Current conflicts in Asia and the Middle East may be the first wars in American history since the fight with Barbary Pirates in which US soldiers had to be more concerned with which papers they burned than with which enemy force they burned. A few months ago there was outrage in Afghanistan when some American soldiers burned some books including copies of the Koran. The result were riots and deaths as thousands of Aghans protested destruction of holy books.
It is now clear the entire incident arose when officials came to believe that prisoners were passing notes in library books. Some idiot American officer then decided to burn the entire collection of 2,000 library books. He was either unware of didn’t care there were aboujt 500 copies of the Koran in the library collection. An Afghan employee told him the books were radical literature.
Let’s face reality. Most Americans fighting in the Middle East or Afghanistan are lucky to get a one hour Power Point briefing on the Muslim religion. The end result is that American ignorance simply runs head into Muslim ignorance and the result is death.
