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Velveeta does NOT look good in orange.
Author: velveeta jones    Date: 03/02/2008 13:58:53

Welcome to March! Seems like we got here pretty darn fast, this year is flying by! Perhaps it seems to be moving so quickly due to the amount of vacations and lack of camera time from George W. Bush, our current criminal in charge. (I'll end up in Gitmo for that comment - I forgot, our "Constitution" is merely a historical document, much like the Magna Carta).

Eight years ago this week, we Americans lived in isolated bliss - having that pre-9/11 mentality ™. The only thing about the Taliban making headlines was that on this day in 2001 they began the destruction of the Ancient Buddha statues that had stood for centuries in Afghanistan.

Despite an international outcry and many groups trying to intervene in an effort to save the Buddhas, the puritanical Taliban's Islamic militia began demolishing the statues across the Bamian Province in the heart of Afghanistan. Even the suggestion of building a concrete wall in front of the statues to block their view, was rejected by the Taliban.

The statues were a marvel of artistry, workmanship and wonder. Two of the tallest Bamiyan Buddhas, carved into a sandstone cliff near the provincial capital in central Afghanistan, stood 175 feet and 114 feet tall and were built around the second century. They stood, tall and proud, overlooking the farming fields below the mountains on the Hazara peoples of that region.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q151/velveeta_jones/Misc%20photos/BuddhaBefore.jpg
http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q151/velveeta_jones/Misc%20photos/Buddhabefore2.jpg



The Hazara are Shiite Muslims in an overwhelmingly Sunni country and considered low-caste due to their very Asian features and live-and-let-live ways. A hard working people that the Taliban consider nothing more than animals, it is believed the Buddha's were constructed by their ancestors, begun around the 2nd Century, AD and finished between the 4th and 5th Century.

Afghanistan had been home to an array of pre-Islamic historic treasures from its days as a key stop on the ancient Silk Road and a strategic battleground for conquerors dating back to Alexander the Great and the Aryans before him.

Taliban Minister of Information and Culture, Qudratullah Jamal, announced in March 2001 that the destruction had begun across the country, of scores of pre-Islamic figures, designed to stop the worshipping of "false idols". (I must note that, though there is undoubtedly something missing in the translation, I find it ironic that this man has the word "culture" in his title).

The militia destroyed the statues with the use of mortars, dynamite, tanks, anti-aircraft weapons and rockets. Now they are nothing but piles of sandstone rubble and clay plaster.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q151/velveeta_jones/Misc%20photos/blownupbuddhas.gif


By weeks end, what had taken centuries to construct, was gone.

The good news, if there is any, is that those ever resilient and patient archeologists are waiting in the wings to try to reconstruct the statues, using the pieces that have been recovered. Thank Goodness for the Indiana Jones' of the world.

One of our 4F members mentioned the other day that Iraq was going to be to the US what Afghanistan was to the powerful USSR. There is much truth to that, in my opinion and many others.

The reason for that is because we have now left Afghanistan for the second time in my lifetime. First, we left in the 80's after helping the mujahideen, the "holy warriors" defeat our enemy. Remember the "evil empire" that Reagan so loved to hate?

The same mujahideen that would later become the Taliban and support al-Qaeda. The same mujahideen that gave us Osama bin Ladin.

And the same Taliban that destroyed the statues that had withstood centuries of weather, natural disasters and wars.

Some political historians and analysts believe that had we stayed in Afghanistan to help after the war, we would have made friends, not a new enemy. Now we have once again abandoned them to focus on Iraq. Soon, we will abandon Iraq to focus on "fill in the blank", Iran, North Korea, Russia, Islamic Terrorists in general, Homegrown Terrorists (that would include anyone who disagrees with American agenda) or, perhaps we'll end up in a recession so bad that we'll be forced to start a whole new World War. Those always seem to perk up the economy. No matter how you look at it, the truth is that abandoning Iraq will lead us to the same problems we had when we abandoned Afghanistan. History continues to repeat itself. Its a hard truth to face, but someone must say it. The fact is, we should never have gone there in the first place. My personal opinion, and the one that will land me in Gitmo wearing orange, is that we should have finished the job in Afghanistan. Yet again, we did not.

But it means more than just setting up the armies and police and puppet governments. It means doing something that certainly no Republican administration will do (and I doubt a Democratic will either, as they will get too much pressure from the Christian right). It means making amends.

No, it does not mean apologizing to Osama bin Ladin and his organization. Those they did us harm, whether they be in the caves of Pakistan or (ahem) sitting in an office in Washington DC, should be put on trial and brought to justice.

It does mean not building bases only to protect our oil interests. Or having our contractors rape and pillage their land and peoples. It means letting them form their own government and constitution, and above all it means making financial amends to the harm we’ve done to the innocent civilians caught in the middle.

Making amends is not an easy thing. It does mean admitting that you’ve done something wrong. Most people on the right don’t like that idea, they cry that “they did bad things to us”. But they fail to see that it doesn’t matter who did what to whom first. The point is, and here is where I think Jesus would agree with me, being honest and taking responsibility for ones actions, even a Countries actions, is what will bring peace. And it sure does cost less, ultimately, then “my guns are bigger than your guns“. Peace is really not that expensive, it just takes guts along with little ingenuity.

And if we had made amends to Afghanistan and not abandoned them the first time in my lifetime, the Taliban might have ended up a peaceful and productive people. And I imagine we could be traveling to the ancient Hazarajat region in the central highlands of Afghanistan, and taking pictures of the colossal Bamian Buddhas that would probably still be standing.






 

13 comments (Latest Comment: 03/03/2008 04:44:25 by Mondobubba)
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