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Have you ever been to an Islamic country ever? You just made up the whole history like a simplistic comic book story. > In Afghanistan and much of the Muslim w

by neebz 13y ago

Have you ever been to an Islamic country ever? You just made up the whole history like a simplistic comic book story. > In Afghanistan and much of the Muslim world, the 'culture' is heavily just Islam: Islam controls social structures, e.g., sex, marriage, child rearing, the role of family, etc. I am from Pakistan. Our culture is massive mix of Indian/sub-continental traditions, Islamic values and most recently westerns customs. There is a strong case that our marriage, sex etc. are more inclined towards traditional indian culture than islamic (e.g. second marriages or marrying a divorcee is a taboo in Pakistan while in fact is encouraged in Islam). There is so much diversity in our provinces on how they deal with women (e.g. in Punjab in rural areas, it is very common for women to have jobs, unlike in the Pashtuns) that your claim of sweeping all Islamic countries under one broom is laughable. > We can toss in architecture, what people eat, and what they wear. Basically from how people dress, eat, work, etc., its all Islam. No it's not. Sorry that's just show your lack of research. Again the 'shalwar kameez' we wear here in Pakistan has more in common with Hindu lineage than Islam with the urban areas are totally jeans/suits. We have huge interest-based banks since forever where banks are a total no-no in Islam. >Afghanistan is going to be an Islamic country, some version of an Islamic country, but still an Islamic country, likely run by a king, strong man, or cleric Not sure you can lump up kings with clerics and make an argument out of that. The only thing common between then is opportunist. They wanted to be on the throne and they might've used religion in some cases or maybe sheer power in other. In Pakistan, more than half of our history, we've been ruled by dictators but not once we got an Imam or a cleric.

