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By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted January 07, 2010 at 11:37:19
"A few points (to be bashed, I'm sure, lol) The major problem in the far east is bringing the majority of the people into our century. Most are relating to life about 500 years ago, where a mans life was virtually worthless. Killing was a way of life and religion was literally EVERYTHING."
Absolute and utter nonsense. It's just as much 2010 in Afghanistan as it is here. There is no mythical "progress line" in human history which charts the line from barbarism to high civilization - such myths were banished from academia decades ago because, like torture, they're great for proving a point but hold next to no value when hoping to discover the truth. Up until the beginning of the war with the USSR, Afghanistan was quite modern by the region's standards - socialist if anything else. It's interference from the superpowers which created the hell that exists there now, Though the Taliban (ironically) bears many similarities to Spain during the Inquisition, it is not a feudal theocracy - it's a postmodern wor-torn hell-hole.
Using the perceived "backwardness" of local inhabitants (of a different colour, language and religion) as an excuse to invade and occupy a country is racism, nothing else.
And as for the "terrorists" point - being Muslim, or from Afghanistan, does not make you a terrorist. The fact that some militant Islamic groups or individuals do things like throw acid in the face of schoolgirls or bomb civilian targets does not make all Muslims guilty of such. Being part of an Islamic government (such as the Taliban) or insurgent group (which does battle with foreign occupation forces) may make you the "enemy" of our (occupying) forces, but certainly doesn't make you a terrorist. Like it or not, we are not "guests" in their country, we are a foreign occupying military force which has made a lot of mistakes. A 20-year-old in Afghanistan today would have been 11 back in 2001 when the towers fell, and has since spent the length of their teenage years watching bullets fly and bombs drop. 9/11 can clearly not be used as a justification for torturing such people. "They" did not start anything. A small group of hijackers did. Has nearly a decade of occupation brought us any closer to catching the people responsible and putting them on trial?
Where, exactly, is Osama Bin Ladin, anyway? Does anyone still care?
"Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century." — Lewis Mumford
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