Pēteris Cedriņš (Peteris Cedrins) wrote:
> On 26 Maijs, 06:14, Vladimir Makarenko <vmak...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> Oh Petya, don't waste your time and bandwidth - what's the point to
post
>> this weak heart whining here?
>> Everybody already has made his mind on Afghanistan.
>> First, you'll find yourself between Scilla and Charibda : under Soviets
>> women in Kabul were walking streets in miniskirts, Taliban was raised
>> with the US assistance.
>>
>> What I think is the question to be asked TODAY is: could the hospitable
>> host of infectious deadly disease on planetary scale be tolerated?
>> Could Pol Pot's Cambodia with a contagious virus be tolerated?
>>
>> The answer is clear: everybody saw how the schmuks from Taliban were
>> executing women and hiding in the mountain holes when it came to face
>> the real men with guns. Such pathetic suckers.
>> But as everything under this democratic parroting of Brezhnev regime
>> which is today in the States - the operation got totally screwed. Not
>> without help or no special of such from Euros.
>>
>> Euros are so nice when it is about gays parading the streets. They are
>> so timid however when it is about to spend few bucks and send a platoon
>> to build a school in Afghanistan and defend it. Soviets were much
>> better. They had a nerve.
>>
>> Well, Obama is coming and bringing a very strong team. Let's hope that
>> the situation will reverse. [He] - and - [he] I mean his team - really
>> cares about Afghanistan. Besides, and I think it is almost crucial -
>> Russians will like pro-American Afghanistan more then Taliban
>> Afghanistan. The Russians may sigh but they their choice is clear - at
>> least I bet on that.
>>
>> VM.
>>
>> > Pēteris Cedriņš (Peteris Cedrins) wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> Terry Glavin at the National Post -- an excerpt:
>>> "This is not just 'George Bush's war.' This is a liberation struggle.
>>> It's a war of resistance against clerical fascism, against the most
>>> unspeakably brutal kind of misogyny, against tyranny, slavery,
>>> illiteracy and oppression. Over the past six years, poll after poll
>>> has provided unequivocal, empirical evidence that the Afghan people
>>> want us there to help them win this fight. And the people are winning.
>>> "In 2004, only one in 10 Afghans had access to medical services. Now
>>> it's eight in 10. Three out of every four children under the age of
>>> five have been immunized against childhood diseases. There are
>>> millions of girls attending school now. More than 100,000 women have
>>> begun their own small businesses with micro-loans administered by the
>>> World Bank -- that sinister institution we progressives are supposed
>>> to despise.
>>> "Afghanistan is now an embryonic democracy, and one of every four
>>> Afghan MPs is a woman. Just a few years ago, Afghan women weren't
>>> allowed out of doors unless they were accompanied by a man. Under the
>>> Taliban, you weren't allowed to watch television, but now there are
>>> seven national television stations, and all sorts of little
>>> newspapers, and 10 universities.
>>> "None of this would have happened if the so-called 'anti-war' argument
>>> had prevailed. If the ISAF armies just packed up and left, it would be
>>> back to the Dark Ages again.
>>> "Still, the Afghan people want more, and faster. Last month, to
>>> protest the snail's pace of their government's efforts to bring armed
>>> militants to heel, workers in the Herat region launched a five-day
>>> general strike that came close to shutting down the entire province.
>>> What did Canada's left contribute to that effort? Nothing.
>>> "Last November, 10-year-old Alaina Podmorow got together with 18 of
>>> her fellow Grade 5 pupils in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley, and
>>> they raised enough money to pay the salaries of five Afghan
>>> schoolteachers for a whole year. How is it that in doing this simple
>>> thing, Alaina and her young comrades, in the space of a few weeks,
>>> made a greater contribution to the liberation of the Afghan people
>>> than the combined efforts of the NDP, the Canadian Labour Congress and
>>> the Canadian Federation of Students, over the past seven years?
>>> "It's a long story. It's at least partly because cultural relativism
>>> has eaten away at the principle of universal rights -- which was once
>>> the bedrock of left-wing politics --and a crude and paranoid anti-
>>> Americanism has come to serve as a substitute for rational,
>>> progressive analysis. By Sept. 11, 2001, the politics of solidarity
>>> had been eclipsed by the politics of the counterculture, and so the
>>> main ranks of the left settled into a comfortable and familiar
>>> Sixties' narrative: It's the Third World vs. American empire."
>>> http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=533347
>>> I got there through "But, I am a Liberal!" --
>>> http://butiamaliberal.blogspot.com/2008/05/internationalism.html
>>> Regards,
>>> /P
>>> http://lettonica.blogspot.com/
>
> Not sure which parts of your post are sarcastic or not, Volodya -- I
> s'pose that's a compliment.
