Quote Originally Posted by Tellos Athenaios View Post
Well if you enjoy straw so much, don't let me stop you.

Some more clutching at, I see. Look, I'm not the posters here who call them savages. I'm not even remotely interested in defending what they did to innocent US service people, and I'm certainly not interested in a morality debate over it.

I do however agree fully with PVC that the Quran holds special value in Afghani society, and that to burn them is going to result in backlash as a matter of course. I full well expect them to be capable of much better, but I don't expect them to hand in a politely worded note of dissent at the US embassy either. From what MRD and other posters have written in Afghanistan, that would be foolishly naive. Therefore, I think the Americans who cry out and going all “look at those savages, I don't know why we're bothering” are utterly misguided.
If there was a case where a girl was molested at a frat party, and someone kept insisting that what was really important was how stupid she was for getting drunk, and that how bad the frat boys were wasn't relevant, you would ask why...

You have no interest in criticizing the Afghani's, but have an extreme interest in criticizing the American soldiers. So the question is why.

It's perfectly clear that this was an uninteresting accident by a few people. On the other hand, the widespread protests in which dozens have died is important regarding the situation in the country...it's clearly a major political issue, part of the ongoing debate in this country about our long standing doubts about the feasibility of nation building, and the coming US election could have a major effect on what happens there. It's obvious which topic is more important an interesting.

The only thing repeating stuff that everyone knows about the Afghans (the Quran holds special value) and about the burning (bad idea) does is give you an excuse to vent your prejudice.