In his recent blog, Brian Sweeney asserts that doctors are not clones. Yet, for some reason he acts like a clone of the spin doctors. Rather than address the issues involving the war in Afghanistan, he relies on the usual politically correct mantras—blame America first, isolationist, hindsight is always 20-20, etc. Recently, he complained about people not involved in “real debate.” Political spin isn’t real debate, Brian. It’s ducking real debate.

Like the spin doctors, he compares the war in Afghanistan to World War II and insists the “GKs” would have opposed standing up to the Nazis. Well, in fact, Brian, get your facts straight. I was around during the Second World War and did not oppose it. Nor did I oppose the Korean War. Opposing one war does not mean opposing all wars all the time. Didn’t you learn that in your freshman logic class in Dartmouth?

In World War II, we fought the Germans and Japanese over territory. We drove the Germans out of North Africa, Sicily and France and the Japanese out of the Philippines and Attu Island. In World War II, you could tell who the Nazis were; they were the guys in Nazi uniforms. How many terrorists wear terrorist uniforms in Afghanistan? We are not fighting Hitler in Afghanistan. He’s been dead since 1945. Get over it.

We need to get out of the dream world the spin doctors have concocted. We’re not threatened by invasion of tanks and bombers or countries with superior firepower. The biggest threat to our country comes from within, not from without. The more we act like tyrannical bullies toward third-world countries the more we encourage them to respond with low-tech terrorism. Jesus was right; the more violence we inflict on others, the bigger the threat of violence in retaliation. He advises us to seek first the kingdom of heaven. But our military and economic systems are based on seeking first the kingdoms of materialism, greed and domination. It’s a lot easier to delude ourselves that terrorists spring spontaneously from an evil religion and hatred for who we are and not for what we do. That delusion has cost thousands of American lives and trillions of dollars.

Michael Scheuer’s book, “Marching Toward Hell,” lists three reasons for terrorist attacks on the US—unwavering support for Israel, using the Holy Land in Saudi Arabia for staging attacks in the first Gulf War and support for Muslim dictators around the world while claiming we are promoting democracy. You can call the chief of the bin Laden unit at the CIA Counterterrorist Center an isolationist who hates Israel and blames America first, but doing that does not refute what he says.

Maybe someone can explain to me why I should believe the politicians who told us Saddam Hussein was buddies with Osama bin Laden and definitely had weapons of mass destruction in March 2003, now tell us we're fighting a “war on terrorism. Terrorism is an abstraction. How can you fight an abstraction? If you mean a war on terrorists, why not say so instead of hiding behind abstractions? If, as one critic insists we are not in a war against Afghanistan, what does that mean? How many genuine terrorists have we killed in Afghanistan and how many innocent civilians?

We’re told wars are the only way to protect our freedom. But such an assumption ignores the facts that Christians gained their freedom from the Roman Empire without going to war, American blacks gained their freedom from Jim Crow laws without going to war, India gained its freedom from the British Empire without going to war, South Africa ended apartheid without going to war, and Eastern Europe gained its freedom from communism without going to war. Did Germany and Japan become free by starting wars? Did the South become free by attacking an American fort in South Carolina? Did Saddam Hussein’s war against Iran make Iraq free? There are plenty of examples of wars failing to end oppression.

We hear a lot of high fallutin’ platitudes like “provided a voice to the oppressed…we replaced tyranny with democracy and returned control to the people…Women have more rights than before.”

But asserting things like that doesn’t make them true. How is rigging elections “providing a voice to the people and replacing tyranny with democracy?” If Afghanistan were a democracy, wouldn’t the Afghan people get to decide whether the US troops should stay or leave? Does Afghanistan belong to the Afghan people or does it belong to US politicians? If “women have more rights than before in Afghanistan,” then someone forgot to tell that to the women in the “Rethink Afghanistan” documentary. If you don’t believe me, you can watch the documentary on the internet. One after the other, they said, aside from some cosmetic changes, the only real difference in freedom was that under the Taliban they had a somewhat better chance of enjoying freedom from death. Now, if you believe people in Anchorage understand better what’s going on in Afghanistan than the people over there, you are free to provide reasons for your conclusion. But I’m free not to believe you.

The documentary provided evidence corporate socialism may be behind the war in Afghanistan more than we realize. One marine in Afghanistan pointed out that the government could save millions by hiring local workers instead of hiring foreign firms, their contractors, their sub-contractors, and their sub-sub contractors. We could get the same job done at a fraction of the cost without all the bureaucratic waste. Of course, the military contractors would not get all those lucrative government contracts. Now, if a US marine trusts local hire, why shouldn’t we, unless we support more government waste?

Neither Brian nor his buddy addressed the real issues in both Middle East wars: Are there a finite number of terrorists? Is ending terrorism simply a matter of killing all the bad guys? Is it realistic to expect an Afghan dad to accept that his sons and daughters you killed were merely “collateral damage” and to respond by holding hands and singing “Kumbaya?” How many innocent lives are we willing to sacrifice because people can’t prove they’re not terrorists? Are terrorism suspects in Afghanistan entitled to the same due process we afford to KKK and IRA suspects in the US? Or are people in other countries guilty of terrorism until proven innocent? If we can’t afford decent health care for all Americans, how can we afford wars that cost three times as much? Political spin as usual will not answer these questions.