Afghanistan Peace Quotes

When you take the time to actually listen, with humility, to what people have to say, it's amazing what you can learn. Especially if the people who are doing the talking also happen to be children.

I've learned that terror doesn't happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren't being offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death.

If you teach a boy, you educate an individual; but if you teach a girl, you educate a community.

This world’s anguish is no different from the love we insist on holding back.

Osama, baah!" Bashir roared. "Osama is not a product of Pakistan or Afghanistan. He is a creation of America. Thanks to America, Osama is in every home. As a military man, I know you can never fight and win against someone who can shoot at you once and then run off and hide while you have to remain eternally on guard. You have to attack the source of your enemy's strength. In America's case, that's not Osama or Saddam or anyone else. The enemy is ignorance. That only way to defeat it is to build relationships with these people, to draw them into the modern world with education and business. Otherwise the fight will go on forever.

. . . hope resides in the future, while perspective and wisdom are almost always found by looking to the past.

Peace is not so much a political mandate as it is a shared state of consciousness that remains elevated and intact only to the degree that those who value it volunteer their existence as living examples of the same... Peace ends with the unraveling of individual hope and the emergence of the will to worship violence as a healer of private and social dis-ease.

...we're also extremely sensitive to the difference between literacy and ideology. It is our belief that the first helps to thwart intolerance, challenge dogma, and reinforce our common humanity. The second does the opposite.

September 11, 2001: Citizens of the U.S., besieged by terror’s sting, rose up, weeping glory, as if on eagles’ wings.--from the poem Angel of Remembrance: Candles for September 11, 2001

We can gain a lot more striving for harmonious coexistence than we can by giving in to hate-filled rage and fear-driven ignorance.

When ordinary human beings perform extraordinary acts of generosity, endurance or compassion, we are all made richer by their example. Like the rivers that flow out of the Karakoram and the Hindu Kush, the inspiration they generate washes down to the rest of us. It waters everyone's fields.

In Muslim societies, a person who has been manipulated unto believing in extremist violence or terrorism often seeks the permission of his mother before he may join a militant jihad and educated women as a rule, tend to withhold their blessings from such things.

If the counsel of the peaceniks had been followed, Kuwait would today be the nineteenth province of Iraq. Bosnia would be a trampled and cleansed province of Greater Serbia, Kosovo would have been emptied of most of its inhabitants, and the Taliban would still be in power in Afghanistan. Yet nothing seems to disturb the contented air of moral superiority of those that intone the "peace movement".

the people who live in the last places - the people who are most neglected and least valued by the larger world - often represent the best of who we are and the finest standard of what we are meant to become. This is the power that last places hold over me, and why I have found it impossible to resist their pull.

Because most of the girls were still in mourning and all of them had lost their textbooks, even pencils and pens, Shaukat Ali began the first classes by reading to them from poetry and religious texts. "Reading, literature, and spirituality are good for the soul," he told them. "So we will start with these studies.

People who live in the last places-the people who are most neglected and least valued by the larger world- often represent the best of who we are and the finest standards of what we are to become.

When women take charge, things start to get out of control really fast.

In an age of bombs guzzling blood, skylarks merge peace with thought and action.

Before the thunderous clamor of political debate or war set loose in the world, love insisted on its promise for the possibility of human unity: between men and women, between blacks and whites, northerners and southerners, haves and have-have-nots, self and self.

When youu take the time to actually listen, with humility, to what people have to say, it's amazing what you can learn. Especially if the people who are doing the talking also happen to be children.

Christians should put survival of the planet ahead of national security...Here is the mystery of our global responsibility: that we are in communion with Christ- and we are in communion with all people...The fact that the people of Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Russia, Afghanistan, and Ethiopia are our brothers and sisters is not obvious. People kill each other by the thousands and do not see themselves as brothers and sisters. If we want to be real peace-makers, national security cannot be our primary concern. Our primary concern should be survival of humanity, the survival of the planet, and the health of all people. Whether we are Russians, Iraqis, Ethiopians, or North Americans, we belong to the same human family that God loves. And we have to start taking some risks- not just individually, but risks of a more global quality, risks to let other people develop their own independence, risks to share our wealth with others and invite refugees to our country, risks to offer sanctuary- because we are people of God

Despite everything that has befallen us, do we not continue to hold the destiny of this shattered and magnificent nation, together with the future of all our children-girls and boys alike-in the palm of our hands?

A wise man from my home once told me that these mountains have seen far too much suffering and killing, and that each rock and every boulder you see represents a mujahadeen who died fighting either the Russians or the Taliban. Then the man went on to say that now that the fighting is finished, it is time to build a new era of peace-and the first step in that process is to take up the stones and start turning them into schools.

They are a testament not only to the Afghans' hunger for literacy, but also to their willingness to pour scarce resources into this effort, even during a time of war. I have seen children studying in classrooms set up inside animal sheds, windowless basements, garages, and even an abandoned public toilet. We ourselves have run schools out of refugee tents, shipping containers, and the shells of bombed-out Soviet armored personnel carriers. The thirst for education over there is limitless. The Afghans want their children to go to school because literacy represents what neither we not anyone else has so far managed to offer them: hope, progress, and the possibility of controlling their own destiny.

