Afghanistan- Taliban Country. Watch this video if you want to understand

[ConsAreLiars]

a bit more about what the US occupation forces mean to the people of Afghanistan. Thew reporter spent some time embedded with US Marines on a "hearts and minds" mission, then went back independently to talk with the people directly. Look very closely at the terrain, the landscape, the buildings. Think of what it might mean to live in an environment like that. Look into the eyes of the people, people like you and me.

I spent some time in Afghanistan, and found the experience to be very mind-altering. Not the opium-laced hash, but the fact that the people there were both "just like me" and very much a part of an intact and absolutely honorable culture that I found completely alien. This was way back when the guns they carried were handmade, rather than mass-produced machine guns, but the culture was the same. I had the good fortune to spend a day with a young man who had been orphaned in an inter-tribal feud, adopted by a British family and educated in England and was returning to his home with his sense of right and wrong intact. He taught me more than I realized at that time.

http://www.journeyman.tv/?lid=17451
Real Media Player clip of 30 out of 45 minutes of this documetary: http://www.journeyman.tv/?lid=17451
Also being shown on Link TV: http://www.linktv.org/programming/programDescription.php4?code=date_taliban

Watch it carefully. It will help you understand why the military domination of Afghanistan (and Iraq) was doomed from the start.

[Starfury]

1. Wow, that's a powerful video! K&R

Thanks for posting this. If these stories are representative (and I believe they are), there's no way anything positive could ever come of this. You can't humiliate a nation and not expect side effects. I've never met anyone from Afghanistan, but from previous documentaries I've seen, there always seemed to be a certain (almost child-like) innocence to the Afghan people, but there's no trace of that here.

[ConsAreLiars]

2. The sense I got, mostly from that one conversation,

was that the concepts we differentiate with terms like right&wrong, good&evil, honor&dishonor, respectable&shameful are pretty much the same. The young man, around 20, was returning to Afghanistan mainly just to return to his homeland, but also with the intent of finding and killing those who had killed his family. Not out of anger, he was not particularly angry; not seeking vengeance; not "for closure," he was pretty pragmatic about what had happened and not obsessed with the subject; not for any other reason you or I might imagine.

Just because it was the right, decent, honest, moral, proper thing to do. It wasn't his first or only priority, just something that he would work at and take care of when it became possible. We talked at length about our differing views, but I was, for all practical purposes, trying to suggest that he act like an animal instead of a human, or advising him to become a despicable person. There really wasn't any question. No "pros and cons" to be discussed. My views simply lacked any morality at all. Not that he didn't understand my perspective, he went to better schools than me and, no doubt, had written papers on western philosophies. But right and wrong are as basic as breathing.

Afghanistan is a very complex country, and this particular conversation just touches on one aspect of a very rich culture. Our very vocabulary is deceptive when we even try to talk about the way their world is -- even basic ideas like "right and wrong" don't have the same meaning here and there. If we watch the film closely, it will help us understand that the resistance to the US occupation is not about Islam vs. Modernity or any of that crap. It's about about how good, decent, smart people are being treated as subhuman by monsters who have not even a shred of decency or the most basic sense of morality.

The film will repeat on Friday and Saturday. Check the Link TV for the times. Record it and watch it over and for every small detail.

[ConsAreLiars]

3. And a kick - watch this.

And set your recorders.