Koran Burning Craziness

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Wait, you're not serious are you? The US army, a molested girl at a frat party?

As for the rest: you're still not getting it. Your uninteresting little incident, is in fact the reason for your “interesting” one, and as the cynical British doctor might point out, usually the root cause is much more interesting than the symptoms. As in this case, because the root cause may well indicate what is to happen next.

Or, if you thought that a bunch of shootings were the worst of it; you're likely wrong. There will be more backlash the US army will have to face in trying to do its job in Afghanistan. I don't think it did wonders for how cooperative the Afghani tribal elders are, let alone for the safety of the US servicemen and women, not to mention USA's wider strategic interest/stakes in the Afghan politics game.

The root cause was was some koran's being burnt. The reason why the Koran's were burnt is unknown for sure, but seems to be nothing more than an uninteresting mistake, you can easily predict that with this many people living in a sensitive culture there will be some incident. What was going through the soldiers heads? Is it important? No. The effect is what is interesting--as you say "what happens next". How can you say that the root cause is more interesting than the symptoms, and then say that it's because the root cause indicates what the symptoms will be, and then talk about the symptoms a bunch?

You are only interested in the burning because it gives you an excuse to talk about how stupid you think the US military is...

By contrast, in this context your USA-centric viewpoint is completely besides the point, again. Who gives a toss about what impact it'll have on the elections? (Read: what real world impact will that have on the US forces in Afghanistan or their retreat?) How are the US elections even remotely relevant to the subject?

"The US election could have an effect on what happens there"

Depending on who is elected, the Afghan strategy might change. Isn't it obvious how it's relevant?

At the end of the day, a number of Afghanis are outraged, the Taliban gets fresh ammunition for their propaganda and US service people get shot in “retalliation”, a number of Americans post outraged posts on an Internet forum and a bunch of Europeans think “yes, well, what did you expect?”,

In your imagination, Americans didn't know that burning a Koran would offend the afghani's and that there would be a backlash of some sort. Think about that for a second. This is why I called you prejudiced...

If it was a story about a murder in a poor black neighborhood, would you start saying things like "my god, what did those naive black people expect living in a neighborhood like that?" Naturally not...you wouldn't assume they were ignorant. But I suppose since you tried to brush off the other analogy with "lol, so the US army is a molested girl??" you'll brush of this one too. You'll probably explain in a painstaking way that it isn't a direct analogy.