demoralizing to the troops.

The troops are every bit as inspirational as the ture believers portrayed in the film, “We Were Soldiers” They will follow their commander-in-chief into the fires of perdition, if need be. God be with each and every one of them.

They remind me of the duty bound whose tribute was penned by Tennyson.

“The Charge of the Light Brigade”.

“Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
“Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.”

I do not want to lose them.