Quote from spect8or:
No, I didn't understand what you meant. I guess you weren't "accepting" that this is the kind of thing you can expect from Muslim populations. So you're shocked that an Islamic regime was installed. But that, my friend, is democracy in action. You seem to think it's just some fundie elites than insisted on it, and if instead the US had handed the Afghans some Denmark-like liberal regime the masses would have been just as pleased.
But then you say this, and I have to think that perhaps you do understand that the problem is Islam, afterall.
But if the problem is Islam, it's not Bush's "religion of peace phase" that you need to worry about it, it's the whole idea of trying to "spread democracy" to Islamic countries. Because democracy will simply mean more Islamic regimes.
The real solution is to install friendly hardliners, and if they are usurped by populist Islamic regimes, like the Taliban, we just go there kill a few people, install a new hardliner, and get out. That way, we could get away with one short, "police action" level, war every, what, five years or so. Not too enticing, but isn't it better than being bogged down year after painful year trying to make silk purses.
Of course, that would require a complete rejection of the liberal-neocon ideal that all other people can be just like us and that they want to be just like us, so defeating that misguided mindset would be the first order of action. Quite a tall order, too, given the unwillingness of its advocates to even consider the possiblity they might be wrong.