I disagree with your statement that they "knew we weren't glorifying people who killed their people". They most definitely appeared to see it that way. You can disagree with their views and you can disagree with how they expressed it, but you cannot read their minds.
A bit late to this thread but I just want to relate an incident that took place today. It is only barely connected to this thread but I thought an outsider's opinion might... I don't know really. But I thought something before deciding to type all this out. Anyway, I was in a crowded room and I happened to be without my turban (my hear was tied back in a ponytail). I was sitting about two seats behind and to the left of a pair of men (white, must've been mid-thirties) and I caught this little bit of their conversation - "If I had to sit next to one of them on the plane, I'd make a f***ing scene!" To which the reply was "F***ing yeah. They should just, y'know, ban turbans on planes on planes or something. F***ing towelheads." I am not, of course, saying that all white Americans are racist c**ts (just most of them ) but there are moments when anyone of any race/religion/creed/caste can be a ******. I guess the reason I brought this up was because of the timing of these two incidents. So a bunch of Muslims decided to wreck Remembrance Day. It was a moment. Was the moment I was spending with my thoughts before I happened to overhear this bit of conversation any less important than a moment when a few million people were Remembering the fallen (or to quote Nexxo, were remembering that life is sacred)? I do not believe it was. I think folks need to look past when and where the protest took place to why. Sure, they might be stupid people who have no idea why they're standing around holding signs (anyone remember the "Death to all Juice" picture?) but there is a reason for their discontent. And frankly, from their point of view, the timing was flawless. There are hundreds of protests every year where I study but none gets as much coverage as the Palestinians protesting on the Israeli independence day. They may have had, on the face of it, a message of hate, but what lies behind is a real sense of frustration, impotence and anger. As has been said many times in the past 8 pages, I may not agree with what they chose to say (seriously bad taste, IMO) but they have as much a right to say anything (within the law) as anyone else. Well said indeed. Especially that last bit. People seem to have forgotten what is being remembered and indeed, what is most important on Remembrance Day and any other day of the year. Yep. It's unclear whether or not they were inciting racial/religious unrest but at face value, it's a protest against the glorification of the military action against mostly muslim (hence their brethren) people and countries. Not only is acceptable as a group of people exercising their rights, it is also understandable if you stand neither in their shoes nor your own. Yep. A noble sentiment and one that I wish was shared by many, many more people. Gotta love him EDIT: Apologies for any incoherence. It's very late (or early, depending on how you look at it) and I am dead tired. Just caught this thread and decided to say something before going to bed.
I've been to Afghanistan twice, once with the Armed forces and the second time providing security to aid workers, which I did for free (though they paid for travel, accommodation. equipment etc) because I believe in helping people. I dare you to explain to me that the reason I spent 2 days clearing the liquified remains of my colleagues and the schoolgirls they were teaching out of the building they were using as a school was because of something that happened 50 years, 100 years or even further in the past.....
No, but it is about something that happened 9 years ago. Anyway you frame it, the US and our allies invaded and occupied Afghanistan, and have been trying to enforce our values on their society. Whether you agree with those values or not, we are the invader and it is not unreasonable for the locals to want us out.
The fundamentalist Islamic beliefs of Taliban terrorists that view the education of women as a bad thing go back more than a few centuries. But for more immediate factors we probably could go back as far as the Soviet occupation. In response the US started funding Fundamentalist Islamic schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan to raise the next generation of freedom fighters. Children's school books extolling the virtues of Jihad and showing pictures of brave warriors attacking Russian tanks as they ground defenceless women and children under their tracks were printed in American factories and shipped wholesale to those schools. The long-term result of in-fighting between weapon-sponsored and CIA trained Mujaheddin, warlords and the generation of Fundamentalist warriors thus raised was the Taliban. This suited the West fine; in 1996 the US foreign office expected that it would be like Saudi Arabia; there would be Sharia law and there would be order and stability to protect the gas pipe lines that were being planned to run through the country. No problem. The Taliban were even honoured guests of Texas as negotiations started. Unfortunately they soon went bad. The US increased pressure to either accept their money or their bombs --forgetting this was the Taliban, fundies raised in the crucible of war against the infidels. Of course there could only be one response. Then unrelated to this 9/11 happened (Osama being another ******* offspring of US support of the Mujaheddin) and Bush saw his excuse to invade Afghanistan. In diplomatic circles we are the butt of Russian jokes. Where the second most powerful army in the world, after a decade's worth of effort, failed to subjugate Afghanistan, we thought we'd walk in and do it in a year. Nine years later we are repeating history. I'm sure you have seen some unimaginably horrible things. But as I said before: pain is not sacred. Your experiences do not give you ownership of the truth. You help people for a living. So do I. Let me give you some collegial advice. In our jobs it is necessary to get close to people's suffering, and thus often all too easy to get too close. You become overwhelmed by grief and lose objectivity. The first rule of helping people is: It is never about you. Whenever we help people, whether individuals or whole nations, we are interfering with their lives. Make sure you do it only with their interests at heart, not what you think is good for them. The second rule of helping people is: It is always about you. It is impossible to help people without imposing your own values and beliefs on their lives (especially because they motivated you to help them in the first place). You are always at risk of losing objectivity. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions; your way is not necessarily theirs. You do not necessarily know what is good for them. You do not have a unique perspective on the truth. If you think that your experiences in Afghanistan make your opinion unassailable then you have got too close. I would advise you not to go there again. What you did was incredibly noble and brave but Afghanistan is one of those situations where no matter how much you do it will never be enough. You already have done all you can and it is time to let someone else do their bit now.
