It's a persistent notion: we're not like them, we're better, we're different.

As you heard on this program, it's the insidious notion from which genocides are made.

It also lies at the heart of what the Rev. James Lawson called the  plantation capitalism on which our economy's based. The idea that some are expendable, that some are less human, that we are simply different, is wrapped up in our Afghanistan policy too.

The US, for example, since 9-11, seems to have believed that lives lost here in 9-11 were worth avenging even at a cost many times that of other people's lives. Each year that the combat mission continues, more Afghan civilians are caught in the combat. The US tried a troop surge in 2007 -- the number of US and NATO troops was increased by 45 percent.  More civilians were killed than in the previous four years combined. 

In 2008, the dying increased. More than 2,100 civilians were killed in another 40 percent jump. We're already at several times over the number who died on September 11 and still there's no end in sight.

The idea that we're different -- goes for our military too. The US is of course more powerful and more weaponized than any other nation. Today's US military would never become mired as the Soviet Union's military was in the 1980s -- in a war without end against a ragtag army supported by foreign jihadist volunteers. Not us. That's what we're told. 

The irony is, the Soviets were brought to the edge of bankruptcy and collapse by a war in Afghanistan that was supported to the hilt, and to the tune of billions of dollars as well as massive infusions of weaponry, by another superpower: the U.S.

Now the US is headed to a very similar precipice without an enemy superpower anywhere in sight.