Why do they hate us? That's the question that has been often asked, but never truly answered, for the past seven years.

Anyone who has read "Dangerous Nation" by Robert Kagan, "Blowback" (et. seq.) by Chalmers Johnson, and "American Armageddon" by Craig Unger knows the answer, and it's not what some claim.

They don't hate us because of our freedom; they couldn't care less.
They don't hate us because of religion; that's merely a tool used -- make that "abused" -- by their leaders.
They don't hate us because of our wealth -- exactly.
They don't hate us because of our power -- exactly.

Syngman Rhee
Ngo Dinh Diem
Ferdinand Marcos
Suharto
Reza Pahlavi
Saddam Hussein
Fulgencio Batista
Jean-Claude Duvalier
Manuel Noriega
Augusto Pinochet

What do these people have in common? Every one of them was a murderous and incompetent dictator whom we put and/or kept in power because he temporarily served some short-term, short-sighted policy objective.  read more »

(Note: This is cross-posted on my website, at http://www.danjacoby.com/politics/columns.)

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wants to send an additional 4,500 American troops to Afghanistan to supplement the 30,000 already there. The problem is that 30,000 isn't enough to get the job done, especially since our NATO "allies" aren't sending as many as they said they would. Meanwhile, Secretary Gates is being told that we don't have 4,500 additional troops to send, so Americans are dying in Afghanistan, the American-backed "government" is corrupt and ineffective, and the Taliban is getting stronger.

The truth, however, is that we have plenty of troops. We could easily deploy far more than 4,500 to Afghanistan, and we could deploy them without reducing our forces in Iraq.

The Pentagon's "Base Structure Report" [1] for FY2007 recognizes over 800 American military bases overseas. Some of these bases have well over 10,000 U.S. troops. Global Research in Canada puts the total number of American troops overseas at over 250,000. [2]  read more »