Afghanistan... Still?... Again?...

Peter Hopkirk's The Great Game, and Foreign Devils on the Silk Road also shed some interesting light on the intereactions of the west and the Afghan tribes.

War on Terror: Holy War 101
Next wave: Rumsfeld frets that radical Islamic schools are training a new army of jihadists—that ‘the harder we work, the behinder we get.’ He’s right to worry

By Ron Moreau, Sami Yousafzai and Zahid Hussain
NEWSWEEK


Dec. 1 issue ; Abdul Baris school day begins at 4 a.m. The freckle-faced, outgoing 9-year-old, an Afghan poppy farmers son, wakes up on the tile floor he shares with four dozen other students at the Jamia Uloom Islamia religious academy, in the untamed mountains of Pakistans tribal areas. After morning prayer services, he fixes tea for the older boys and himself, eating a bit of bread before classes start at daybreak. Students spend most of the day reciting the Qur’an; memorizing every one of its 6,666 verses is the main requirement for graduation. Still, this madrassa is the only formal schooling most of these boys will ever have. So they learn civics from a white-bearded scholar named Amanullah, 65, who teaches them about the Taliban. ;There was a real Islamic regime; the old man says. ;They fixed 25 years of problems in no time, using Islamic laws;
http://www.msnbc.com/news/996640.asp?0dm=C329N

Oh look, AU is bringing out more bigotry. Does it make you feel good to think of dead Muslims, AU? Oh, I forgot, you aren't a bigot. You are Jewish, You can't be bigoted. What ever was I thinking?

Nice, Hamburger.

Which is shows more serious bigotry -- anti-Americanism or anti-Semitism? (Serious question looking for serious answer. Or koan.)

Anti-anythingism!

Hey moron
That story is right out of today's news. I will have to call Newsweek and tell them not to publish articles like that hobbit does want to hear the truth

Tartarin
Ask the hobbit he is no doubt anti-American.

Wow, what reasoned response.


Or, one could focus on the real
problem...the fact that none of the funding for schools has gone to build schools. But I guess "those people" don't need schools, do they?
Anti-Americna? No, just anti small minded American exceptionalist bigotry!
But I guess I'm just a "traitor," eh?

Would you rather I call you professor Hobbit.

There you go again using the B word. It is now Americas fault that hatred and jihad is taught in the Maddrassas [sp]. Whose fault was it before the US got there. And who is responsible for it being taught in Maddrassas all over the world. Mr Defender of the faith. Oh don't tell me I know. They are being taught in the same way by the same people as they have been all along. We are bigoted because we did not build them nice shiney schools to teach their poison in. You seem to have the same one word answer for everything.

So, do youa nd itty kitty spend long winter nights together?


When its appropriate....


What?


Saudi Arabia, of course.


Are you aware I'm not even Muslim? I was raised Catholic.


No, you seem to feel the need to blame every wrong in the world on Islam and the French. You really must get our more often!

I'm SO TIRED of these old fogies clinging to the idea that their country, their ethnic background, their 1940 carry-overs, their military experience (bah humbug!) gives them some sort of realer reality. It doesn't. It's desperately naive.

AFGHANISTAN
please read the article by daniel benjamin under : http://slate.msn.com/id/2087768/ Daniel Benjamin , a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council staff. He is the co-author of The Age of Sacred Terror. it is a two page article and i think it takes up too much space to reproduce here. i feel the article gives a good account of the situation in germany after the surrender in may of 1945. more on this later. hbg

fedral : i can understand that you might think that there was resistance against allied forces after the surrender of germany in 1945. i think that just based upon my personal experience as a 15 year old living in germany at that time, i can say that the germans were simply too exhausted to put up any kind of resistance - besides they were pretty darn happy (if there was any happiness at all) that the war was over. to compare to the situation in iraq let me just make a few points : the german army surrendered and the army units where generally put into pow camps, any soldiers that had deserted their units and were picked up by the allied soldiers were also quickly put into these camps, there were hardly any german men between the ages of about 17-18 and 40-45 that were left in the general population - they were either dead, wounded and confined to military hospitals or in pow camps. the first pow's were released home -after pretty thorough investigation by allied interrogators - towards the end of 1945. my brother was taken prisoner by the americans and returned in the summer of 1946 having been declared unfit for work in a labour camp by an american army doctor because of war wounds -he actually hid when the american troops advanced and gave himself up to some americans once they had rolled through, since he did not relish the idea of becoming a dead hero -. there were allied military units throughout germany, not just in the major cities. allied military police were on street patrol wherever you looked for several years after the war ended. as a matter of interest, i was arrested by british military police in 1948 - 3 years after the war ended ! - for wearing an american khaki army jacket(without insignias) because it had not been dyed blue or brown and i was kept in jail overnight(i guess i should confess to being a jailbird) - but i had no hard feelings - they were doing their job and i had the jacket dyed VERY quickly. it amazes me to see newsclips from iraq and afghanistan and see the locals running around with guns openly displayed and being fired into the air(mostly!). a german trying such a stunt would not have survived long; his own people would have turned him in quickly. as far as the devastation in iraq is concerned, i don't think it bears ANY resemblance to what germany looked like after the war. i'll try to illustrate with just one example : during allied bombing raids on the city of hamburg during 23 to 29 july 1943 more than 30,000 people were killed and an area of several sqaremiles was levelled. this was a district of apartment houses were mostly labourers lived and the area was never again used for housing; it has now became an industrial park. keep in mind, this was only ONE air-raid on ONE city; i'm sure you are aware that was only the beginning of many more to come. if you have a chance, try to find an ex-gi who was stationed in germany around that time and ask him some questions about any german resistance AFTER the surrender. why the comparison between germany and iraq is being made, i truly cannot understand ! it seems to me that there is really not any reason to it at all. try to get hold of some books showing the devastation in germany after ww 2 and i think you might get a better understanding. enough for now ! i think it is a good idea to discuss these issues; i hope you agree. hbg

Well, although I was born after the war, I just can fully agree with what hamburger said - not only from that what I've heard (which certainly is biased by the own experiences of those who tell it), but also, because I have done some researches about this time.