Each person held aloft a single lit candle—the city’s traditional way to express its appreciation for that year’s peace prize winner. It was a magical sight, as if a pool of stars had descended from the sky; and as Michelle and I leaned out to wave, the night air brisk on our cheeks, the crowd cheering wildly, I couldn’t help but think about the daily fighting that continued to consume Iraq and Afghanistan and all the cruelty and suffering and injustice that my administration had barely even begun to deal with. The idea that I, or any one person, could bring order to such chaos seemed laughable; on some level, the crowds below were cheering an illusion. And yet, in the flickering of those candles, I saw something else. I saw an expression of the spirit of millions of people around the world: the U.S. soldier manning a post in Kandahar, the mother in Iran teaching her daughter to read, the Russian pro-democracy activist mustering his courage for an upcoming demonstration—all those who refused to give up on the idea that life could be better, and that whatever the risks and hardships, they had a role to play. Whatever you do won’t be enough, I heard their voices say. Try anyway.

Two decades of virtually uninterrupted fighting had made even the most dignified structures appear drunken, wounded, or lost. The entire city seemed to affirm the notion that warfare is a disease.

Well, I admit it. I had the greatest respect for the Afghan people, even while I was shooting and killing them. I still do. You could even say I love them. I like their songs and prayers, as peaceful and timeless as their mountains.

I have always been dismayed by the West’s failure—or unwillingness—to recognize that establishing secular schools that offer children a balanced and nonextremist form of education is probably the cheapest and most effective way of combating this kind of indoctrination.

I'm no military expert, and these figures might not be exactly right,' I said. 'But as best I can tell, we've launched 114 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Afghanistan so far. Now take the cost of one of those missiles, tipped with a Raytheon guidance system, which I think is about $840,000. For that much money, you could build dozens of schools that could provide tens of thousands of students with a balanced, non extremist education over the course of a generation. Which do you think will make us more secure?

I’m no military expert, and these figures might not be exactly right. But as best as I can tell, we’ve launched 114 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Afghanistan so far. Now take the cost of one of those missiles tipped with a Raytheon guidance system, which I think is about $840,000. For that much money, you could build dozens of schools that could provide tens of thousands of students with a balanced nonextremist education over the course of a generation. Which do you think will make us more secure?” (295)

I don't do what I'm doing to fight terror. ... I do it because I care about kids. Fighting terror is maybe seventh or eighth on my list of priorities. But working over there, I've learned a few things. I've learned that terror doesn't happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren't being offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death.

Finally a soldier marched in and, holding his right hand to his chest, said, "Salaam aleikum. Chetor hastid? Jan-e-shoma jur ast? Khub hastid? Sahat-e-shoma khub ast? Be khair hastid? Jur hastid? Khane kheirat ast? Zinde bashi." Which in Dari, the Afghan dialect of Persian, means, "Peace be with you. How are you? Is your soul healthy? Are you well? Are you well? Are you healthy? Are you fine? Is your household flourishing? Long life to you." Or: "Hello.

...education is a sacred thing, and the pledge to build a school is a commitment that cannot be surrendered or broken, regardless of how long it may take, how many obstacles must be surmounted, or how much money it will cost. It is by such promises that the balance sheet of one's life is measured.

Today that legend is inscribed on the stones that were used to build the walls of the school, and as the water falls out of the sky and over those stones, the words of the legend are carried down from the mountains and into the fields and gardens and orchards of Afghanistan. And as the water and the words rush past, who can fail to turn to his neighbor and whisper, with humility and awe-if this is what the weakest, the least valued, the most neglected among us are capable of achieving, truly is there anything we cannot do?

Днес на тази планета има 120 милиона деца в училищна възраст, които са лишени от образование поради полова дискриминация, бедност, експлоатация, религиозен екстремизъм и правителствена корупция. Надявам се и се моля през следващото десетилетие да успеем да проправим път на образованието навсякъде и да осигурим обучение на всички тези деца, две трети от които са момичета. Нищо не би ме направило по-щастлив, ако книгата „Училища от камък” помогне за постигането на тази цел.

Eventually, I came to understand that a group of people who wield enormous power happen, oddly enough, to espouse some of the very same ideals imparted to me by people in Africa and central Asia who have no power at all. The reason for this, in my view, is that members of the armed forces have worked on the ground-in many cases, during three or four tours of duty-on a level that very few diplomats, academicians, journalists, or policy makers can match. And among other things, this experience has imbued soldiers with the gift of empathy.

Хората, живеещи в пределите на цивилизацията, по правило не са сред най-изтънчените и космополитни човешки същества. Често са необразовани и не са в крак с модата и актуалните световни събития. Не са особено изискани, а понякога не са и дружелюбни. Но хората, които живеят в края на пътя, са сред най-жилавите и находчиви човешки същества, които можете да срещнете. Те се отличават с необикновено съчетание от храброст, твърдост, гостоприемство и състрадание, което предизвиква у мен истинско преклонение.