graycat 13y ago
> I am from Pakistan. Our culture is massive mix of Indian/sub-continental traditions, Islamic values and most recently westerns customs Apparently the main part of Pakistan relevant to Afghanistan is the 'tribal regions' mostly not governed by the rest of Pakistan. There your claims of a "mix" seem to be not correct. Further, much of the problem the US has had with Pakistan is from the strong role of Islam there and in Afghanistan. For reasons of religion, culture, domestic politics, and foreign policy, Pakistan has been mostly on the side of the Taliban, that is, wants to dominate Afghanistan. My comments about Islam were focused on Afghanistan. The comments also apply a lot to Iran and Iraq. For Pakistan, sure, it used to be part of India which is wildly mixed from Muslim, Hindu, what it got from the British, and the old cultures from before the British. India is a forbiddingly complicated place, and Pakistan has been influenced by that. But the main reason for the formation of Pakistan was just Islam -- they wanted an Islamic country. Net, the main culture in Pakistan is just Islam. Italy is heavily a Roman Catholic country, but the church does not run everything. Turkey is an Islamic country, but the clerics don't run everything. An Islamic country can have a culture more varied than just Islam. No doubt the culture of Pakistan is more varied than that of Afghanistan. The main interest in this tread is what the heck is the US going to do about Afghanistan and why? The main content of why is just the role of Islam. The US brought to Afghanistan constitutional government, free elections, roads, schools, hospitals, training and equipment for police and a military, but Afghanistan is about to throw away all of that and return to an 'Islamic state' run by the Taliban. Thus, I and much of the US are losing patience with both Afghanistan and Islam.
- lobster_johnson 13y ago
  Turkey is a secular state. While the population is muslim, the state has historically resisted attempts at islamification. That resistance is being eroded, however. Off-topic: You seem to be using the word "net" a lot in a way that seems odd to me. Net as in "the net effect of which is"?
  - graycat 13y ago
    "Net" is partly from accounting where we calculate, say, earnings, and have already subtracted off expenses, etc. More generally "net" means a summary or a very simple statement of the core point. In writing to be understood, often it is good be clear, and even too simple, about the main 'points'. Otherwise it is too easy that no 'points' at all get across. Your comment and at least two 'siblings' are far more thoughtful than mine was so that my oversimplifying with "net" is not appropriate. Back here in the US, after 9/11 and now 12 years in Afghanistan, we need to make some difficult decisions: We tried, hard but in total ('net'!) not hard enough, to make Afghanistan a "shining city on a hill" but apparently have failed and maybe even 'net' have done more harm than good. Bin laden is gone. The Taliban government that let Bin Laden use their country as a base to attack the US is not gone but is out of power. There are stories that some even in the Taliban now understand that it was a big mistake to let Bin Laden use Afghanistan as a base to attack the US. The US has tried 'nation building' in several countries of the world. We were largely successful in Germany and Japan. With US military protection, Taiwan and South Korea have done well. The US has tried hard to have peace with both Russia and China and not have them become another 'Axis' like Germany and Japan in the 1940s. Still, in Viet Nam, Cambodia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the results of US efforts been from frustrating and/or poor (Iraq) down to worse. Viet Nam is the grand tragedy: I have a nice 600 dot per inch black and white printer from Brother, made in Viet Nam. Terrific for Viet Nam. The US couldn't be happier. The Brother printer is much better than the HP printer I bought in 1994. That Brother and Viet Nam are at least in part beating HP in the printer business is mostly fine in the US (except for HP stockholders!). As far as I can tell, what Viet Nam is now is just fine with the US. The big, huge point for the US is that Viet Nam is not part of some Axis of Moscow, Peking, and Hanoi that seemed to be a threat starting just after WWII where the US had just defeated the Axis and didn't like things that looked like an Axis. The WWII Axis also hurt Viet Nam -- Japan occupied Viet Nam. But, the way Viet Nam is today, it is clearly no threat to its neighbors or the US, and that's really all the US wanted. The US didn't want a colony, and for the rubber or lumber, wanted to pay fair prices for it. The tragedy is that Viet Nam and US relations as they are today could have been just the same in the early 1970s, the 1960s, ..., back to just after WWII (to heck with the French) just by both sides just deciding to and shaking hands on it. In summary ('net'), the US has tried, sometimes at great expense in US blood and treasure, often with much more expense in blood in the other country, sometimes been successful, and sometimes not. When we have failed, we didn't really know why. For why the US was successful in Germany and Japan, both countries had very strong, highly disciplined cultures, suffered just devastating, horrible, defeats, with homeless people wandering cold and hungry in the streets with rotting bodies under piles of rubble, and then used their discipline to say "never again", mean it, implement it, do a lot of really hard work, and rebuild themselves. So, 'culture' played a part. So, why not success in Afghanistan? My view: Culture. The culture was different; either the US didn't understand it or it was insufficient. What was that culture? In a word, Islam; it runs nearly everything. The US tried to build a 'secular' (independent of religion) democracy, and the Taliban have Islam on their side. The US has B-52 bombers from 40,000 feet, GPS location, A-10 airplanes that reduce tanks to piles of scrap iron in seconds, supersonic F-16 airplanes that can reduce a tank to scattered scrap iron in even less time, schools, hospitals, etc. and lose, and the Taliban have sticks, stones, some RPGs, and rusty AK-47s and win. To me, the main difference is that the Taliban have the 'culture', in this case, Islam, on their side. Whatever, likely the US will be leaving Afghanistan, fairly soon. For the US, it's much more difficult to attack us now. In particular, it's difficult even to have nail clippers on a US commercial airplane. And I can believe that in many Islamic countries, anyone shouting "Jihad! Death to ..." will quickly get a 'corrective lesson' they won't forget, maybe even can't forget. For Turkey, if they become more fundamentally Islamic, then they will find that the US, NATO, the EU, and maybe even Russia will become much less friendly.

by neebz 13y ago

graycat 13y ago

> I am from Pakistan. Our culture is massive mix of Indian/sub-continental traditions, Islamic values and most recently westerns customs Apparently the main part of Pakistan relevant to Afghanistan is the 'tribal regions' mostly not governed by the rest of Pakistan. There your claims of a "mix" seem to be not correct. Further, much of the problem the US has had with Pakistan is from the strong role of Islam there and in Afghanistan. For reasons of religion, culture, domestic politics, and foreign policy, Pakistan has been mostly on the side of the Taliban, that is, wants to dominate Afghanistan. My comments about Islam were focused on Afghanistan. The comments also apply a lot to Iran and Iraq. For Pakistan, sure, it used to be part of India which is wildly mixed from Muslim, Hindu, what it got from the British, and the old cultures from before the British. India is a forbiddingly complicated place, and Pakistan has been influenced by that. But the main reason for the formation of Pakistan was just Islam -- they wanted an Islamic country. Net, the main culture in Pakistan is just Islam. Italy is heavily a Roman Catholic country, but the church does not run everything. Turkey is an Islamic country, but the clerics don't run everything. An Islamic country can have a culture more varied than just Islam. No doubt the culture of Pakistan is more varied than that of Afghanistan. The main interest in this tread is what the heck is the US going to do about Afghanistan and why? The main content of why is just the role of Islam. The US brought to Afghanistan constitutional government, free elections, roads, schools, hospitals, training and equipment for police and a military, but Afghanistan is about to throw away all of that and return to an 'Islamic state' run by the Taliban. Thus, I and much of the US are losing patience with both Afghanistan and Islam.

