I didn't see anything from the hajis that made me think any different about their intentions.

You may not have seen it, but every last one of them wanted you dead. Afghanistan is probably one of the most devoutly Islamic societies in the world. And you were an infidel trespassing in Dar Al Islam.

The alternative could have been irradiating everything from Morocco to Pakistan with nuclear weapons which the USA has at their disposal on 9/12/01.

Not practically feasible I'm afraid. Not without poisoning the rest of the world. But yes, in future I'd probably recommend a stand-off approach. We tried the humanitarian liberation and nation building approach in good faith, and we learned the lesson that you simply cannot civilize that culture. But we had to try before we learned that lesson. So going forward we should apply a polciy of containment and severe retribution for attacks against the west.

In retrospect it seems as if we may have fought in Afghanistan in order to train our own military and NATO to conduct counter insurgency operations in our own countries, against our own citizens who do not go along with the New World Order.

Let's not get carried away. If that was a training exercise, why were you told by the moustaches when you got back home to forget everything you learned there, lose the high speed kit, drop the advanced gunfighter drills and revert back to cold-war mode?

I am sorry but I literally cannot watch Canadian politicians wearing the poppy and hanging wreaths for the Dead on the 11th

Yeah, that bugs the shit out of me too, but you just have to remember - it's not about them.

Also take solace in the fact that when that politician pins a poppy on his lapel, and then looks up at your chest and sees the medal(s), he knows he's a pussy.