We Don't Know What We Are Doing Over There

by James Glaser
June 2, 2004

I have a friend who went down to Southern Mexico with his new girl friend. They wanted to visit small towns and see how the locals lived. At one small village they took in a cock fight. There was a wooden ring in which the birds fought and on one side all the men sat together and on the other side all the women sat together. Well my friend's new girl friend didn't like this at all. She said she wanted to sit with him and when the men started yelling for her to get over to the other side, she tried to get the local women to move over to where the men were sitting.

My buddy was smart enough to grab this American women and get her out of there. Now we all know that a cock fight would not happen up here in the States, but this is a good example of why things are not going our way in Afghanistan or Iraq. Sure, at any sporting event in the United States, men and women sit together. It has been that way for a long time and everyone is comfortable with it that way. However, that doesn't mean that those people in the little village in Southern Mexico would feel comfortable that way.

So, not only was this woman with my friend rude, but she was also arrogant to think she could go down there and have things her way.

We have our American Army over in Iraq and Afghanistan, where we are trying to tell the people how they should live. Just like the woman in Mexico, we are trying to change how things work in these two countries.

These people have no idea of what Democracy is nor Women's Rights for that matter. Yes we can feel that it would be better for all of these people to change their lives to the way we want them to, but they have to want to too.

You can't walk into a cock fight and start changing all the spectator rules. That takes time, maybe decades. The women in Iraq and Afghanistan want rights, but even they know that it will have to come at a pace that works for their country. Small changes by our standards are giant leaps for the women over there and with each new step, time will be needed to get acceptance. Remember these women are living in the Dark Ages and Western Women didn't get all of their rights over night.

Change is hard. Right here in the USA it took decades of hard work for women to get the vote. Think about how hard it was to get Black children and White children in the same school. Washington wants to change everything over there right now. People, men and women resist change.

We think growing opium poppies to make a living is a crime. Well over in Afghanistan it has been going on for hundreds of years and it is Afghan's best cash crop. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, bribing government officials is common practice. We think that is wrong, because our government officials would never take a little bribe from a citizen, no our officials only take "Big" money from corporations.

The Afghanis and Iraqis have been doing things their way for hundreds, if not thousands of years and who are we to kill a bunch of their people and then tell them we know what is best for them. They don't buy it and we wouldn't either if some one came over here and said everything we were doing was wrong.

You can explain how there are better ways of doing things and with good examples of why our way is better, those people might pick out a few of our ways and try them. Stick a gun against somebody's head and they will change too, as long as you keep that gun there.

We don't know what we are doing over there. We do know that we have created a lot of hate and killing. We didn't have a plan going in and we haven't come up with one while we have been over there.

What we have to do is step back and admit that we have really screwed up this whole War on Terrorism. I think we should start over and come up with a plan before we kill any more people or get any more of our people killed. To continue holding that gun on the people of the Middle East is not going to work. We know that those people hate us, heck they are willing to die in numbers just to kill one American. That in itself should tell us that we need a new approach.


POST SCRIPT:

Yesterday my computer broke and it took a whole day to get my old backup one going again. Living in the North Woods does have its draw backs. I had to drive 130 miles round trip to take my computer in to get fixed and it will be a couple of days before it even gets on the bench. It is quiet and peaceful and the loons are making their evening cry out on the lake. It is now 9:30 PM and there hasn't been a car by here since 10 AM, when the mail lady drove by. I think the trade off is worth it.


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