9/11 wouldn’t have happened if Pakistan, carved out of British India, was part of modern day India which has a constitutional democracy where there are even more Muslims living but who are not radicalized as they are in the former.
It is well-known that Pakistan is a safe haven for terrorists (or, if you, prefer “freedom fighters”) that still cross over to Afghanistan. It is also well-known that the Pakistan intelligence apparatus, the ISI, helped fund and support the Taliban which harbored Al-Qaida and it does so for strategic reasons, or in other words, “Hey, they are worse than us, okay?” A little like (or a lot) how China “needs” DPRK to show the world that they, the North Koreans, “are worse than us so don’t bother us about human rights issues. At least we are trading.”
Instead of invading Afghanistan, maybe we should have invaded Great Britain which used to act arrogantly during their period of “empire-building,” like carving Kuwait out of present day Iraq which led to another conflict in the first Persian Gulf war.
Why is it okay for Western powers such as Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands to go around invading nations, drawing up new boundaries, naming landmarks after them but are not held accountable for deaths and occupation?
Before we are quick to judge folks living in far-flung areas and call them brutish, foolish and vengeful, we need to study the history of great colonial powers who strengthened their powers and therefore their wealth off Third World subjugation. These world powers did not become stronger by their own virtues but by violence. The same type that we see engulf various nations all across the world.
Lesson from history: Empires come and empires go, but all do come to an end. At least from their zenith of power and influence. And their national sins still reverberate to the present day.

MATT PHILIPS
Mangilao, Guam