It might be, however, that the situation in the US-zone was different to the one, where hamburger and my people lived, the British zone.

One thing was certainly different: food supply and "live circumstances" were definately better in the American zone. (Which was the reason that the British government asked the USA for help - there was a really bad situation in the UK as well, as you know.)

walter : my comments are of course only based on my limited experience as a 15 year old boy when ww 2 ended. no doubt, my memory of events has become somewhat clouded over the years. just to state briefly were i was in 1944/1945 : our school had been evacuated from hamburg to bavaria in august of 1944. we stayed in a former orphanage that was attached to the metten monastery(they have a wonderful website). in about october 1944 we were sent to two small towns(kubitzen and babylon) in the "sudetenland"(formerly czechoslovakia). the american troops arrived about may 1, 1945. after a few days our headmaster was advised by the american commander that the area was to be handed over to the soviet army and that if we wanted to leave, we had to be out by may 6, 1945. it's a date i won't forget, because it is my birthday. so on may 6 we started marching out of what now had again become czechoslovakia. we had to stop for a search by czech border guards, but were eventually allowed to pass into germany. we trekked on for several days (about 60 kilometers) before the u.s. army stopped our group of a few hundred boys near the bavarian city of straubing. for a few days we were housed in a large barn and then the u.s. authorities told the local farmers to take one or two boys each. just as an aside : we thought that it was a great experience, and even now when we have our class-reunions we tend to see it all in a rather rosy light. in july 1945 the hamburg schoolboard sent several busses across germany to pick us up and get us back home. school started in again in about september 1945(we lost one year and had to repeat it). in 1948 we graduated from highschool(oberbau - junior matriculation) and i started work as an apprentice with the port- and warehouse company in hamburg(hamburger hafen- und lagerhaus a.g. - another interesting website). as i said, my comments are only based on my rather limited experience of that time period.
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now i finally come to my comments regarding the comparison of today's situation in afghanistan and iraq to that of germany AFTER the surrender of germany. perhaps there were some isolated incidents somewhere in germany at that time; i simply do not know. i do think however if there had been the kind of armed attacks by germans on allied troops, as are now taking place in afgh/iraq we would have heard about them before. i simply find it hard to believe that there were large groups of armed germans killing allied soldiers without any mention of it in newspapers, broadcasts or newsreels , either at that time or sometime during the last 50+ years.
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there are many books available at our local library dealing with that period of time and i have not found any account of such german actions. also the numerous documentaries about ww 2 that i have watched over the years mainly on the "history channel" have never shown such action(this morning the history channel showed the documentary "stalingrad" with filmclips from both the german and the russian side and many interviews of former german soldiers. my wife and i did not manage to watch the whole show; even though it's now been over 50 years since the end of ww 2 ; it's still all too much in our memory). cbc television also had a very interesting documentary this morning : "the uncensored war" - in iraq; if you have a strong stomach you will find it an excellent documentary.
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i better come the end of my ramblings. if anyone is interested in a personal account of life in germany from 1926 to 1948, i highly recommend the book " DESTINED TO WITNESS" by hans j. massaquoi, published by MORROW in 1999. the german translation under the title " NEGER, NEGER, SCHORNSTEINFEGER ! "was issued by KNAUER - ISBN 3-426-61854-0 . massaquoi was born in hamburg in 1926 to a german women and a liberian man(whose father was the consul-general in hamburg). since hans was not an "aryan" he was essentially a non-person in germany. in 1948 he left germany for liberia to search for the other part of his family and in 1950 he went to the united states. after some tough slogging he made it and eventually became editor-in-chief of EBONY magazine. it's a fast paced and absolutely riviting story. DO NOT MISS IT !!! ... of course i'm prejudiced because hans is also a "hamburger" and still proud of it ...hbg

Thanks very much for that personal report, hamburger! :wink:

The far right has used a series of "anonymous" emails, and forgeries of later 1940s era magazine artilces (The most apalling was an article purported to have been written by John Dos Passos from a 1946 issue of Life) to try and build the case that the opposition in Iraq was a repeat of the experience in Germany and Japan. This exercise in disinformation is disgusting on so many levels, not the least of which is as an illustration of how quickly we are becoming a totalitarian state, where propoganda is manufactured to keep the populace complacent.

There are occasional complaints in these discussions when one or another of us refers to atrocities committed by the US. They go hand in hand with this curious refusal to understand that war itself is the problem, and that it is responsible for barbarities on all sides. Once again I recommend the movie "The Assault," based on Harry Mulisch's book, which opens with a killing during the final days of the German occupation of Holland. From the moment the story begins, it is clear that there's plenty of blame to go around, and that ambiguity is the main thread of the story.

Hamburger -- your account is terrific, very evocative. Thanks for the mention of Massaquoi's book.

This same group refuses to believe that the US is capable of anything but good. Naivete at its finest, often expressed as "my country wrong or right (think about that one for a moment)," or "Love it or leave it."


Again, this same group sees war as, if not enjoyable, desireable. I honestly do not understand this mindset. To be fair, I saw it less often among active duty and reserve soldiers than among civillians who had either never served, or who had served >20 years previous. What does this tell you?

Afghanistan?
No much about it. Not enuff Americans being killed to warrent the news or discussion? No pizzaz?