A colonial army of occupation, however, can't directly bring about "a sense of national identity" and build "a legitimate state" by training sepoys, be they several thousands or even several hundreds of thousands (though it's clear that the occupier in this case is not interested in shelling out enough bucks to train hundreds of thousands). A national identity of Afghans has to be built by Afghans themselves. But Luke, or Nathan, or any good liberal utilitarian will tell you that this is sentimental nonsense, because we are finally usually our immense military power to Do Good, and rubbish about the need of the oppressedto liberate themselves ignores the realities of benevolent paternalism, jsutified also by self-defense. Sheesh, you Marxists never learna nything. No wonder history has passed you by. jks
--------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20021208/43596703/attachment.htm>