I say we won the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

[Magn]

I would agree with you there, if time permit it. Do you know how costly it is, to stay that long? This kind of tactics can seriously cripple any nation's economy and it already has.

I don't have the economics of it.

I know the Iraq war is draining the US, but thats because Bush was a boneheaded enough to jump into a war that wasn't even connected to the terrorist attack without UN support.

This may be naive maths, but it seems to me that if a single country could maintain the occupation in Afghanistan for a year, then 30 countries could maintain it for at least 30 years.

The credit crisis is connected to the war in afghanistan and iraq. Pay a soldier's wages and he will buy himself a home. If he dies or gets injured, no more paychecks, means no more subprime mortgage payments, means banks and pension funds going bust (which is what already happened).

Won't the family get some sort of coverage for the soldier's death?

The way mortgages work is retarded anyways. If you manage to pay up 90% of your house's value, you should own 90% and the bank should own the remaining 10%.

Then again, the banks are holding the big end of the stick vs the would-be owners (hence the whole "invisible hand" of the market really won't regulate itself here) so it would really be up to the state to do something about it if it weren't too busy appealing to constituents that have been brain washed by the empty rethorics of right wing intellectuals (otherwise, you'd have a bunch of angry poor right wing voters with delusions of upcoming wealth screaming in the streets for their patriotic right to be exploited... if it weren't people's lives that are on the line, it'd be a funny spectacle indeed).

That is completely wrong. Religious fanaticism is not something you can outlast. It appears as a reaction to oppression of the people. It has been like that since the dark ages and in every war between different religions clergy was there ready to stir things up and bless the guns. This is even more truth for muslim religion, centuries and centuries of oppression and constant attacks by catholic nations resulted and in widespread hatred and resentment. Crusades of dark ages have simply taken another form today via economical enslavement of these countries.

Religions of judeo-christian roots have 2 main things going for them:

1) Love thy neighbor and treat them as you'd want to be treated

2) You will live eternally in happy bliss if you behave yourselves

We can agree that religion the way it is run by the fanatic extreme gives up on theme (1). It becomes worst as religion tries to get involved with politics (really, the whole "religion is not about politics" adage is for religion's own good... you start doing serious politics with religion and you end up with a generation that truly despise the entire religious institution like it happened in the province where I live).

They can still brainwash their young into following theme (2), assuming that they exert strict control over the environment in which they are raised.

The moment you start giving the children real free will on what to believe with alternatives, most will either become agnostic/atheist or religious moderates (meaning they believe in the better aspects of what religion has to offer, but don't think everything the religious texts say is gospel).

Those that become religious moderates will do so only if religion can provide them some sort of emotional solace, which it won't do if it doesn't uphold theme (1).