If you had posted the immediately preceding response as your initial one I could have discussed it. "Worst post ever" is seriously extreme hyperbole and doesn't even bother to take the time to refute anything in any meaningful way.

My moral paradigm is not "militant western democracy". Although I, raised in a pluralistic secular democracy, was appalled at the Taliban when they oppressed women, murdered people for not following a tyrannical brand of Islam, blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas and destroyed thousands of priceless works of art in the Kabul museum, and engaged in lots of other reprehensible conduct that would take an entire book to catalogue, I saw no reason for the United States to intervene in the way they were oppressing their own people. Just as we don't invade nations like Zimbabwe or Burma simply because they butcher, torture and starve their own people, it made no sense, up to 8:45 am on September 11, 2001, to even consider wasting time, effort, human lives and billions of dollars fighting a regime that did not seem to pose a threat to the United States or have any strategic value for us whatsoever.

I'm not interested in seeing the United States forcibly forward the interests of democracy in any foreign country, and Iraq is a wonderful example of how democracy cannot be imposed on a people from without. I personally think that Karzai probably should have been removed by the US military years ago as he's one of the most corrupt and mendacious people we could have chosen. I also think that the US should have taken the opportunity, presented years ago, to align itself solidly with the moderate Northern Alliance since it was clear that the Taliban and Pashtuns were a near synonym. In short, if we had taken sides in the Afghan Civil War from the start, we would have had better success. Treating the Pashtuns as the enemy would have been better.

It also would have let us partition Afghanistan along ethnic lines, and then tell Pakistan that it could occupy Pashtun regions, something that Pakistan would probably have been happy to do - they want the "strategic depth" and could have gotten rich off the opium trade.

But enough about the fact that I'm more a "realpolitik" sort of asshole rather than a touchy-feely "we want to give you the gift of democracy" sort of person.

The simple fact is that there is ample evidence that the Taliban regime was not simply providing safe haven to al-Qaeda - it was in bed with al-Qaeda. The Taliban bear direct responsibility for attacking the United States and murdering thousands of innocent Americans in addition to the tens of thousands of innocent Afghans they murdered (and continue to murder). Intentional targeting of civilians, intentionally murdering people who are trying to teach little girls in Afghanistan, horrendous torture - nothing the United States has done can, by any objective standard, come close to where they are.

So am I comfortable portraying them as "bad"? Yes. Does that mean that everything the US troops do is "good"? No. However, something as minor, in the grand scheme of things, as pissing on a couple of corpses, is not a "moral" problem for me.

For the record, in the past I've expressed the opinion that cemeteries are a waste of space and that cremation should be the only legal means of disposing of corpses. Corpses are a rarified form of garbage that we deal with differently out of memories of the person who used to be there.