Petya, it would drive any person insane to look at the world's affairs
or its history without antidepressant of sarcasm. I am not sure if I
mentioned here from the last book of Kurt Vonnegut "A man without
country": how, while they, the POW, were sitting in some basement during
bombing of Dresden and just trying to guess if the death will come easy
as a bomb or hard way, as fire, when one of the guys suddenly said: "If
we feel like **** I can only imagine how pedestrians there feel".
But as exempt of the usual order of things I do agree with you -
Afghanistan must not be left alone.
> No -- I rarely find myself between Scylla
> and Charybdis when it comes to the USSR and the US. They can't be
> equated, and I fin those arguments and the people who make them -- my
> friend Dmitry included -- to be way off base. The US, with all of its
> failings (and OK, OK -- its massive, humongous, gargantuan failings)
> is not, and has never been, anything like the USSR, despite the
> delirium of the Holmanesque, Karlamov, et al. The US is a democracy,
> an "imposing democracy" on a tribal society is not anything like
> imposing Soviet totalitarianism.
Petya, the biggest problem I ahve with your understanding of Soviet
system that you see it as solid and stable as a rock - you ignore its
evolution which eventually brought it to the relatively "peaceful"
demise (my condolences to Tajikistan).
Soviets when came to Afghanistan played the very old book: they follow
the same recipe they played in Soviet Asian republics. And basically it
was on the bottom line very moderate upgrading pre-feudal tribal social
system AND - and this is most im****tant - putting the seeds of defeat of
the very system they wanted to upbring: education. You have all the data
today to compare ex Soviet Asian republics with their Southern neighbors.
Afghanistan fell a victim to proxy wars between USSR and USA. Soviets
lost in result ~15,000 people dead. Whether the rise of Islamic
fundamentalism was sparked or just fueled by the US in this war - I
still haven't made my mind, it's at list on the face sounds too
"marxist", simplistic to be true. It maybe accelerated it, gave it means
and forms but I somehow think it would come anyway.
> The article I posted was from the
> Left -- the far Left, even.
Listen, you are confusing me with somebody - I don't really care of the
name of those who talks sense or gibberish - "left" or "right". Besides
the whole labeling is becoming archaic with no place in today's world.
> The idea that universal values were and
> should be at the core of the Left is historically right on -- cultural
> relativism is attacked in the article, and I happen to agree with the
> attack.
I cannot argue here as I really do not follow those whom you call "Left"
to know if they have an agreed position on Afghanistan.
>
> There's the famous quote from General Napier: "You say that it is your
> custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn
> a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them.
> Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a
> gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
>
> Horrid imperialism! Is it?
That is a really good one. I will save it for future ba****ng of Baltics.
>
> No one, not even Holman, responded to my comments re the chaos in
> Latvia in 1919. There are now fresh dead Balts in Afghanistan --
> Sergeant Arūnas Jarmalavičius and Major Ivar Brok, the latest.
> Fighting for freedom at the behest of the UN and civilization. Oh,
> what an iffy phrase! Is it?
Balts in Afghanistan is a separate topic - I do think you should not be
there. There are big boys with big guns. They could have done for once
in a while something without drugging small nations into it. One dead
Balt scaled up to big boys equals 100-300 of loss.
>
> Spare me the bull**** -- in this case, no one is trying to feed the
> Afghans anything they don't want. Or are we?
Are you sure you still shooting at me?
>
> The intervention in Latvia in 1918/19 led to free elections in 1920.
> This is, in essence, a vindication of force. The places and nations
> are totally different (as is most any place we might fly to upon some
> magic carpet), but it would be a bit idiotic to pretend that
> principles were not involved. Like Vello, I happen to be fond of self-
> determination. I don't see us putting up many an impediment -- if you
> wish to elect Hamas and self destruct in "Palestine," for example...
> go for it!
>
> Just don't try to tell me that cultural relativism trumps basic human
> rights. The guy you liked, Alvis Hermanis, spoke on a program with the
> wonderful name "100 grami kultūras" the other day, explaining how
> watching rabid homophobes attack gay pride made clear to him how
> decent Letts could have slaughtered Jews so enthusiastically. Out on a
> limb, there --but some isolate "culture" is really no excuse for
> barbaric bigotry, and in that sense he is right.
>
> And -- political rights? My trouble with Dmitry is that _everything_
> is made to seem relative. I know Dmitry is a good guy -- I s'pose even
> Andrius is. But give a nod now and then to the fact that we make
> promises. One of the things the Trot I cited makes clear is that being
> anti-war often means being pro-war. You do not cure Afghanistan by
> "getting out of Afghanistan" -- do you? That is fundamentally whacked
> -- the West, including Latvia, is trying to build up Afghanistan into
> a country that can take care of itself. I do not think disagreement
> with the project is necessarily whacked -- but what the article I
> posted argues is that it usually is. I think that's true. The argument
> of most of the Left is far weaker. It's based on the idea that the
> Western values are wrong. They are not.
>
> Vsego khoroshego,
> /P
I kinda confused by these paragraphs. Anyway, I hope I made myself clear
on a topic.
VM.
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