Quote:
Originally Posted by mikeh40+
this is kinda a hard one to respond to, while i admit that i dont know all that much about the afghan people as a whole nor do i understand what they go through in daily life since it is so much different from life in the U.S.A or other parts of the globe, i find it hard to swallow the points of paying money to a people that are so willing to pick up a weapon and kill, bodybuilding aside ,its part of their own government and the ideals that they have, that causes their nation to be poor, sorry but the web site you directed me to was nothing but a campaign for the afghan people, so we pay them instead of the Taliban,, seems we are paying plenty with the lives of our own soldiers. sore subject i`m afraid, and ill timed,, dont mean to sound harsh but thats just my thoughts.. props to the bodybuilders and anyone anywhere that is trying to better their lives,
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I understand it's tough one to swallow, and I appreciate your thoughts. My concern is getting this war over with so people like my son-in-law can come home, and the bottom line is we're not going to shoot our way out of it. When even the generals agree on this I think we should listen. It's not exactly that they are so willing to pick up a gun for pay, it's that if my children are literally starving, I will do anything I have to to feed them. One out of four children dies before the age of 5 there, and in some places last winter people were literally eating grass. When you have a guy like General Petraeus saying we need to give them another way to feed their families, that's pretty potent.
I think we can go a long way toward winning by giving them a helping hand. The idea of wild-eyed America-haters are blown apart by this documentary, in my opinion. It would be a shame to lose this country to extremists when it seems most of the people come closer to having American values than most Middle East countries. The business about covering up women only really took hold when the Taliban took over in the Nineties, which was a response to the lack of law and order when the warlords were fighting. Before that women were doctors and professionals.
Of course there are hard-core Taliban who will only understand being "martyred", but they are the ones paying these kids to fight while they themselves hang in the background. Why not pay the kids to do something else to free up forces to go after the hard-core, I say. It's just good war-fighting policy. Sun Tzu in the Art of War says you weaken your enemy any way you can before attacking, including causing defections of his men.
Peace through sport.
