humm... so back in the 70's and 80's we know that Amerika nutured and raised the Taliban to fight a proxy war against the Soviets.

Its good to see they spent some time on educating them too..
educating them to be good little 'Islamic terrorists'.

So, according to President Bush,..
supplying Afghanistan with School textBooks which contain "talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines"
is teaching "respect for human dignity, instead of indoctrinating students with fanaticism and bigotry."

And Amerika would never support Terrorists...

Then again I could be wrong...
Maybe 'Terrorism' is a "Unintended consequence" of the Western Powers fighting against the "evil" Soviet Invaders...

But then, if we actually listen to the Foreign Policy advisers from the Whitehouse, we're told that 'Terrorism' was an 'unintended consequence' of assisting the Afghan people in fighting the Soviets.. "We didn't know, We weren't prepared.." when dealing with Islamic Jihad - which the Americans were taching them all along.

HAHAHAHAHA! How great is that...Still, if anyone canpull the ol' 1-2 on the world, it's the States.

And we supported the Soviet Union when they were fighting National Socialist Germany.

We did so not because the Soviets were our friends, but because Germany was a more dangerous threat at the time. Its the same in Afghanistan where we helped the Mujahadeen to fight the Soviet Union in the 1980's.

Of course the point of all this is that Marxist Pig and his comrades think it was wrong for the US to fight against their communist cause during the Cold War.

I don't how that comes across, however I have not been brainwashed.

So Sixgun, you admit that the US only uses quick fix solutions to solve it's problems? "Oh, damn Nazis, let's have these happy Soviets do our work for us"

"Oh, damn commies etc..." All the way down to whatever crazy scheme the Northern Alliance or whoever controls Afghanistan now will do. America creates it's own enemies through quick fix solutions...

I would say that you have been brainwashed by the "Blame America First" crowd.

Note how the quotation marks are used. Used for contempt of the notion that the Soviets were a menace. Thus we see the true motives of the author.

My counterpoint to all of this is that we supported the Soviets in WWII. It was a temporary support as they were fighting what was then a more dangerous enemy. Yes the communists were a menace. Yes we know that Stalin was a really, really bad guy. But we were fighting a more dangerous foe at the time and war makes strange bedfellows.
Once the fascists were put down, we could then fight the communists.

This is alot like the situation today where we supported the Mujahadeed in Afghanistan.

What a quaint rationalization . . .

I know that I have not been indoctrinated because I question my motives. You clearly do not.

Thats a load of Bravo Sierra.

There will never be such a thing as a writ of habeas mentem; for no sheriff or jailer can bring an illegally imprisoned human mind into court, and no person whose mind had been made captive by the methods outlined in earlier articles would be in a postion to complain of his captivity. The nature of psychological compulsion is such that those who act under constraint remain under the impression that they are acting under their own initiative. The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him, the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free. that he is not free is apparent only to other people. His servitude is strictly objective."
-Aldous Huxley; Brave New World Revisited

Your half way there sixgun...
You recognised that their was a hidden motive by the author, with the use of quotations around the word 'evil'.

Quite simply really...
In case you didn't realise, 'Evil' is relative in defenition.
There is no single universal meaning of "Evil", otherwise you'd have a definitive point of Comparism, between the 2 ideals of "Good" and "Evil".

In short, IF God existed, we may have a definitive example of "Good" & likewise, IF Satan existed, we might have a definitive example of "Evil".
But since neither do, then we can't actually prove that "Good" or "Evil" actually exist.

So, how could America ever claim that the Soviets were "Evil", when their is no definitive evil, to speak of ?

A form of 'Evil' then you'll argue...
And to what are you comparing this 'form' of evil ?

...and continues teaching them to this very day, despite the rhetoric from Dubya of the opposite.

Yes... bringing "freedom and democracy" to Afghanistan, while brainwashing the children, with ideals of "fanaticism and bigotry".

One uses what's available. With regard to the Soviets and Afghanistan, what would you have had the US do? Nothing? Directly attack the Soviets? Using local proxies is a dangerous business, but often the only game in town. And no, they weren't nice people, but there weren't exactly a lot of Patrick Henrys and Tom Paines roaming around the 1980s Afghan landscape, waiting to be recruited.

It's easy to look back in hindsight and say that choice X was folly, because it didn't work out ideally. But then you are obligated to show that choices Y and Z were better, and why, based on the information available at the time. Anyone can pick the winning lottery ticket the next day.

Supporting something 'evil' (like the reds) and creating something 'evil' (like super militant jihadis) are different...

I doubt that anyone arming the Afghanis in the 1980s expected to "create" the Taliban of 2001. Indeed, do we really "create" anyone? What happened to free will? The US armed them in a struggle against a far more evil entity -- don't the Taliban deserve any blame for becoming what they became?

Didn't you read the article? The US force fed them militant islamic insanity as kids! What did you guys expect!?

Not so,

The middle east was already full of Islamic militants, the Iranian revolution with Ayatollah Khomeini is a case in point.

That we could use an enemy as a proxie force to fight another enemy is actually good strategy. Fact is that these Islamic militants are nowhere near as dangerous as the old Soviet Union for the fact that the US could invade and conquer the entire middle east in a few short months. The Soviet Union with its large military, its arsenal of ICBM's, strategic bombers, nuclear submarines was a far more dangerous adversary.

Ok, but you'll notice that they ended up no more savage and insane than any of the other Islamic countries, that had no American textbooks. The textbooks were probably a bad idea, but they seem redundant.

And OBL came of age well before this, in another country.

Interesting words there Six...

I believe the US could possibly invade & conquer the entire middle east region, in a few short months...
the only problem with this idea...
the US could never maintain a 'hold' on the middle east, so of what use would it be?

Kill a few hundred thousand INNOCENT people of the middle eastern region... but I'm sure you'd have no regrets about that..
as the War "achieved" its purpose ~ whatever that happens to be at the time right.. just like ridding Iraq of its Weapons of Mass Destruction (Which was just a giant 'distraction')

So I wonder what 'crap' Washington will decide needs to be taught to the Iraqi children...
"Ba'athism is evil"
"Communism is evil"
"Socialism is evil"
"Capitalism is good (for Amerika..)"
..."Israel is Good, Amerika is Good, Palestine is evil, Iran is evil, Syria is evil.."
or as Dubya would better put it...
and this is how we bring "democracy and freedom" to you.

Whether or not we can define it, evil exists. Evil is relative in view, but not in actuality (like most things). It is evil to kill people you have a responsiblity to protect, to opress the poor, and to promote ignorance and demote education.


What actually shocked me about this article, actually, is that a) We're writing texts designed to educate Afghanis at all. That kind of thing should be written by either an Afghani professor, or someone from the region at the very least. b) Our aid budget for rebuilding Afghanistan is so small. We send ten times as much to Israel every year, and Israel doesn't need the help nearly as much.