Canadians in Afghanistan

[xoxoxoBruce]

The Canadians in Afghanistan, are there for humanitarian aid.....medical teams.
Of course the Taliban only sees they are infidels, wants to kill them and the people they are trying to help.
Apparently the Taliban isn't concerned with winning the hearts and minds of the natives, just keeping them too scared to object is enough.

[footfootfoot]

I'm really beginning to think that fundamentalism is a mental illness.

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

I'm really beginning to think that fundamentalism is a mental illness.

Delusional paranoia, perhaps? I would say this is true of fundies of all flavors.

Not to condone in the least what the Tali-ban is doing, but I imagine with all the warring factions and intrigues and counter intrigues, probably everyone in Iraq has decided everyone else is the enemy. Sad.

[fargon]

The Taliban, or whatever you may call them are shooting themselves in the foot. We ( the Coalition ) are fighting an evil group of criminals, who are mad because we have taken away there power and instead of acting like conquers are allowing the people of Afghanistan to govern themselves. Fundamentalist Islam in it self does not condone such acts. The people served by these clinics are usually women and children, those who are the future, and those who carry and nurture the future.

[richlevy]

Unfortunately, the battle lines have been drawn here and will not disappear anytime soon. Part of this is the fact that we have a President who is openly devout and who has pledged to wage a crusade against terrorism. While we have forgotten those words, the Middle East is no more likely to forget them than we are Ahmadinejad's use of the word jihad.

Of course, in this kind of war there are fewer and fewer bystanders. The clinic was part of a 'hearts and mind' effort, so it was in part a military operation. A NGO clinic run by missionaries would also be seen as a threat considering that part of their goal would be proselytization.

This leaves the only non-threatening presence a secular NGO clinic, and they would just be threatened because they didn't have military or church backing.

BTW, if Hamas wanted to open a clinic in the USA in a poor Muslim neighborhood, it would be shut down within a few hours. The only difference is that the ambush would be by goverment lawyers. Who you are connected to does make a difference on both sides of the Atlantic.

Remember that these people do not watch Fox News and understand that all soldiers are apple pie loving kids from Wisconsin (or Toronto) who just want to help. Many of them listen to Al-Jazeera and consider anyone with a uniform an unlawful occupier at best.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by richlevy

snip~
The clinic was part of a 'hearts and mind' effort, so it was in part a military operation.

Aren't the Canadians there under the auspices of the UN as peace keepers/humanitarian aid? Nothing to do with the US plan (more likely non-plan) for Afghani hearts and minds.

I have to agree with UT, these thugs are only interested in killing anyone they don't control and don't mind taking out some of the ones they do control, as collateral damage.

[Undertoad]

(Impolite version of UT begins)

Oh for fuck's sake, that's such a load of crap I don't even know where to begin. How far do you have to go to justify the bombing of clinics? How fucking far do you have to go to figure it's W's fault? How far do you have to go to even consider an argument taking the side of Hamas?

I just can't wait for a Democratic President and Democratic congress so people like you learn what fucking side you're on in this war.

(Impolite version of UT ends)

[Undertoad]

They are pissed off at the nuance of particular words in the President's speech days after 9/11, but can't tell the difference between a US Military effort and Canadians there to set up a medical clinic.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

They are pissed off at the nuance of particular words in the President's speech days after 9/11, but can't tell the difference between a US Military effort and Canadians there to set up a medical clinic.

Uniformed military are targets. Is this a surprise? This is not a defense of their behavior, but someone had better start looking into the motivations of these bastards if we even want to have a chance of getting out of there.

And yes, the leader of the most powerful nation in the world should not be so monumentally stupid as to describe a war in the middle east as a crusade. Crusade is as bad a trigger as jihad.

You don't have to like it, but it's time we started to understand it. We screwed up the first 8-12 months of the occupation because people not only didn't understand what was going on, but did not feel the need to even try to understand. A few hundred billion dollars and 10-12 thousand lives later, everyone is starting to wake up.

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by richlevy

You don't have to like it, but it's time we started to understand it.

You think you understand it, and as proof you play the moral equivalency card.

I don't think I understand it. But I know for certain it's unacceptable to claim that the reason these misunderstood men kill Canadian aid workers is because the leader of the country next door used the wrong word on 9/14/2001.

I don't understand it, but I am really, really certain that the clash of civilizations between radical Islamists and the West did not start on 9/14/2001.

This seems so very obvious to me, that I'm gonna say right out, that anyone who makes such a claim, and then claims to "understand" it, is just speaking out of their ass.

Understanding why a group might act as they do is not the same as condoning their actions. I think Rich has a point. Certain words are a trigger to either side. A Muslim leader can make a two hour speech and use the word "Jihad" exactly once, and the Western press will fall all over themselves reporting this "new Islamic threat." The same thing is true in reverse of a word like "crusade." Certainly, the animosity between Muslim and Christian has deep roots, but leaders on both sides do the cause of peace no favors by throwing out incenduary words. Its a bit like a white person driving down to the nearest black ghetto and screaming "Nigger!" out his car window and then wondering why the people on the street who hear him don't seem to like him too much.

