Hey, it couldn’t be worse than crawling on our knees, begging for love. Pathetic. These “sacred texts” were confiscated because the Taliban terrorists had marked them up with coded messages and exhortations to continue the war. I do believe that the punishment for defiling the Koran (by marking it up, say) is death. Can we hope that we took these bastards out and shot them? Hah.
GROVELING WEAKNESS: “It is easy to lose count of the number of administration officials who have issued groveling, pitiful ‘apologies’ over the burned Qu’rans at Bagram Air Base. But take note that our apologies aren’t sufficient. The protests are still active, they are spreading to Pakistan, and Iran wants more – a lot more. It’s ironic how we see things through Western, secular eyes concerning issues pertaining to religious pre-commitments. Our apologies are so serious, so heartfelt, so sincere, so sober – and so completely irrelevant to the Muslim world.”
I liked it better when they were afraid of us instead of the reverse. Now they smell weakness. How did that change, exactly?
Groveling only leads to groveling and more groveling until you can never grovel enough. And to think, our government has the nerve to call themselves leaders.
A few quotes about the Vietnam War which to me, at least, echo some of our present predicament in the Middle East (After the news of the past couple of days, I find myself siding with the advice of Gen. Curtis LeMay, vis a vis Afghanistan, below):
You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.
–Ho Chi Minh to the French, late 1940s
You have a row of dominoes set up; you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly.
–Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954
Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place.
–John F. Kennedy, 1961
This is not a jungle war, but a struggle for freedom on every front of human activity.
–Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964
Tell the Vietnamese they’ve got to draw in their horns or we’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.
–Gen. Curtis LeMay, May 1964
We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.
–Lyndon Johnson, Oct. 1964
We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.
–Ronald Reagan, 1964
We should declare war on North Vietnam. . . .We could pave the whole country and put parking strips on it, and still be home by Christmas.
–Ronald Reagan, 1965
I see light at the end of the tunnel.
–Walt W. Rostow, National Security Adviser, Dec. 1967
The war against Vietnam is only the ghastliest manifestation of what I’d call imperial provincialism, which afflicts America’s whole culture–aware only of its own history, insensible to everything which isn’t part of the local atmosphere.
–Stephen Vizinczey, 1968
Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.
–Richard M. Nixon, 1969
I’m not going to be the first American president to lose a war.
–Richard Nixon, Oct. 1969
Santayana is known for the sayings, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, and “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” [Wikipedia]
I really don’t know how you can bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age when they already appear to be there.
-Old Coot, 2012
I believe I said “pre-stone age” but really, there’s no need to bomb – let’s just leave and let them continue their barbaric ways. They have nothing we want except opium and that will continue to come our way, regardless.
Bom Qom.
Actually the taliban is against opium cultivation. They nearly eliminated it.
They caused a word wide shortage in opiate based pain medications.
Since US occupation, opium cultivation increased more than 8 fold.
Then there are the pipeline projects…………
Westmore, while it is true that the Taliban eradicated (or almost did) opium growing when they ran the country, they’re encouraging farmers to grow it now – they’ve become addicted to the money, ironically.
We’ve been in that God-forsaken place for over a decade and it’s suddenly dawned on some folks of ours that desecrating and burning these sacred texts might not go over well with the locals? That midnight raids, and endless occupation is not a good way to win friends and influencepeople? Good thing your friends in the Republican party like Mitt Romney and Little Ricky the Mullah Santorum want to wage endless war around the world to make us so much safer. I feel so much safer that the lunatics in your party want bigger Pentagon budgets and to bomb Iran for breakfast. Such a sensible way to run our country.
Yes. In fact NATO troops guard poppy farms and encourage more cultivation. In the war on drugs, no group was more successful than the Taliban.
We should have burned more Korans and the prisoners who defaced them by scribbling code messages to each other on the pages and thus defiled them. We would have received plaudits from Muslims worldwide and rid ourselves of a huge scum pile while we were at it. Win win.
Dollar Bill – I’ve had it with your dribble. Please join me on my trip to Coronado, California. I’d like to introduce you to some of my Navy buddies. I’m sure they would love to sit down and hear your wisdom. Where it goes from there, I don’t know.
I meant to comment on this earlier but forgot. Kudos on your post title.
I say we fill the Middle East with MacDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts and let them become sugar and fat addicted diabetics like the rest of the Western World – then we pump in some mindless entertainment, such as a turban and burka version of “Dallas” – we can call it “Kabul” – and they should be like us in no time. Culture war over.