"I imagine your perspective changes a lot if you're out there on the ground."

Very true, when your country is invaded and your friends and family shot/raped/jailed/killed by the invader's mercenaries, your perspective probably changes very fast!

Anyone getting in actual combat will experience perspective change no matter which side he is on I guess.

It is a bit harder for the rest of the world to sympathize with the invaders than with people defending their own homes and country. Just imagine your country invaded by a self righteous army trying to "uplift" you. I actually like the Unites States a lot, have lived there and so on, but if the USA were to invade my country you can be sure I'd fight back too. Americans would, if they were invaded instead of being the invaders.

We aren't there to "uplift" them. We're there to stop safe havens for terrorist groups from being set up by the Taliban, a group that was formed in and supported by Pakistan.

If America was taken over by a group that violated human rights like the Taliban, that was refused to even be recognized as the legitimate government by the overwhelming majority of nations in the world, and was the subject of binding UN sanctions, yes I would sympathize with the invaders. But that's just me.

> We're there to stop safe havens for terrorist groups from being set up by the Taliban, a group that was formed in and supported by Pakistan.

These people, including Al-Qaeda, where receiving funds from the US (with the help of Pakistan no doubt) to support their struggle against the soviets.

The Taliban's origins are in Afghanistan, which was later abandoned ... which is regrettable, since the aid it needed for building schools and hospitals was a only a fraction of the money already spent in warfare by the US.

I guess this is what you get when you're having the God syndrome. If you're going to interfere with other people's business, at least do it right.

" We're there to stop safe havens for terrorist groups from being set up by the Taliban, a group that was formed in and supported by Pakistan."

I was talking about Iraq, not Afghanistan. The topic is about hackers going to Iraq. Nice trick of deflection.

Why are you in Iraq again? Persuading the American public that the invasion of Iraq was a response to 9/11 is the greatest con game in history.

As as to the Taliban, they are holed up in Pakistan (and Somalia, and Yemen) these days . Will you be invading those countries too?

rdl's post that started this thread discussed contracting in Afghanistan, and replies to that post discussed overseas deployments in a general sense. In fact the "bullets in the bad guys" comment that set off this thread comes in rdl's point 2 about combat going on in Afghanistan and not Iraq. It wasn't a trick or deflection. My comments about the Taliban also go for Saddam and his Ba'ath party.

My country has been invaded by a self-righteoius army trying to "uplift" me. I call them Christians, and I consider them the real enemy in this country.