[The Don]

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1)Why was Afghanistan acceptable to attack, but Iraq was not?


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Neither were. The US military can overthrow as many regimes as it wants, but terrorists will still be able to plan there attacks somewhere (last time I checked, Bin Laden is still at large). In 1995, Timothy McVeigh did it from inside the US.

It isn't worth the resources to take preventive measures that will never work. A $50 handgun in the hands of the pilots of those planes would have been more effective than the US's $400 billion military budget.

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2)Are we truly at war?


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The government is sending people to kill people. That is war.

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3)Is the Patriot Act a good thing?

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Will it do anything but contribute to the ever increasing power of government at the expense of the freedom of the fearful taxpayer? Read the “War is Peace” (Goldstein's book) section of Orwell's 1984.

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4)Which is more important: our lives, or our freedom to live them the way we choose?


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Both are obviously of the utmost importance. But accepting the latter doesn't mean that we are compromising the former.

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6)What is our goal?


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“Our” is very ambiguous. The government's goal is not necessarily consistent with that of individuals in America. The goal of right wing political leaders--whether conscious or unconscious--seems to be self-aggrandizement by means of fear-mongering. Historically, fear has proved to be a powerful political ally. I'm sure that some of them actually believe that they are accomplishing something in Iraq/Afghanistan -- but this is naïve.

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7)Four years later, have we overreacted to 9/11?


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To say the least.

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8)Have the lives we've lost in Iraq been less than the lives we've saved in doing so?

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Impossible to say but in all likelihood, yes. This is not to mention the 30k Iraqi deaths. It is hard to get out of the nationalistic mode of thinking, but think about it this way. Just because people are born outside of the jurisdiction of the US government doesn't mean that their lives are any less valuable(especially when they are the ones facing aggression).

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9)Is this a temporary state, or a new paradigm of America?


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I would tend to lean toward the latter given historical tendency. Adoptions like the welfare state have stuck, regardless of their effectiveness. I don't see any incentive for government to relinquish their militant state, given that it only adds to its power. The future is headed toward the old “to achieve peace, perpetual war is necessary” paradigm.

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10)Are things better?


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Wasted resources. Wasted Lives. Less Freedom. To put it succinctly... no.