Hair-trigger

"Terry Jones says the “Braveheart” film poster in his Florida office gives him spiritual sustenance." - NY Times

This is a caption from a  NY Times article about the Floridian pastor whose actions have apparently sparked violent protests in Kandahar which have resulted in at least ten deaths and nearly one hundred people wounded so far. The pastor has apparently "supervised the burning of a Quran", which provoked the wrath of Afghans all over Afghanistan. This seems like a bit of an over-reaction on the part of the Afghan people at first, after all why should they care if some idiot from Florida burns a Quran he likely got from a local Barnes and Nobel? I think it's clear though, that these protests have really very little to do with this particular event, and much more to do with the pent-up anger and frustration the Afghans are feeling following ten years of occupation, and killing by American forces in their country.

This is, so to speak, simply the straw that broke the camels back, although in this case it seems that this camel had its back broken long ago. I think these recent events are a grave indication of just how far we are from "winning" this war. The reports mention people running through the streets waving Taliban flags and shouting anti-American slogans - and this is in Kandahar, the chosen capitol during the Taliban rule. Have people forgotten the brutality and prison of fear they lived in during the time the Taliban were in power, or has America so badly mismanaged this war and its relationship with the Afghan people that they would choose to go back to the Taliban rather than to suffer any further American occupation? My guess is people haven't forgotten.

I think events like this force us to seriously consider the likely hood of ever wining over the "hearts and minds" of these people, who if they have forgotten what life was like under the Taliban, have certainly not forgotten the actions of the U.S. military. Things like these, far more than any opinion poll, really highlight the deep hatred and anger many Afghans have for the U.S., and personally I am doubtful that we can ever repair our image in Afghan eyes. If in the future it turns out that more and more Afghans find themselves in favor of the Taliban, the underdogs of the Afghan civil war and who are Pashtun and more importantly deeply Islamic - how can America ever compete with that? In one hand, I feel as though America owes it to Afghanistan to help rebuild the damage we have done, but on the other hand, and events like this are beginning to sway my opinion in the opposite direction, and perhaps we'd be doing them a bigger favor by just leaving and preventing further harm.

It'd probably be cheaper to simply supply the Afghan government with foreign aid and let them work out a settlement with the Taliban, and let Afghans sort out the problems of Afghanistan. Of course, in the past this has simply led to interference from Pakistan and other neighboring countries and to civil warfare. I suppose my reaction to these recent events is simply this: If there is any possible progress to be made in Afghanistan, it doesn't appear as if we're making it, and I have to seriously question what is going on in the minds of the men whose job it is to manage this war, and what our motivation for continued occupation is.