The circumstances surrounding the Koran incident, which happened overnight Monday to Tuesday, are still subject to investigation.But by all means, let's make sure we get out in front and take the blame for this.
But US officials said the military removed the books from a prison at Bagram because inmates were suspected of using them to pass messages.
What I suspect is that the inmates wrote in the books, including their precious Koran, in Arabic script. Guards realized messages were being passed and seized the books. Since they were already defaced, they disposed of them by burning.
I have met Muslims who are quite reasonable people. Apparently, they are not the majority.
This is purely a propaganda event by the Taliban. It is easy to work people up against a very restrained authority where there is very little danger of retaliation. This suits cultural Muslim Obama just fine, petty little dilettante that he is. Here is our excuse to get out of Afghanistan and let them have their Taliban Spring. Obama, like Carter, figures he will be out of the White House -- or el presidente for life -- before anything too bad happens stateside.
I'm trying to come up with a good reason for staying there. I can't. I say cut our losses and go home. Nation building is one thing with civilized societies like Germany or Japan but you can't do it there. There doesn't appear to be enough raw material to create a civilized society. It's Islam. A cancer on the world.
ReplyDeleteHistory tells us that you always reach a point of diminishing returns in Afghanistan. It has been like that for so long -- rough country and a rough people, suited, I suppose, to it.
ReplyDeleteKipling would say that it is "ruin to run from a fight", but in the same poem, he says sometimes a clean leaving is better:
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.