Just wondering, while everyone has been arguing about the glorification of the poppy & remembrance, anyone notice the inscription on the cenotaph? "The Glorious Dead" How long has that been there? Anyone asked those who died how glorious they feel?
Did anyone else not give a **** upon reading this except feel sorry for the people near them who had to give up their 2 minutes silence just so a bunch of fakers could pretend that they were making a point? They have every right to protest during the two minute silence or whenever they feel like it but everyone should also be entitled to two minutes of reflection.
I think it's fair to say, that each man does things for his own reasons. Some will have been happy to die a "glorious" death. But I certainly wouldn't feel that way. Interesting point....
Exactly. They could have just ignored the protesters. Imagine the statement that would have made: the MAC making its noise and the crowd simply turning its back on them and having their two minutes if silence. Then moving on without giving them a second glance.
I suspect if we were that kind of nation this part of the forum would be rather quieter than it is. Back OT(ish), one of my grandfathers was force-marched from India to a German POW camp, never mentioned any glory in the faces of those who died on that march. Point of fact, he never mentioned the march to me at all. The other served in North Afrika as a tankie, some time before that he, his brother & cousin sailed their boat down to Dunkirk to help out with the repatriation of the BEF. I was very young when he died, but when I asked the brother & cousin about the war they never really answered me. A number of soldiers in my father's regiment died while in the service of their country & none of their deaths can ever be associated with glory nor any kind of real worth I can attach. In Flanders Fields never really did it for me, but For The Fallen and of course Ligoniel both put me on the floor.
That's always been the challenge. How do we honor those who served and died when the wars we sent them out on were pointless exercises in willy waving? We've seen it time and again since WW2, we send out young men and women out to kill and be killed for causes that might seem like a good idea at the time. Later, when we realize that this might have been a bad idea you hear the cries of "No! Leaving now would dishonor the memory of those who have fallen!". And so we send more of our youth to die to "honor the memory" of those who died before. The end result is that more and more dead soldiers pile up long after most people have come to realize this was a bad idea in the first place because no one wants to admit that they made a mistake in sending troops in the first place. Afghanistan is an excellent example of this. Pretty much everyone seems to get that what we're doing isn't working and is probably making things worse, but we don't want to "dishonor those who have gone before" by surrendering, and so we continue to feed bodies into the meat grinder. An even better example of this was Vietnam after 1969. After Tet pretty much everyone knew the war was both un-winable and unsustainable, yet it went on for 6 more bloody years while we tried to create a "reasonable interval" between when we left and when the South Vietnamese government fell to the North. The challenge is to honor those who gave their lives in service to their respective countries while admitting that the missions they died trying to complete were flawed or even impossible.
Mourning is always for the living. Governments use it to glorify what is at best a failure of politics, at worst a crime of arrogance and greed; body bags covered by a bright flag. The public who colluded with the war --whether out of xenophobic fear or greed and arrogance of its own-- now colludes out of guilt. If we wear the poppy and pay our respects we absolve ourselves of our sins of sending young men and women to kill and die for our expedience. We do not have to think of the fact that a quarter of the homeless are ex-servicemen, or that a third of them are mentally ill, yet struggle without support every day. We do not have to think of their widows and orphans. We paid our due on Armistice Day. Back to driving our 4WDs.
After reading most of the thread and visiting both the MAC website and youtube channel, I have decided to express my views to people in question. This is the email I sent to info@muslimsagainstcrusades.com I am quite interested to see what reply I will get.
Freaking disgusting behaviour, Nexxo, How did you become so intelligent? Every damn Topic!, spread the knowledge.
He stopped trying to shack up with semi-anonymous women, stopped bitching about people taking more than 2 minutes to respond to his texts, and took up reading. *Actually, I've developed this theory that he took part in some particularly devious experiments when he was at university studying Psychology. Being the geek he is, I've decided that he and some of his professors gathered together some very bright people under the guise of "behavior experiements," then systematically hooked them up to a custom designed brain power transfer device (the real Metaversa). It's sort of like the quickening in Highlander, but instead of consuming life force, Nexxo and his colleagues just absorbed people's higher brain functions. He's mentioned before that television producers have approached him to offer professional commentary. I suspect at some point he met Tim Kring, and after showing Kring the brain-sucker thingy he was the inspiration for Sylar on Heroes. *This may or may not be entirely fictional. You decide.
I agree that would have beeen a good response but you can never bet on a large group of people all doing the right thing, perhaps a few people and often most people but not everyone. Plus, it's bloody hard to concentrate when a bunch of people with loudspeakers are standing behind you.
