“Here’s $100, now paint my house.”
Oh, I agree, as a child of the 70’s I remember growing up worried about nuclear annihilation. Not much has changed though, we have simply replaced one dangerous hegemony with ideas of world domination with another. Granted they are not a united hegemony and they don’t have a massive army, but the will is there.
I read at the weekend that we (the UK) have agreed to send another 1000 troops to Afghanistan and the President Obama is “concerned” about the new laws.
Concerned? Why are we even there? Nothing we can do will eradicate centuries of ingrained predjudice, unless we did the thing we said we wouldn’t do i.e. topple the government there’s nothing much we can do. Plus no invading army has ever manage to hold onto Afghanistan, we failed in the 1830s and 40s. The Soviets failed in the 1980s and collectively we (Britain, America and others) are failing now.
Karzai is apprently up for re-election soon, but will the alternatives be even worse?
Maybe a Taliban or AQ candidate? Lovely, just what we need.
Didn’t you get the memo? Foreign policy and CIA operations have nothing to do with it. It’s because they hate your freedoms and they hate that the US is the only shining beacon of liberty in an otherwise hellhole and barren planet full of terrurists and dictators.
Oh, and about the OP. Well as disgusting as those laws are, it’s pretty solid progress when comparing it to the previous Taliban rule.
You missed off the smiley right? What about Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand? Last time I checked they were democracies too.
That got my attention too. Since I have generally seen ‘preen’ used in reference to birds, the image that came to my mind was that the husband walks into the room and the wife is washing dishes or something, and he shouts, “Preen!” and the wife stops doing whatever she is and starts running her fingers through her hair and over her body. The husband watches this for some time, then yells, “Stop” and the wife stops and going back to whatever she was doing. The husband turns around and walks away since his ‘desire’ has now been satisfied.
Y’know, I’m sitting here reading this thread because I have an interest in things that go down in Afghanistan because I lived there back in the '70’s and LOVED the people and the country.
While I find the language and intent of the new laws to be repellant to my delicate western sensibilities, I also gotta ask WTF is wrong with so many people here on the SDMB.
You guys sound like the colonialists of yore- those brown heathens just don’t know what’s best for themselves, so we’ll just show them the light of our enlightenment.
How many of today’s problems in the world are the outcome of that odious notion?
The Afghanis will come around to our modern thought if and when they feel like it and no one can hurry that along- the British tried and failed, the Russians couldn’t ‘tame’ them and now we find ourselves facing that same stubborn streak that IMO characterizes an Afghan.
Face it, the values that we hold dear aren’t necessarily those held by the rest of the world.
You don’t like it? Fine by me, just volunteer for an NGO that is working to change it from within the country and do something to make a difference. Bitching about it from here will not change anything over there.
Thing is, they’re so arrogant and lack understanding in such a fundamental way that they actually believe that they’d have no problem with the Chinese.
Yes sorry, I neglected to put the smilie in place. Because I’m an Aussie, that’s one of the many many things that pissed me off about the neo cons, with their views of American exceptionalism they basically write off the entire developed world as irrelevant or non-existant.
Hopefully that will change under the new administration.
IMHO it has nothing to do with colonialism and everything to do with survival. We went into Afghanistan this time because of the taliban and the terrorist training camps.
If the islamic world were to be more willing to live and let live then there would not be this level of feeling against them. The point is, is that the west is responding to islamic fascism in order to prevent further attrocities and forced conversions.(There was a thread recently about Indonesia IIRC).
Before you think I’m being too partisan, let me state that I’m an atheist and detest all organised religion. Why do I currently single out islam? Because at present they are the ones that pose the greatest threat to my life and the way I live. Whether this is just down to my perception or not I don’t know, but I live in a city with a large muslim population and it can feel pretty uncomfortable at times as I am more and more expected to adjust the way I live to accomodate their religious beliefs. Even at work we now have to have non alcohol related social events just to “inlcude or muslim brethren” and if we eat out it has to be in halal restaurants. Needless to say I don’t socialise much at work anymore.
I’m just as against christian fundamentalists who want to teach creationism in schools, but they do not currently plant bombs on buses and trains or crash planes into buildings so are the lesser of two evils.
I think you’re also missing the point, islam needs to go through a reformation in the same way the christian church did. One of the reasons we have equality for women and human rights is IMHO due to the decline in religion rather than its increase.
I don’t want to conquer anyone I don’t really even want to change their belief system (although I hope they will put primitive superstitious nonsense behind them eventually). By the way by “primitive superstitious nonsense” I include all religions and mythology and UFOs and the paranormal. I don’t believe that we can change Afghanistan or any other muslim country by force, real change must come from within, which means the west needs to offer an enlightened alternative by example rather than force. But if attacked we must be prepared to defend ourselves and slap down any aggressor as hard as possible.
I think it means the first job in modernising Afghanistan is teaching them good English so they can write laws which are civilized and make sense. How can you even expect to have a civilized country if you can’t speak good English? Duh.
That’s the problem with keeping troops in other countries to maintain our interests, but being too squeamish to be real imperialists.
Native Defendant: When a man dies, his widow is placed on a pile of possessions and burned. This is our custom.
British Judge: When a man burns a woman to death, we place a rope around his neck and hang him until he is dead. This is our custom.