The Afghanistan mess

[kengr]

The question that no one has addressed is why on earth were they burning *any* books?

If they'd just hauled off the books to be donated or something, things would have been fine.

Oh god. On NBC news they just had a general (possibly retired) calling Afghanistan a "primitive society".

Gee whiz, no wonder they aren't buying our apologies. We *aren't* showing them any respect, so there's no reason to buy the apologies.

Comments

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

Apparently, some of the prisoners had written messages in them. So, these Korans were defiled by Muslims in the prison before being burned.

[maxstories.livejournal.com]

Actually the question is how these "books" were even noticed? That base has a massive burn pit for sewage and waste. More than a few stacks of paper and related material are brought out every day to toss in the pit. These books were confiscated because prisoners were using them to write notes to one another. So there's no reason to believe they came out in some special bag or delivery to the burn pit.

So how did this come up? Who saw it happen? Why is it big news?

Afghanistan is a primitive society - along with most of Africa and the Middle East. They've not been able to govern their own affairs. Pretty much ever.

I'm not sure we help that though. And if it weren't for the horrific way things will go downhill once we're gone, I'm not sure we should ever allow ourselves to be sucked into that morass until we have a stiff enough backbone to see transforming their society to something moderately functional through.