lobster_johnson 13y ago
Turkey is a secular state. While the population is muslim, the state has historically resisted attempts at islamification. That resistance is being eroded, however. Off-topic: You seem to be using the word "net" a lot in a way that seems odd to me. Net as in "the net effect of which is"?
- graycat 13y ago
  "Net" is partly from accounting where we calculate, say, earnings, and have already subtracted off expenses, etc. More generally "net" means a summary or a very simple statement of the core point. In writing to be understood, often it is good be clear, and even too simple, about the main 'points'. Otherwise it is too easy that no 'points' at all get across. Your comment and at least two 'siblings' are far more thoughtful than mine was so that my oversimplifying with "net" is not appropriate. Back here in the US, after 9/11 and now 12 years in Afghanistan, we need to make some difficult decisions: We tried, hard but in total ('net'!) not hard enough, to make Afghanistan a "shining city on a hill" but apparently have failed and maybe even 'net' have done more harm than good. Bin laden is gone. The Taliban government that let Bin Laden use their country as a base to attack the US is not gone but is out of power. There are stories that some even in the Taliban now understand that it was a big mistake to let Bin Laden use Afghanistan as a base to attack the US. The US has tried 'nation building' in several countries of the world. We were largely successful in Germany and Japan. With US military protection, Taiwan and South Korea have done well. The US has tried hard to have peace with both Russia and China and not have them become another 'Axis' like Germany and Japan in the 1940s. Still, in Viet Nam, Cambodia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the results of US efforts been from frustrating and/or poor (Iraq) down to worse. Viet Nam is the grand tragedy: I have a nice 600 dot per inch black and white printer from Brother, made in Viet Nam. Terrific for Viet Nam. The US couldn't be happier. The Brother printer is much better than the HP printer I bought in 1994. That Brother and Viet Nam are at least in part beating HP in the printer business is mostly fine in the US (except for HP stockholders!). As far as I can tell, what Viet Nam is now is just fine with the US. The big, huge point for the US is that Viet Nam is not part of some Axis of Moscow, Peking, and Hanoi that seemed to be a threat starting just after WWII where the US had just defeated the Axis and didn't like things that looked like an Axis. The WWII Axis also hurt Viet Nam -- Japan occupied Viet Nam. But, the way Viet Nam is today, it is clearly no threat to its neighbors or the US, and that's really all the US wanted. The US didn't want a colony, and for the rubber or lumber, wanted to pay fair prices for it. The tragedy is that Viet Nam and US relations as they are today could have been just the same in the early 1970s, the 1960s, ..., back to just after WWII (to heck with the French) just by both sides just deciding to and shaking hands on it. In summary ('net'), the US has tried, sometimes at great expense in US blood and treasure, often with much more expense in blood in the other country, sometimes been successful, and sometimes not. When we have failed, we didn't really know why. For why the US was successful in Germany and Japan, both countries had very strong, highly disciplined cultures, suffered just devastating, horrible, defeats, with homeless people wandering cold and hungry in the streets with rotting bodies under piles of rubble, and then used their discipline to say "never again", mean it, implement it, do a lot of really hard work, and rebuild themselves. So, 'culture' played a part. So, why not success in Afghanistan? My view: Culture. The culture was different; either the US didn't understand it or it was insufficient. What was that culture? In a word, Islam; it runs nearly everything. The US tried to build a 'secular' (independent of religion) democracy, and the Taliban have Islam on their side. The US has B-52 bombers from 40,000 feet, GPS location, A-10 airplanes that reduce tanks to piles of scrap iron in seconds, supersonic F-16 airplanes that can reduce a tank to scattered scrap iron in even less time, schools, hospitals, etc. and lose, and the Taliban have sticks, stones, some RPGs, and rusty AK-47s and win. To me, the main difference is that the Taliban have the 'culture', in this case, Islam, on their side. Whatever, likely the US will be leaving Afghanistan, fairly soon. For the US, it's much more difficult to attack us now. In particular, it's difficult even to have nail clippers on a US commercial airplane. And I can believe that in many Islamic countries, anyone shouting "Jihad! Death to ..." will quickly get a 'corrective lesson' they won't forget, maybe even can't forget. For Turkey, if they become more fundamentally Islamic, then they will find that the US, NATO, the EU, and maybe even Russia will become much less friendly.