2 American NATO troops dead in Afghanistan as locals rage at US's proper burning of Quran
POSTED BY: AURaptor
UPDATED: Saturday, February 14, 2026 20:29
VIEWED: 3904
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Quote:
Originally posted by CaveTroll:
So; Outside of the US we follow their religious instructions, people die when there's a total chimp out because we're following the rules of their religion, and our president apologizes and bows towards Mecca.
Inside the US we make religious organizations break their religious rules, there's a protest, the protesters are told to shut up and like it, and the president doesn't have to do anything.
Got it.
Hello,
When occupying foreign lands, we must abide by their rules or make ourselves their enemy. That's plain as day to anyone who cares to see it.
In our lands, there are a plethora of laws regarding the behavior of the citizenry and the limitations of religious behavior. Otherwise we would have legal honor killings and some other practices most commonly shrunk away from in the public imagination.
What you are complaining about appears to be that businesses are required to provide health insurance to their employees.
And so, when a religious institution decides to run a business, it must abide.
What is it about this legal requirement that is so much more offensive than the requirement that they not stone adulterers?
--Anthony
_______________________________________________
"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner
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Just to add a couple of points:
The books were burned "inadvertently", along with some other books and trash because they weren't recognized as Korans, it's mentioned in every story on the matter:Quote:
I haven't read anything about them having "writing" in them, merely that they weren't recognized as Korans.
U.S. officials said the books were mistakenly sent with a pile of trash for disposal before several Afghans identified them.
Dunno if anyone has gone after Obama for "apologizing", but the GOP candidates of course have jumped all over him for this "weakness". Just FYI:Quote:
So the "weakness" they're all screaming Obama is showing by apologizing is just bullshit.
President Bill Clinton sparked controversy when he offered contrition short of a formal apology, telling Ugandan school children in 1998 that "European Americans received the fruits of the slave trade, and we were wrong in that."
Republican lawmakers complained that Clinton had lowered the dignity of his office. Tom DeLay, the House majority whip at the time, said he was offended to see a president "directly or indirectly attacking his own country in a foreign land."
But the next president, George W. Bush, a Republican, spoke to the nation's slave-holding past much more directly, calling it "one of the greatest crimes of history."
In a powerful speech in Senegal in 2003, Bush described the horrors of slavery and the injustices of segregation and said that only through centuries of struggle had America "learned that freedom is not the possession of one race."
President Ronald Reagan apologized to Japanese-Americans who were imprisoned in camps during World War II.
Bush apologized for abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib after the photographic evidence was seen around the world. He called it "a stain on our country's honor and our country's reputation".
At other times presidents have admitted things have gone wrong, giving the impression of an apology while stopping just short: Bush on his administration's flawed response to Hurricane Katrina, Richard Nixon regretting the Watergate break-in, Reagan on the arms-for-hostages scandal.
Instead of a simple "I'm sorry," Reagan offered: "Mistakes were made." http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/It-s-not-easy-for-presidents-to
-say-I-m-sorry-3359552.php
It's a sad incident; the Afghans seem to overreact to it, and I'm sad that's happening. I personally think it is a visceral reaction to ALL the things we've done that have been disrespectful of their religion, their customs, and just about everything else--something we do pretty regularly when we invade a country, out of our own ignorance of the culture. We need to get OUT...we've created such an atmosphere of anger that just about anything we do is fodder for release of that anger.
I found this, an excerpt of which does a good job of explaining the problem:Quote:
Smith says that NATO troops "get on a plane at a NATO base in the U.S. or Europe and fly to a NATO base in Afghanistan, and they never really engage with the Afghan population. Also -- and this is the chicken-and-the-egg question -- because of force-protection measures, soldiers can't get out there and win hearts and minds, and because of this, more soldiers die. And the more that soldiers die, the more force-protection measures there are -- and they interact even less. We've just driven a wedge between ourselves," Smith says, echoing feelings and observations expressed in numerous conversations TIME has had with analysts, observers, service members, officers and security contractors over more than two years in Afghanistan.
The Saturday attacks seem to verify the findings of a declassified -- then reclassified -- U.S. Army study titled A Crisis of Trust and Cultural Incompatibility, which w
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Quote:
I haven't read anything about them having "writing" in them, merely that they weren't recognized as Korans.
I'm curious, which news outlets are you relying on.
NPR or MSNBC ?
" The unrest started Tuesday, when Afghan workers at the sprawling Bagram air base noticed that Qurans and other Islamic texts were in the trash that coalition troops dumped into a pit where garbage is burned. Some Afghan workers burned their fingers as they tried to salvage some of the books. Afghan government officials said initial reports indicated four Qurans were burned.
The materials had been taken from a library at Parwan Detention Facility, which adjoins the base, because they contained extremist messages or inscriptions. Writing inside a Quran is forbidden in the Islamic faith, although it was unclear whether the handwritten messages were found in the holy book or other reading materials.
A military official said it appeared that detainees at the prison were exchanging messages by making notations in the texts."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/10111369
" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "
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Quote:I would say the same thing about Iraq and Libya except the numbers would be higher. Iraq? Not an existential threat, ever, and not the source of 9-11. (We can thank the Saudis for that, who also funded the Taliban and the more extreme elements of the Pakistani ISI.) Libya? What did they ever do to us?
30 now dead, hundreds injured... and for what ?
Surely there must be SOME compelling reason, something to justify why we killed a least a hundred thousand people and spent trillions of dollars! Seems to be so must dust in the wind, pretty much like the fuss being raised in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Seems like everyone is behaving like idiots.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:Quote:I would say the same thing about Iraq and Libya except the numbers would be higher. Iraq? Not an existential threat, ever, and not the source of 9-11. (We can thank the Saudis for that, who also funded the Taliban and the more extreme elements of the Pakistani ISI.) Libya? What did they ever do to us?
