This is bulls*it!!!!!

[lxskllr]

Well if you don't believe in God you can always kill in the name of democracy or communism or (plain old give me your oil and other resources) capitalism.

I agree in general. Many times religion is just the uniform used for combat, but sometimes religion adds a fanatical twist to the situation. You can't use a logical argument against magical sky people. If people are fighting on the basis of magic, you either fight back, or wait for them to evolve.

[Frosted]

O man, religion sounds just so peaceful and rewarding. Jeez I still wish I believed n the myth called god. Then I could kill in his name as well.

It's territorial.
It just so happens that the catholics are republican and the protestants are unionist.
Ireland has been populated originally with catholics. When the English and Scots settled in the North, they just so happened to be Protestant. It's only circumstantial that it happens to involve religion.

[BadAxe]

Well if you don't believe in God you can always kill in the name of democracy or communism or (plain old give me your oil and other resources) capitalism.

To which I am against all of that. Its time to stop killing each other over anything, religion, politics, resources, cultural differences. Its time to come together as a species, view each other as humans, and only humans, and work together to solve the worlds problems, to reach into space and begin figuring out the universe, and begin to evolve as a species.

[Frosted]

To which I am against all of that. Its time to stop killing each other over anything, religion, politics, resources, cultural differences. Its time to come together as a species, view each other as humans, and only humans, and work together to solve the worlds problems, to reach into space and begin figuring out the universe, and begin to evolve as a species.

True. In Northern Ireland they've seen the horror. Now they're moving slowly toward what I hope to be a permanent peace.

Unfortunately killing for whatever reason is a depressing re-occurring cycle with humanity.

[sgreger1]

I maintain that these guys shouldn't face any crazy punishment, give them an UCMJ Article 15 just like you give for any other punishment, and then be done with it.

I understand where you guys are coming from in that this makes us look bad, but you have to realize that our soldiers for the most part see things in a very black and white, us vs. them mentality since that is how it is portrayed in their environment. If you think a little book burning as a "**** you" gesture to muslims is bad than I am glad you don't know about the rest of the stuff that goes on. In my unit it was like the holy grail if you killed someone and were able to find a Koran on their body and bring it back. They search you when you come back home to make sure no one is taking war trophies, but things can always slip through the cracks.

It's real easy to sit here and talk about how it's not nice to hurt someones feelings, but the men in question here are not in the business of kissing owies and worrying about feelings, nor are they in an environment that reinforces empathy in any real way. In the army there is one punishment, an Article 15: you lose all of your rank, have to work till midnight every day (and then wake up at 5am the next morning to do it all again) and then you lose half your pay for 2 months too. This is given for DUI's, fighting, stealing shit, or frankly anything else. Jail time is only for someone who REALLY ****ed up, like went AWOL or murdered someone. HURTING MUSLIMS FEELINGS DOES NOT COUNT. It is not a real "**** up", it is just stupid ass young men being stupid. It is bad for our image, but soldiers aren't too worried about that, that is for the civilian affairs losers to worry about, at least that's the attitude. Jailing these young men for burning pieces of paper just because some group happens to really like whats written on that piece of paper is retarded.

Do you know how often Muslims burn American flags, bibles, etc? It's common practice, we don't get an apology and no one goes to jail. And I don't think anyone should, because it's just free men doing what they do. In the army you are less free so some punishment may be in order, but not jail time for god's sake.


We are engaged in a decade long war with millions of deaths (many of those civilians), we have destroyed the infrastructure of two entire countries, we have poisoned their children with depleted uranium, and we have bankrupted ourselves in the process.... and you people want to complain about how burning a book has pissed off some religious nuts. Who in the **** cares.

[Naswari]

Do you know how often Muslims burn American flags, bibles, etc?

Some Muslims burn the American flag as do some people in central and south America as well as people in other parts of the world, but no Muslims will ever burn the Bible.Muslims (and yes I happen to be one, maybe not a very good one but a Muslim nevertheless) respect the Bible and we respect and love Jesus and believe him to be a Prophet/messenger of God just as we believe Abraham,Moses etc were also messengers of God.

So your assertion that Muslims burn bibles is a false one.

I could say a lot more about the whole situation in the world today but I wont, I come here to talk about snus not religion or world politics so Ill leave it at that.

Good day

[Frosted]

If anybody knows an ounce about modern soldiering, burning the Koran was an idiotic, insensitive and cringeworthy thing to do. Operationally, this kind of stupidity can take years off any progress gained.

On the other hand, killing people because of it is equally idiotic.

[shikitohno]

Give the guys some disciplinary action like sgreger mentioned, and make them attend some sensitivity seminar if you really want to punish them. Dumb move on their part for sure, but they did have reasons for destroying them (though I think analysing those messages and keeping them on file would have been smarter), and the reaction is just completely disproportional. It only serves to reinforce negative images of Islam in the West. Bibles get burned in the US. You don't see the Amish storming out of PA and killing folks every time it happens, though.

There does come a time when people have to say, "Muslims, man the hell up. I'm not Muslim, I'm no more bound by your religious laws than you are by Hindu religious decrees. Not everyone is going to always be nice to you, deal with it." There are far more appropriate ways to express your displeasure with US actions than breaking out the riot hat and going and killing people every time we piss you off. In the long run, this is only going to hurt Afghans themselves. They hurt a lot more of their own people than ours, and if we get fed up enough, we can say, "To hell with this, good luck with that nation-building thing, we're out."

