The Taliban Problem

Starting in 1996 until 2001, the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. Who are the Taliban? An Extreme-Islamist group, who believe that Women shouldn't be educated, and should just not have a voice anywhere.
This, of course, is not accepted by the U.S. government.

The Taliban are one of the worlds worst groups, and the Taliban and Al-Qaeda probably were the ones who created the "All Muslims are Terrorists" stereotype.
If you judge all people associated with a religion just based on two groups, and even worse, if you say that all Muslims should die, to me, that's no better than Al-Qaeda.
And if you say "Oh, well they actually attacked us" then you are telling a lie.
There were about 3,000 people in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. And over the course of the Iraq war, we have killed about 10,000 civilians.
That's a difference of 7,000 people, dead.

In 2001, the Taliban lost control of Afganistan, and lost thousands of supporters.
After 3 years, the Taliban leaders had enough supporters to re-start the group.
And ever since 2004, the Taliban have been terrorising Afghanistan and it's leaders.
The movement is getting out of control, and right now, the Taliban are bombing innocent children in schools because they are educating girls, they are bombing to scare the school board. What the Taliban is obviously trying to is to get the government to stop educating girls so that the Taliban will stop bombing.
But the school board is not buying in, they have taken 5 years of this now, and they haven't bought in, yet.
People all across the world are calling out, telling them not to buy in, and other people are calling out to buy in.
What do I think? I think that although people will die in the process, the government should not buy in. If the Taliban gets it's way, then they will do more things, and if they keep on buying in, the government might as well be a Taliban government.
A special thanks to nytimes.com for additional information
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Sam

Iraqi Road

In my last post, I talked about 9/11, which is what triggered the Iraq war. After 9/11, the U.S. realized that Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were more powerful then we thought.
And at that time, George Bush thought that Osama Bin Laden was hiding somewhere in Iraq. This, of course, was absolutely irrational and untrue.
There were no Nuclear weapons in Iraq, and you couldn't even say that there was no way of telling weather or not there was Osama Bin Laden, and/or Nuclear Weapons in Iraq, because there was no legitimate proof of there being any of that in Iraq. In the speech that Colon Powell gave to the United Nations, it showed blurry pictures of where there "might be" Nuclear Weapons, and proof that there were no people or weapons associated with Al-Qaeda was that they checked, every space that looked like the ones Colon Powell showed.
Were there Nuclear Weapons? No.
Were there Terrorists? No.
And you would think that at this point, they would abort the mission.
But they simply couldn't.
1st, They had caused so much international news, that it couldn't just be over after a few months.
And 2nd, they had already taken over Iraq, and they couldn't get out of it.
And after another year or two, the mind set had come back, and then it came back, stronger than ever.
Then, George Bush sent more and more troops in, costing about 10 billion dollars a month, and we got in bigger and bigger debt.

And in the middle of it all, the leader of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, was executed, because the U.S. thought that he had ties to Al-Qaeda.
Saddam Hussein had his share of problems, he murdered and tortured tens of thousands of people in his own country, but had no ties what so ever to Al-Qaeda.
And there is no reason for the Death Penalty, no one deserves to die and people are very easily concealed in a prison.
The Iraq war is one of the worst wars in the history of America.
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Sam

8 years, we remember.

Eight years ago today, two airplanes hit the World Trade Center, which were some of the tallest building in the world, and the tallest buildings in New York. Where were these airplanes from? After the government (meaning the Senate and the CIA, since the President was sitting in a classroom reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", which according to him is his favorite book. Hey, it's probably the closest thing to "Ulysses" he's ever read) found that it was members of Al-Qaeda who hi-jacked the planes, and ran them into the World Trade Center.
This killed almost everyone in the towers, with only a few dozen survivors. And the people who did survive are now scarred for life.
A lot of people don't know that beyond the towers, another two planes were hi-jacked. One hit the Pentagon, and although there were no deaths, a lot of people got seriously injured. And one was going to hit the White House, but failed the mission.
This was the iconic moment in the"all Muslims are terrorists" stereotype.
Before this, we knew about terrorists, but didn't really care, then 9/11 came along, and the U.S. suddenly took action, as they had to. Once the Al-Qaeda group had gone into the U.S., and took lives, that's when you half to take action.
But then, they went into Iraq, and there was no reason to go to Iraq.
The decision to go into Iraq was made by the U.S. government, and a speech was given in a U.N. convention by Colon Powell.
Colon Powell was, more likely then not, the most reasonable person in the history of the Bush Administration, but he could have very easily said "No. I will not give a speech to almost every country in the world saying that a completely corrupted war is actually needed."
But, he did, and the speech basically said "There might be weapons, so we are gonna check, and spend 10 billion dollars a month on something that isn't real."
And that somehow persuaded a bunch of countries to help pay for this war.
I don't know.
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Sam