In the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.
The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist code.
The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist code.
This, via this worthwhile Metafilter thread. Funny old world.
And while I’m at it, via American Samizdat : the Hall of Shame. Not really surprising, is it, how those who raise their fists and call for war so often seem to be those who’ve never actually seen it?
“In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.”
– Ambrose Bierce
– Ambrose Bierce
And for good measure, how about this?
MECCA, March 22, 2005 — President Osama B. Laden today called for a “regime change” in the United States, saying the military dictatorship led by unelected strongman George Walker Bush “is an ever-present threat to world peace.”
Speaking in Mecca at a rally marking his first year in power, the Saudi president said that “issues of national sovereignty are beside the point when the civilized world is faced with the possibility of untold carnage. Bush has long been developing weapons of mass destruction. He has announced his willingness to use them. He refuses to abide by international treaties to curtail these tools of evil. I will not wait on events while dangers gather. We must act.” [more…]
Speaking in Mecca at a rally marking his first year in power, the Saudi president said that “issues of national sovereignty are beside the point when the civilized world is faced with the possibility of untold carnage. Bush has long been developing weapons of mass destruction. He has announced his willingness to use them. He refuses to abide by international treaties to curtail these tools of evil. I will not wait on events while dangers gather. We must act.” [more…]
Category:
Politics Chafe My Scrote