[AlternateGray]

On the killing of Canadian aid workers: Both a demonstration of the taliban's power, and simply because they could.
This is 1. a guerilla war waged by people who don't give a damn about the health and welfare of the Afghani populace. The aid station was likely to improve relations between the people and the coalition, and thus was a threat to the killers. They either need the support or the fear of the populace. They're not going to get the support... (see above). Senselessly slaughtering harmless benefactors is a great way to scare people. 2. A guerilla war, period. In which you take any shot you can against your enemy, and in this case the enemy is anything western.
As for the schism between the U.S. and the middle east in general... Not to oversimplify things, that couldn't have anything to do with Israel, could it? Those leaders (and wanna-be-leaders, more importantly) in the middle east that wish to use religion as a rally point to increase their own power base have all the fuel they need to keep the hatred against the U.S going strong. Sure, Bush using the phrase "crusade" doesn't help, but it's like throwing a twig on a bonfire. Until Israel OR fundamentalist/militant Islam ceases to exist, there will be no peace. Actually, even if Israel disappeared overnight, the U.S. is still "the Great Satan"- I'm not an expert on the details of the Islamic religion, but I believe we earned that label because our belief system is, in key ways, damn near the opposite of fundamental Islam's. Freedom of religion? Separation of Church and State? Free speech? Until we make Islam the state religion, we will always be infidels. And thus the case can be made that our influence/presence in the middle east is (and always will be) "worthy" of retribution. Violent retribution.
In a place where religion is all that many people have, it will be the number one tool for ambitious assholes. They gain their power from the monopoly that religion has on the middle east's culture, and from the passion that their people have for that religion. And the U.S. is the greatest threat to that power. Our culture is a huge threat to the power base of fundamentalist theocracies.
Religion is a scary thing. I received death threats on military.com for espousing separation of church and state, for God's sake.* And that's in a nation that encourages tolerance and where separation of church and state is the law. In a group of countries where that's not the case, and there's religious/political leaders telling their followers that we're the devil... yeah. Until religion loses its all-powerful status in the middle east, or until the U.S. completely detaches itself from affairs there (yeah, right), there will always be conflict between the two.

*or maybe it was because or the length of my posts. Who knows.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by marichiko

Understanding why a group might act as they do is not the same as condoning their actions. I think Rich has a point. Certain words are a trigger to either side. A Muslim leader can make a two hour speech and use the word "Jihad" exactly once, and the Western press will fall all over themselves reporting this "new Islamic threat." The same thing is true in reverse of a word like "crusade." Certainly, the animosity between Muslim and Christian has deep roots, but leaders on both sides do the cause of peace no favors by throwing out incenduary words.

Thanks Mari, that's what I was trying to point out. In order to be effective at curing or killing, you really have to understand the people who will be on the receiving end. And one thing is that we cannot begin to get a perspective on how the 'crusade' remark was recieved because GW is our president. From the rest of the world's point of view he is a guy in control of the worlds largest military and WMD's who could deliberately or inadvertantly destroy the world. So when he talks about a 'crusade', people will notice and will probably not forget it.

I'm sure that there are people in Iran making excuses for Ahmadinejad. However, it is impossible to unmake a statement like that.

[AlternateGray]

The motivations? Afghanis understand perfectly the motivations behind the Taliban effort. When the Taliban first came into power in the mid-late 90's they enjoyed the popular support of the Afghani people, who were sick of the corruption and lawlessness of the local warlords, not to mention the endless fighting. The Taliban were mostly locals, and they brought about organization, law and order, especially moral order. Most importantly, they brought peace through unification. As time wore on and the Taliban gained almost complete control over the country, the movement grew in size very quickly. Most of the new members weren't locals. They were foreigners, mostly Pakistanis and Arabs, who saw their chance to jump on the bandwagon to power. The movement changed: while the original Taliban were local Islamic scholars offended by the actions of the warlords, they weren't necessarily extremists. The new Taliban was most definitely a hard-core fundamentalist group with a heavily foreign, specifically Arabic, influence, and they actually began to lose some of the support of the people. The Taliban started out as heroes (and they were); they ended up being seen as a power hungry, uncaring group corrupted by foreigners, trying to shove revamped Saudi wahabism down the Afghani people's throats. It's a power thing, now. Not too dissimilar to the Sunni Baath-related insurgent group in Iraq. For them, it's not about religion, or nationalism, or freedom, or the People. It's a group of people who want to be on top of the pile when the dust settles, and that's it.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by AlternateGray

Most of the new members weren't locals. They were foreigners, mostly Pakistanis and Arabs, who saw their chance to jump on the bandwagon to power. The movement changed: while the original Taliban were local Islamic scholars offended by the actions of the warlords, they weren't necessarily extremists. The new Taliban was most definitely a hard-core fundamentalist group with a heavily foreign, specifically Arabic, influence, and they actually began to lose some of the support of the people.

My understanding of the downfall of the Taliban is that this group drew practically all its movers and shakers from the Pashto-speaking quarter of Afghanistan and everybody who wasn't Pashtun was pretty much excluded. The excluded got resentful. Then they got a chance to do something about it.

In a nation, such as it is, where everybody's definition of "foreigners" is "those people in the next valley," you're going to get a very great deal of this. Add to the mix property being insecure and no social mechanism at all for keeping general order and causing benevolence to be the order of the day -- and you have Afghanistan. The place ever gets overall order and it's going to be a marvel of liberty -- a likely effect (though not inevitable, just likely) of all those separate communities, walled off in their valleys.