4 DEAD AS KORAN PROTESTS RAGEThe US embassy tweeted that it was "on lockdown; all travel suspended. Please, everyone, be safe out there." Protesters were heard crying, "Long live Mullah Omar!" referring to the Taliban leader, and "Death to America! Death to Karzai!" The outrage wasn't limited to the streets, either; parliament passed a resolution demanding the Koran burners be punished, and several lawmakers shouted "death to America!" inside the chamber. A senior military official tells the Washington Post that the Korans had been removed from the base's prison library because they had radical messages scrawled in them.
Editorial comment: Once again, it is well past the time the U.S. should get out of Afghanistan.
1. We furnished our enemies, who we have captured and imprisoned, a library. This is located, probably, between the cafeteria and the soccer field. In that library we placed several Korans. This is because our enemies are very devout and need to read the Koran while they are locked up. They only want to kill us, after all, because their religion tells them they ought to kill us.
2. Some of these prisoners, devoutly, I'm sure, wrote fanatical things all over these Koran library copies. Death to America and what have you. The ignorant American jailers tossed the defiled Korans (Kori?) in the trash. When will we learn? - Should have probably gave them to a cleric for disposal. Or something.
3. The trash gets taken out and burned.
4. Muslim janitors on the American payroll note that in the fire are Korans burning. Americans rush to take them out of the fire, burning hands in process. But edges of pages are clearly burned. Muslim janitor employees, of course, feel it their duty to tell their friends and neighbors what the infidels have done. All hell breaks loose, so to speak. And it continues. Four dead as of this writing. See attached picture of Muslims with mouths open shaking fists and carrying signs. Flags will doubtless be burned. You've seen this picture, or one just like it, a thousand times since we've been in Afghanistan. Is this a rational response of a civilized people to what happened? Why am I the only one who thinks these people are irrational barbarians? I know, I know, it's only a few million who are doing these things. The rest of the Muslim world is very peaceful and rational. (And that's the truth, btw.)
5. Question: why would we want to spend billions to build schools and new roads and bridges and work to improve women's rights in Afghanistan, and pay the salaries of Afghan government employees? Is there anyone left out there who still thinks these people will start to love us? Thank us? Stop wanting to kill us? Really?
Go home, America.
Okay. I'll take the bait.
ReplyDeleteIt's a simple fact that the Koran is the holy book to moslems.
And yes, that may seem ridiculous to us unbelievers, but to a moslem, the Koran is not just a book about holiness, it is in itself holy.
This is not about prisoners or detainees, it's about unbelievers committing a vile desecration of holy works. So the people who did it have just trashed all the hearts and minds work their compatriots have been working so hard to achieve.
I'm not a supporter of islam, I wouldn't be troubled by the burning of bibles.
But I ask you, how peacefully do you think americans would react if some arabs shat on the stars and stripes?
Well, Soub, I'll give you my take and tell you what I've gleaned from the news sources I could find.
ReplyDelete1. The Stars and Stripes are being shat on every day, figuratively and probably literally for all I know. No riots in the streets in this country and no calls for Death to Saudi Arabia. It's called civilization.
2. The holy books (illegally desecrated by Muslims, incidentally) were thrown away with some other torn up books by accident, they say, or by some ignorant low ranking soldier train in killing instead of religious sensitivity, or by Muslim employees (of which there are 5000 employed by the base, they say.
It's an inexcusable overreaction to a pretended slight which was an accident at worst and caused by Muslim desecration anyway. That's an offense also punishable under Muslim law, btw, but no one in the crowd is calling for the heads of the prisoners who did the writing in the holy book.
Your making excuses for the gross overreaction doesn't hold water. Even if the transgression were overt and purposeful, like pissing on the dead, it is still a gross overreaction to the deed. I mean, if you are not talking about barbarians.
American soldiers, get your asses home from wherever you are in the world! And stay there until you are attacked again.
I am well aware the Koran is very sacred to Muslims and not just a book. That was all covered in all the news accounts. It's a good thing we didn't bomb Mecca with something radioactive if this is how they respond to an accident or before any true investigation is completed.
ReplyDeleteFinally, to be perfectly honest, even if there were no misdeeds and no rioting, I would STILL want American soldiers to come home. So I suppose this whole event is incidental to my rage at American politicians and Generals.
