Our efforts to preserve their culture, out of “cultural awareness”, is like trying to preserve a malignant cancer.
For it to positively shine in Afghanistan shows how utterly grotesque their culture truly is.
I'm finishing my year long tour in Afghanistan with the Army. What you posted is spot on with regard to Afghanistan. This place is a nation of hillbillies and illiterate losers primarily to their ass-backwards culture.
I liked his post very much too.
What I got from the article is that much of the village was complicit with the Taliban. In that case it needed to be made an example of. No “culture” and nothing there to preserve as in the case of Dresden, it would have been understood by the most backward of people, especially by the most backward of people.
There is no resistence where there are no survivors.
You may or may not have heard of it, but the brilliant historical novel ‘Flashman’ (the first in the series), by George MacDonald Fraser, recounted the disastrous British withdrawl from Afghanistan, under perhaps the most incompetent general who ever lived, Major-General William George Keith Elphinstone, CB.
The anti-hero of the novel, Harry Flashman, is a coward, cheat, scoundrel, womanizer, and general all-around swine, and the novels were alleged to be parts of his autobiography, which took him to the greatest conflicts and battles of the 19th Century. Fraser did such a historically accurate job, that initially he fooled several literary critics into thinking it was a real autobiography.
In any event, it is a very enjoyable read, and having been to Afghanistan, you will have a good “terrain walk” picture of how things were for the British in 1842, carrying Brown Bess muskets (effective range from 50-100 yards.)
“This place is a nation of hillbillies...”
I was there Jan - Jun 2007. Met some of the 173rd folks. You have seriously insulted every hillbilly in the history of the world. Hillbillies are damn fine, reasonable people compared to Afghans.