I know this is a bit anathema to them, but perhaps Muslims could learn something from Hindus. Don't like an occupying nation? Take a page out of Ghandi's book. Make sure it's the peaceful protest page, and not the "Screw industrialization, let's go back to an agrarian society!" page. If every one of your protests isn't a damn riot, you'll gain a lot more sympathy with Western audiences, which will translate over time to a lot more pressure on Western governments from their citizens to treat you properly, and get out if that's what you want. With the current protest plan, you simply come off looking like a bunch of uncivilized jackasses.

You know what? Screw it. I'm just going to print off a copy of this post and stash it somewhere, and 10 years after the US finally gets the message and gets the hell out, I'll see if I can't arrange to have it translated and dropped by the thousands over Afghanistan. This whole, "Never hurt our feelings, or we'll riot and indiscriminately kill people, even the ones on our side. Islam #1!" thing is definitely going to have seemed like it panned out pretty well for you in another 20 years when you're living under another brutally repressive theocracy.

[Roo]

We need some perspective here. We are talking about what happened in Afghanistan, not bibles being burned in the USA and how the Amish would react (??). While I'm not at all in support of the Afghan response, let us not forget who we are dealing with. Afghans, simply put, have nothing left but their traditions, tribal allegiances, and Islam. They are an occupied country, and after 10 years of the occupiers "murdering" (as it is perceived) and accomplishing nothing (as it is perceived), now they (we) are insulting their deeply-seeded religion, which is all that some feel they have left to grasp on to. Given this scenario, is it any surprise that it takes little to push these folks over the edge?

It is clear as day that people in Afghanistan will respond this way to the smallest of provocations, and that will never change. Just one more reason to GTFO.

[rickcharles606]

I typically don't get involved with these types of threads, but I'm a veteran and the thought of "prosecuting" these soldiers for burning Korans is ridiculous. Should they be punished, yeah sure. That being said, I don't feel we as a society should allow these men to have their lives ruined for an insensitive action. It wasn't criminal, and let's not forget...our elected officials asked them to go to Afghanistan in the first place. And they went.

If Muslim people want us to respect and honor their holy book, then they should do the same and not defile it by trying to pass coded messages to one another that could lead to yet another dead American. The only fault I find with the American soldiers is that if these Korans did have coded messages written in them...they should have been kept for study and future use against the enemy.

[wa3zrm]

It is clear as day that people in Afghanistan will respond this way to the smallest of provocations, and that will never change. Just one more reason to GTFO.

So true... sad it takes years for us to learn. We got Osama bin Laden, time to come home.

If they do the same type of crap again, time to turn the sand into glass.

[Roo]

Good post Rick I couldn't agree with that more.

[shikitohno]

It is clear as day that people in Afghanistan will respond this way to the smallest of provocations, and that will never change. Just one more reason to GTFO.

This is the exact thing that I'm taking issue with Roo. They react this way at the drop of a hat. This isn't exactly the first time this has happened, and it didn't take very long into the war before you first saw them doing this. I'm all for respecting their cultures and religion. What I'm saying is that this way they go about trying to get what they want is totally counter-productive. You don't get others to treat you like an adult by throwing a temper tantrum. They've got a good number of legitimate grievances, but their method of trying to get what they want has not worked for them in the past (see any number of similar riots in terribly oppressed Muslim nations, as well as previous ones in Afghanistan), and it will never work.

Their rioting makes them look bad, almost always winds up hurting and killing way more Afghans than it does their supposed enemy, and fails to have any lasting impact. If all they have is their traditions, they should rally around them, and either undertake peaceful protests to try and get their demands met, or wage an all out guerilla war against us to get the message across that we are not wanted there. After a war that kicks us out of the country, they can have whatever sort of government they want, that they think will respect their culture and traditions. The warfare part worked out pretty well against the USSR. I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised to see either the Taliban, or a similar group of theocratic warlords sweep into power and dismantle whatever shred of democracy they do have though. Comparatively speaking, the current response of rioting for a few days or a week is a positively childish response that doesn't accomplish anything in the long term, but lets everyone pat each other on the back and say, "Good job, we showed them, didn't we?"

There's bound to be plenty of pretty smart people living in Afghanistan. It would be nice to see them learn from the past, and try a different tactic.

[Roo]

If they do the same type of crap again, time to turn the sand into glass.

Not trying to pick a fight or single out any particular person here, but the US needs a geography lesson on Afghanistan. We tend to think of Muslims = Middle East. Afghanistan is geographically and historically firmly rooted in Central Asia, and the culture is vastly different from what you might be imagining in the Arab world. They are not "sand people". The only desert to be found there is in the south near the Pakistan border. That being largely irrelevant, it is our failure to understand a people we are at war with that perpetuates and exacerbates the difficulties of this conflict.

[shikitohno]

Yeah, from what I understand of it, parts of New York have a pretty similar climate to Afghanistan's. Mostly mountainous, has a fair amount of arable land, but most of the really good land goes towards growing poppies for opium production. You know, if we really wanted to improve the living standard for Afghans, we could always just get rid of that pesky law that makes heroin illegal. Bam! Instant market for something Afghanistan is already great at making.