The Toronto-based Globe & Mail doesn't post too many of the letters that I send. Too radical I suppose. I should take it as a compliment.

Here's the latest "too hot to handle", in response to a historian chastising the 'left' for not supporting the liberation of women in Afghanistan, liberation at the end of a NATO gun barrel...

Dear Editors

People opposed to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq may be naive and idealistic at times, but we're not naive enough to believe that the war in Afghanistan was started to eliminate a mysogynistic and theocratic regime by an American regime that itself has notable mysogynistic and theocratic tendencies.

I cannot believe that Afghanistan would have been invaded without 9/11 or a similar provocation. The war was started as punishment for harbouring Bin Laden. Morals and ethics just made a good cover.

Imagine that Canada was invaded by a foreign power because of one of our moral failings, perhaps our disgraceful treatment of the environment. After the invaders slaughtered our government (because they refused to reform overnight) does anyone really think that Canadians would then welcome the 'rebuilding' of their shattered country especially if it was focussed on hunting down and killing the remnants of the current government (elected by only a minority of the population)? Even the NDP and Greens would surely be aghast.

For all their many failings the Taliban at least brought some measure of stability to their country. It might be naive for me to have hoped that the regime would have moderated over time as the stability allowed Afghanis to focus on higher values than mere survival, but it is twice as naive to believe that democracy and gender equality can be imposed by tanks, bombs and guns on a country where now, once again, mere survival has become the number one priority and the foreign armies are increasingly seen as foot soldiers of the American empire.

- David Crowe