[David Briggs]

Joey Dean , having owned a rusty Jensen during a brief gloomy period in my life, I can feel your pain!
Back to this thread, there is a huge difference in assisting a nation state in its struggle to achieve change and become democratic and trying to simply export democracy and capitalism to places that have no interest and are not trying to affect that change on their own.
We assisted the Aussies, New Zealanders, Brits, Russian and other europeans in a fight that they were already doing the best they could and their sacrifices were many, They did not expect us to do all the heavy lifting and everybody fought against the common enemy with everything they had, these people were willing to die for their beliefs and for their freedom of choice.
That is not what is happening today, the US and its allies in the war on terror are fighting in places that don't care(understand or want democracy), they view us as occupiers and targets of oppurtunity. We seem to think that if we present "democracy" to everybody than they will leap at the chance to control their own destiny but in reality that is not working out like we thought it would. Their are some places in the world where equality is not viewed as essential or desirable and what is thought to be important is the DIFFERENCES between people, not what is COMMON.