Is Our Mission About Preserving Our Way Of Life, Or Helping U.S. Extend Its Supr

One person who's been saying this — and getting little attention — is Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago. Based on the comprehensive databank he's developed as director of the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, Pape concludes there's been a strategic goal common to nearly every act of suicide terrorism in the past 25 years: "To compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland." If we paid more attention to this, and less to the self-satisfying babble about our superior Western ways, we probably wouldn't be increasing our contingent of Canadian troops in Afghanistan. Our troops are attempting a number of things in Afghanistan, including helping the Afghan people build a country. But we are also there to wage war, to kill "scumbags" who "detest our freedoms," as our top military leader, Gen. Rick Hillier, has said. http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0212-24.htm [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on February 14, 2006]

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