Heard some US soldier on TV explaining that although the Taliban are some brutal bastards ...

[NNN0LHI]

... they are not corrupt. That boggled my mind. How can that be?

Another thing he mentioned was that no one was better at "dispute resolution."

He didn't go into a lot of detail but he did indicate that their form of "dispute resolution", didn't always entail limbs being cut off or stonings.

He said the US is no good at "dispute resolution", because we don't understand the culture. He said a lot of disputes are settled instantly when the person in the right gets awarded a sheep from the person who wronged him on the spot. And then the dispute is all over. Cut and dried. No hard feelings. And no appeals either.

Where Americans in the same situation want to do investigations and take statements of what happened and in the meantime the hard feelings fester and the next thing you know a small problem that could have been settled with a sheep in 5 minutes has now turned into a big problem with major implications.

This soldier made a lot of sense. We are way out of our realm.

Don

[SoCalDem]

1. Bullets battling ideology never works

We keep trying to impose our morality/culture/society on people who do not want it.

We forget that our way is not the ONLY way.. and things that we see as totally abhorrent are just the way they do thing. They think a lot of OUR society is abhorrent.

[Warpy]

2. The Taliban were initially welcomed because they were seen

as incorruptible. As it turned out, they were just as corrupt as any other group, some of them practicing what they preached, more of them not practicing it in private, and a few were just as bad as the warlords they supplanted. There was no self policing.

While I think they'll eventually have to form part of any government that arises (and no, we don't get to determine the form it will take), they won't be welcomed back as supreme rulers. They left a bitter taste in too many mouths.

We don't understand the culture and should not be involved in domestic squabbles, at all.

The only things we need to do are to stop killing those people, declare victory and go home.

[Myrina]

4. +10 for your last 2 sentences

:-)

[Ernesto]

3. One of my life's great learning moments

When I realized that the people we were killing in Vietnam actually had the upper hand morally speaking. After all, it was THEIR land they were defending.

[EFerrari]

6. Once you commit a thought crime, there's no going back.

:)

[old mark]

5. Bush started that war - it HAS to be stupid...nt