30 now dead, hundreds injured... and for what ?
Surely there must be SOME compelling reason, something to justify why we killed a least a hundred thousand people and spent trillions of dollars! Seems to be so must dust in the wind, pretty much like the fuss being raised in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Seems like everyone is behaving like idiots.
I just love how , so often on the Left, we see folks pivot away from the issue at hand, and bring up completely different , separate points, to avoid having to deal w/ the specifics. In THIS case, the errant burning of some defaced Qurans, which were, by the Muslims own customs, desecrated and made unclean.
They shouldn't have been burned, they were mixed up with other religious material, which also had been written in , and which could have lead to the confusion... and yet multiple apologies by our President and god knows how many others have been met with 4 Americans killed, along w/ scores of others killed or injured.
What if we had simply said...
" The books had been desecrated , by fellow Muslims, and we burned them. If you have a problem with that, we'll be willing for you to tell us how to handle them next time, should the need arise again. Thank you. "
" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "
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My only response to this is to name my right hand Afghanistan and my left hand America and double facepalm at the rampant stupidity.
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Quote:
ATTENTION ALL MORONS WHO KILL PEOPLE OVER A DAMN BOOK, HOLY OR NOT:
THERE WILL BE SEVERAL BOOK BURNINGS SCHEDULED IN SEVERAL PLACES IN YOUR SUCK-ASS COUNTRY TODAY...PLEASE RIOT WITHIN THE DROP ZONE...ER I MEAN...PROTEST ZONE... AND THEN KISS YER ASS GOODBYE!
Frankly, I think anyone who burns a book, no matter for what reason or what book, is showing themselves to either be ignorant to the point of incompetence or self-righteous jackboots. Both attitudes were probably involved, some combination of laziness and disrespect that allowed this to seem like a good idea.
And anyone who kills someone for religious reasons is a fanatical theocratic scum-sucking zealot where logic and thinky-thoughts go to die.
I honestly can't decide which one is dumber. Empress Thisisstupid even facepalmed at this so hard she blew herself up. We're talking epic level face-napalm here.
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Quote:Rappy, my point being... just because some people are stupid doesn't mean we should follow suit.
I just love how , so often on the Left, we see folks pivot away from the issue at hand, and bring up completely different , separate points, to avoid having to deal w/ the specifics.
Although in your case it's a little hard not to, seeing as you're intellectually challenged.
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Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
But in our land churches make none of the rules, they do not make laws, we are not their tools.
I see your ante and raise you a Brick Sandwich.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_law
In our land churches make SOME of the rules, and often prevent others from being made and/or enforced, as well as trying nonstop to make us their tools and occasionally succeeding in spite of the First Amendment.
Lest you forget, we still ALSO have the problem of Judges sentencing Juvenille offenders to religious indoctrination and abuse at hellholes like Teen Challenge which are in many cases propped up by government tax money.
While in THEORY we're supposed to have seperation of Church and State, in PRACTICE that is not as often the case as it should be, and also worth a mention is small towns where the judge, jury, cops and court personnel are all members of the same religion if not the same church and will conspire against an outsider or "heathen" using the law as a bludgeon...
Quote:
The Raines law was passed on March 23, 1896, by the New York State Legislature. It was nominally a liquor tax, but its intention was to curb the consumption of alcohol by imposing regulations.
Among other provisions, it prohibited the sale of alcoholic beverages on Sunday—except in hotels. Most men worked a six-day week, and Sunday was the only full day for drinking at saloons. Under the law, however, hotels were allowed to serve liquor on Sunday, to guests only, provided it was served during a meal, or in the bedrooms of the hotel. State statutes allowed that any business was considered a hotel if it had 10 rooms for lodging and served sandwiches with its liquor. Saloons quickly found a loophole by adding small furnished bedrooms and applying for a hotel license. Dozens of "Raines law hotels," often located directly above saloons, opened.
As a contemporary source put it, "This offered a premium on the transformation of saloons into hotels with bedrooms and led to unlooked-for evils," i.e. an increase in prostitution, as the rooms in many "Raines law hotels" were used mostly by prostitutes and unmarried couples. (In some cases these rooms may not even have been available at all; in a 1917 novel the protagonist sees "a Raines Law hotel with awnings, indicating that it was not merely a blind to give a saloon a hotel license but was actually open for business.")
Jacob Riis wrote in 1902 of saloon keepers who mocked the law by setting out "brick sandwiches," two pieces of bread with a brick in between, thus fulfilling the legal requirement of serving food. He also writes of altercation in a saloon where a customer attempted to eat a sandwich which the bartender had served just for show; "the police restored the sandwich to the bartender and made no arrests."
Such a shabby bar serves as the 1912 setting of the classic play The Iceman Cometh, by Eugene O'Neill.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raines_law
I know that most people are so conditioned to accept the abuses of religion in america that it doesn't even register on their consciousness anymore, but I think it a bit out of sorts for you Anthony, given how often I bitch about it.
-Frem
I do not serve the Blind God.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:Quote:Rappy, my point being... just because some people are stupid doesn't mean we should follow suit.
I just love how , so often on the Left, we see folks pivot away from the issue at hand, and bring up completely different , separate points, to avoid having to deal w/ the specifics.
Although in your case it's a little hard not to, seeing as you're intellectually challenged.
Yes, yes. I disagree w/ your point, ergo, I must be stupid. *yawn* Got anything else ?
Apologizing sure hasn't helped matters. But I guess in your view, that was clearly the 'smart' thing to do, right ?
" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "
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