AFGHANISTANISM
Afghanistan 2010-2022
book excerpt
“There’s a lot that is comfortable about distance...
You can pontificate about the situation in Afghanistan in perfect safety. You have no fanatic Afghans among your readers. Nobody knows any more about the subject than you do, and nobody gives a damn.
... I don’t wish to belabor this subject of Afghanistanism...”
“His house, his country, his property, his all, were ours...”
“We found ourselves, indeed, in a land flowing with milk and honey...”
“The people of which not only detested us as invaders, but looked on us, with fanatical hatred, as infidels...”
“The sky became illuminated at night with the blaze of burning villages…”
“It is probably the best method of striking terror into these savages, and perhaps of eventually preventing bloodshed.”
“Our evacuation of the country resembled almost as much the retreat of an army defeated...”
“They could not appreciate the generosity of their conquerors...”
“Legs, arms, heads and bodies laying about in all directions as far as you could see. It was horrible but it served them right. ”
“Seizing their weapons they become... as dangerous and as sensible as mad dogs: fit only to be treated as such.”
“There were still many Afghan bodies and these took time to locate and bury. But the stench lingered on for many days.”
“... where the son thinks as his father did, men are still proud to be men. Here, no more high-heeled sluts in short frocks…”
“We are drawn together in devotion to the abiding values of religion.”
“The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent is as — it is as if he has killed all mankind. (Applause)”
“His screams went right through me. I fired again and shot him straight through the throat. Blessed silence ...”
“I saw how his hands were trembling; I noticed the horror in his eyes. ‘He is only a boy!’ I thought and pressed the trigger.”
“Our grief has turned to anger...”
“It was a hand. A small hand, obviously that of a younger person. Jones was moving it around with a stick…
I had trouble fathoming that a young kid would have been a real threat to us.”
“Sir, what is your thinking right now about taking the war to Iraq? ...you said Afghanistan was just the beginning.”
“…their tanned, lined and weather-beaten faces alive with hatred, I could see that feeling as I looked into their dark eyes…”
“If I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the Earth. It would be gone.”
“You can’t kill people if you think of them as people.
I’d been trained to ‘other-ize’ them, trained well.”
“You can’t leave. You can’t leave.
It was — it was heartbreaking.
’You can’t leave,’ she said.”