ReplyDeleteI think you misunderstand me.
ReplyDeleteI think that the acts of the mob, (and the afghan government too) are the acts of a mob of ignorant savages.
The people who burned the korans were incredibly stupid. I have no doubt whatsoever that they'd been given briefings on avoiding causing offence to the populace, and probably dozed through the speeches.
The outcome was predictable. Just as the outcome of the pics of marines pissing on taliban dead was predictable.
My thoughts are roughly thus: The purpose of war is to win. You don't win by letting your enemy tie you down with your own rules. Modern warfare by our countries seems to involve too many restrictive rules of engagement. We get our enemies quoting the geneva convention and insisting on human rights under international law, while they respect no such conventions and laws.
I would say "carpet-bomb them back into the stone-age", but hey, they're already there.
So. part of me says "use overwhelming force".
But then I ask myself what the hell we're doing there anyway?
It's like trying to reason with a storm of angry bees, Ha!: just zap 'em with a flamethrower... but accept that the reason they're all so determined to sting is because you kicked their hive.
As for schools, hospitals and mom's apple pie, well, of course they're not eternally grateful. They believe that fate and allah determine whether we're sick, and if we live or die, not penicillin.
I make no excuses for the gross over-reaction, it's just what they do. And the U.S. military knows that.
Now we've got the pundits calling for intervention in Syria. Whichever way the fight goes in Syria, the outcome will be no more favourable to us in the non-moslem world than the outcome of the revolutions in Egypt and Libya.
We're sabre-rattling around the borders of iran again, isn't the death toll big enough already for us to realise another war would be disaster?
The reason we're so concerned about Iran is that we think it's gaining nuclear capability. Like we thought saddam was. but israel has them. Why is that okay with us?
Interesting that a mullah on the BBC claimed that the burning of the Koran was not in itself wrong. They also have to remove old ones. However Afghanistan (like Pakistan) gets very excited about such things.
ReplyDeleteThe Koran is seen as the very words given to Mohammed and is never placed on the ground, it is always on the top shelf of libraries because it is pre-eminent. Christians on the other hand know the bible God breathed and the copy just that, a copy of the words.
That said we should be home now. We went to catch bin Laden, he escaped, Brits then wished to create a fair society when there, Yanks ran to bomb Iraq for no reason. had we stayed in Afghanistan we could have done a job, dumped the Taliban, and been home by now. Another year awaits....
American soldiers need to be removed from Afghanistan and brought home. I see no purpose being served by attempting to rebuild a nation that hates Americans. How many wake-up calls, like this one, does our government need to do the right thing??
ReplyDeleteI'm with you on this one, Max.
xxx
I agree with removing the soldiers from Afghanistan. I do not condone violence like this for any outrage and don't here. I find it terribly sad that people are responding to something where no one was hurt with violence.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I also know that the story this angry "rabble" is hearing is unlikely to be complete or balanced, but, instead, carefully crafted to maximize damage and inflame passion, fear and hatred.
And I've seen people just as rabid about misuse of the flag as these folk are about their holy book.
And, in that kind of media manipulation, no group of Muslims or any other organization are cornering the market on angry rhetoric, resultant needless violence,or, in fact, moronic responses.
This wide-spread branding of a large group of people (despite the off-hand caveat later) as inherently uncivilized/violent/irrational is exactly the sort of thing being done to whip Afghani extremists into frenzy. And we do it here. All of America or Western Civilization is not represented by the Westboro Baptist Church cretins or the angry hordes that reacted against the lawful process exonerating the police officers involved in the Rodney King incident or a few other dozen examples of widespread violence or hysteria we've had ourselves.
Nutcases overreacting hysterically get the headlines. I suspect that even our allies overseas (or just north of us) can readily get a very distorted view of American culture and society by reading our headlines.
Responding bombastically to this kind of deliberate inflammation just continues the cycle.
In my opinion.
bombast |ˈbämbast|
ReplyDeletenoun
high-sounding language with little meaning, used to impress people.
Thanks a lot.
ReplyDeleteThere are many words I'd use to describe Max: rebellious, argumentative, controversial, contrary. Funny too. I probably wouldn't include bombastic.
ReplyDeleteExasperating. I forgot exasperating.
ReplyDeleteExasperating? Yes, you are that. :)
ReplyDelete