Did anyone watch 'Inside the Taliban' on the National Geographic channel?

You said:

It's hard not to make judgements. I realize that they only showed one side of the picture and I have no doubt that we're still doing good things over there. But they also showed enough corroborating evidence to satifsy me that they weren't providing misleading information. Sure they added music and such to add to the drama, but their facts are undisputed.

 

What you have pervading this region is poverty. Ignorance is a product of poverty. Ignorance is the breeding ground for hatred. Someone has to be blamed either for your life or blamed because they are not living the same "pure" (see poverty) life you are. When many young men(or women) have no chance at education, a job or even decent food except through Imams preaching hatred against the West, it becomes a never ending cycle. Tack hundreds of generations of preaching against "infidels", and you have the present day arena. The Koran is the only thing many of these people have. Bombing them back to the stone age is not much of a punishment. Most of their old crap looks like their new crap.

Probably the only real arrogance we are guilty of is not fully understanding the fundamental differences between other cultures and ours(Anglo Saxon). To most Americans, it is incomprehensible that people in other countries have different values than us. By that I don't mean the house, car, etc , but just basic values on human life. When there has been peace in these regions before, it has been a result of a more brutal regime keeping them down. Our expectations for peace may not be possible.

 

I think there's ALOT to that statement. We automatically assume people want to be 'free' and 'democratic' when nothing could be further from the truth.

 

I agree, the more I think about a few things others like Red have said the more sense it has made, seeing it is believing also.
These people in these middle eastern countries aren't really civilized, they are
more like barbarians meaning all they understand is war and hate, they have
to have a leader who oppresses them to keep them in check.

 

Which is exactly why there is a pervasive spread of the Muslim religion to other impoverished areas of the world. Take a look at Indonesia and Africa. Nobody ever accused Muslim leadership of stupidity. One of the basic teachings in the Koran is, when approaching others, use a "convert or be killed" mentality. You are either one of them or you are an infidel.

The God in the Koran created this new set of "rules to live by" because he was angry at Christians and Jews, thereby implying that God no longer supports/believes the teaching/laws of the Bible. It ain't the same God folks......there is no room for compromise on this one.

 

Does anyone think the democrats or liberals will ever figure this out or understand this?

 

Are you talking about Iraq or Afghanistan? For Iraq, I'll try and compile some of the emails I get regularly. For Afghanistan, all I have to go off of is stuff a good buddy of mine wrote about. He was there when the Taliban really started ramping up attacks, but at the same time, he said there was a lot of positive things regarding building schools and homes and that the people were extremely happy for what we were doing for them.

 

You're friend's there and I'm not, so he's obviously in more of a position to know, but what good are the new schools if no one is attending? Hopefully, the areas that the Taliban are intimidating and threatening to kill the people who send their kids to these school are in small, rural areas where we have a limited numbers of troops and not pervasive throughout the entire country.