[Humbug]

Right before we took out the Taliban i had read the Iliad and the Odyssey...and i kept harking back to those epics whenever i would see Afghanistan with their many tribal squabbles and with their leaders' tendencies to boast and to exaggerate about everything that happened. Their lives over in that part of the world seem so wrapped up in stories and in trying to weave their own verses into the imaginary tapestry that flows around them and their people. It's very much like the mentality that you read about in the Iliad, as though still extant today, so much so that every time i would hear about some Afghani leader marching his band of men against the Taliban i almost expected to see him holding a spear in his hand, thumping his chest with it, and then breaking out into some long poetic dialogue telling of how his men will massacre the enemy in one fell swoop. It's the same now listening to Saddam and his minions speak. The same sort of boasting and the same sort of painting pictures with words that have little to do with reality but everything to do with myth making.

[Eala]

The same sort of boasting and the same sort of painting pictures with words that have little to do with reality but everything to do with myth making.

In part it seems they're trapped by their language. I've been told that Arabic is a very expressive, emotive language. This can lead to a focus on the expression instead of the thing expressed.