Hellenic Reporter

"Before we rush to condemn America we must remember that even today millions of poor and miserable people all across the world are lining up outside US embassies eager to come to America, not just to live here but to become an American. No Muslim country today, can claim that people of other nations and other faiths see it as a promise of hope, equality, dignity and prosperity." -- Muqtedar Khan, Ph.D. Association of Muslim Social Scientists, Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Winning hearts and minds

Padre Robert Lauder (Major), visits the Mirman orphanage in Kabul, Afghanistan. Maj Lauder was visiting the orphanage during a recent trip to Kabul where he visitied with Canadian troops working in the city with various Afghan government and allied military organizations. Canadian soldiers in the area have taken it upon themselves to help support the orphanage. Photo by: WO Bill Laing, Strategic Advisory Team Kabul

Brigadier-General Dave Fraser, Commander of ISAF's Regional Command South, and Regional Head of the Afghan National Police are meeting with the Commandant of the Pakistan Frontier Corps and military at the Pishin Scouts Casern near the town of Chaman, Pakistan. Photo by: Master Corporal Yves Gemus

Kandahar, Afghanistan: A Canadian Leopard Tank weighing over 100,000lbs rolls across the tarmac at the Kandahar Air Field after delivery on a C-17 Transport Aircraft (back ground). Equipped with a 105-mm L7A3 gun, the Leopard is capable of engaging targets during the day or at night as well as in adverse conditions. Task Force Afghanistan is part of Canada’s contribution to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. This mission is about Canadians and their international partners helping Afghans rebuild their lives, their families, their communities and their nation. Canadian operations will work to improve the quality of life of Afghans by providing a secure environment in which Afghan society can recover from more than 25 years of conflict.

A member of the Afghan National watches for any sign of Taliban insurgents as soldiers from Alpha Company (A Coy) continue their sweep through Panjwaii District of Kandahar Province as part of Operation MEDUSA. Their efforts are currently focused on securing the area and making it safe for the return of persons displaced during recent fighting in the area. Photo by: Sgt Lou Penney

In the 5 years since NATO entered Afghanistan, 5 times more children are in school, a third of them are girls...there's a paved highway linking all the major cities...there's an ELECTED President and there's an elected parliament...
But the 8th Century-minded Taliban continue to threaten the peace and progress that most Afghanis want now, in 2006. The Taliban thought they had their chance when the US transferred security of the region over to NATO forces.

The Taliban were betting that the newly arrived NATO forces would be "soft, not the like Americans (who are) willing to fight"....The Taliban were wrong.

Some citizens continue to help the Taliban, but that support continues to decrease as Afghanis witness their homes, schools, mosques, churches, temples and and ancient shrines being destroyed by the Taliban every day, while NATO forces and humanitarian agencies help to rebuild everything.

Handing out school supplies donated by American schools and Churches to Iraqi children.

U.S. Army Doctor Capt. John Fulk listens to an Iraqi man's heart in the White Gold Village of West Baghdad, Iraq, on Aug. 5, 2005. Medical personnel and soldiers with 2nd Battalion, 130th Infantry Regiment, 256th Brigade Combat Team are providing medical assistance and toys to residents of the village. DoD photo by Staff Sgt. Jorge A. Rodriguez, U.S. Air Force

Lieutenant Brittany Meeks with kids she gave school supplies, toys, and candy to while serving in Iraq in 2004.

+ Cleaning Up Afghanistan - One Round at a Time ++++ School Supplies Delivered to Two Schools in Local Tribal Area

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Love one another. -- Jesus

Fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt. -- Robertson Davies, Canadian novelist

"We will not say thereafter that the Greeks fight like heroes, but that heroes fight like Greeks!" -- Sir Winston Churchill

...even though a large tract of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule. We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France and on the seas and oceans; we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills. We shall never surrender... -- Sir Winston Churchill

Maybe Love was more durable than Hate; even if Love changed, some shadow of it, some lasting shape, persisted. Hatred was perhaps like a finger-print upon the smooth glass of the sensitive soul; a mere grease-mark, which disappeared if left alone. -- Salman Rushdie, novelist

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. -- Albert Einstein

The central question for our time is not how you worship God or even whether you worship God. It's whether you believe in this life you can be in possesion of the absolute truth and you have the right to impose it on others. We need to remember that too... -- Bill Clinton (BBC Radio, Aug 16, 2006 in Toronto, Canada)

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight...is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. -- John Stuart Mill

In Italy for 30 years the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed. They produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. --Graham Greene

One day I want my children to say, "...my father chose to die in blood, rather than to live in shit."
-- Greek anti-Nazi resistance fighter slogan

"There will be peace with the Arabs when they will love their children more than they hate us." -- Golda Meir - Israel PM (1972)"

My experience has been that if you grab 'em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. -- General Creighton Abrams

Man, in his arrogance, thinks himself a great work worthy the interpretation of a deity. More humble, and I think truer, to consider him created from animals. -- Charles Darwin

You do what you have to do in life when you form a philosophy that you can't talk yourself out of.
-- Constantine Karamanlis

Our founding principles are "National Independence, Popular Sovereignty, Social Emancipation, Democratic Process."
-- Andreas Papandreou

"I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Depending on the breaks." -- General "Buck" Turgidson, from Stanley Kubrick's film 'Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb'

There are no accidents, only nature throwing her weight around. Even the bomb merely releases energy that nature has put there. Nuclear war would be just a spark in the grandeur of space. Nor can radiation "alter" nature: she will absorb it all. After the bomb, nature will pick up the cards we have spilled, shuffle them, and begin her game again. -- Camille Paglia

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe. -- Albert Einstein

We may anticipate a state of affairs in which two Great Powers will each be in a position to put an end to the civilization and life of the other, though not without risking its own. We may be likened to two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life. -- Robert Oppenheimer

Love all of God's creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light! Love the animals. Love the plants; love everything. If you love everything, you will soon perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love. -- Fyodor Doestoyevski

There is no proof that Muhammad attained perfection and the ability to perfect others as claimed...that is why, to this day we never see anyone converting to Islam unless in terror, or in quest of power, or to avoid heavy taxation, or to escape humiliation, or if taken prisoner, or because of infatuation with a Muslim woman, or for some similar reason. Nor do we see a respected, wealthy, and pious non-Muslim well versed in both his faith and that of Islam, going over to the Islamic faith without some of the aforementioned or similar motives -- philosopher Ibn Kammuna

The penalty for apostasy, in Islamic law, is death. Islam is conceived as a polity, not just as a religious community. It follows therefore that apostasy is treason. It is a withdrawal, a denial of allegiance as well as of religious belief and loyalty. Any sustained and principled opposition to the existing regime or order almost inevitably involves such a withdrawal -- Bernard Lewis