Down there in the dark was the most technologically sophisticated navy strike force in the world, launching fighters and cruise missiles into Afghanistan...I had to admit that what the Taliban was doing was brillant. Without satellites, without an air force, with even their primitive radar knocked out, they were ingenious enough to use plain old commercial flights to keep track of the fifth fleets positions. I realized that if we were counting on our military technology alone to win the war on terror, we had a lot of lessons to learn.

This country has not seen and probably will never know the true level of sacrifice of our veterans. As a civilian I owe an unpayable debt to all our military. Going forward let’s not send our servicemen and women off to war or conflict zones unless it is overwhelmingly justifiable and on moral high ground. The men of WWII were the greatest generation, perhaps Korea the forgotten, Vietnam the trampled, Cold War unsung and Iraqi Freedom and Afghanistan vets underestimated. Every generation has proved itself to be worthy to stand up to the precedent of the greatest generation. Going back to the Revolution American soldiers have been the best in the world. Let’s all take a remembrance for all veterans who served or are serving, peace time or wartime and gone or still with us. 11/11/16 May God Bless America and All Veterans.

When he said that the Kingdom of God is spread out upon the earth, he was telling them that justice, goodness, peace, and all those things denied them by the elites of the world were not anyone’s exclusive possession but the inheritance of all people.

Phrases like “hearts and minds” first arose in public discourse in the 1890s. The French called the strategy “peaceful penetration.

Don't let it get to you, mom! The Western media also fights against us. That's where our reputation as fundamentalists and terrorists comes from." "You're right. Between one's fanaticism and the other's disdain, it's hard to know which side to choose. Personally, I hate Saddam and I have no sympathy for the Kuwaitism but I hate just as much the cynicism of the allies who call themselves "liberators" while they're there for the oil." "Exactly. Just look at Afghanistan! They fought there for ten years. There were 900,000 dead and today the country is still in chaos. No one lifted a finger! Because Afghanistan is poor! The worst is that the intervention in Kuwait is done in the name of the human rights! Which rights? Which humans?" At the time, this kind of analysis wasn't commonplace. After our own war, we were happy that Iraq got itself attacked and delighted that it wasn't happening in our country. We were finally able to sleep peacefully without fear of missiles... We no longed needed to line up with our food ration coupon...the rest mattered little. And then, there wasn't any more opposition. The protesters had been executed. Or had fled the country any way possible. The regime had absolute power...and most people , in search of a cloud of happiness, had forgotten their political conscience.

The greatest victory in living memory – of the United States over the Soviet Union – was achieved without any major military confrontation. The United States then got a fleeting taste of old-fashioned military glory in the First Gulf War, but this only tempted it to waste trillions on humiliating military fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan. China, the rising power of the early twenty-first century, has assiduously avoided all armed conflicts since its failed invasion of Vietnam in 1979, and it owes its ascent strictly to economic factors. In this it has emulated not the Japanese, German and Italian empires of the pre-1914 era, but rather the Japanese, German and Italian economic miracles of the post-1945 era. In all these cases economic prosperity and geopolitical clout were achieved without firing a shot.

People allow India to exist only in two versions: In the first, everything is too beautiful to be encapsulated, women are swarthy and hippy, shoeless boys play soccer in dirt roads, elephants roam the streets, and temples are merely there for your enjoyment. In the second, India is a country lurching forward awkwardly, suffering a rape epidemic, incapable of a feminist movement or proper health care, a place where people shit and piss in the streets, where the caste system has ruined entire generations, where poverty is so rampant and depressing that you'll hardly make it out with your soul intact, where your IT centre is based, a place just close enough to Pakistan or Iraq or Afghanistan to be scary, but stable enough to be fun and exotic. Because, boy, isn't the food good, and aren't the landmarks something, and hasn't everyone there figured out a kind of profound meditative inner peace that we should all learn from? Like all things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. A place, any place, can be beautiful and perfect and damaged and dangerous at the same time.

Back then, I had no idea what would actually happen. That Pakistan and Afghanistan would ultimately become more all consuming than any relationship I had ever had. That they would slowly fall apart, and that even as they crumbled, chunk by chunk, they would feel more like home than anywhere else. I had no idea that I would find self-awareness in a combat zone, a kind of peace in chaos. My life here wouldn't be about a man or God or some cause. I would fall in love, deeply, but with a story, with a way of life. When everything else was stripped away, my life would be about an addiction, not to drugs, but to a place. I would never feel as alive as when I was here.

Peaceful?' they ask, at a loss for words. For those lucky enough never to have experienced war, the word "peaceful" has little meaning.

There was a time in my life when I did a fair bit of work for the tempestuous Lucretia Stewart, then editor of the American Express travel magazine, Departures. Together, we evolved a harmless satire of the slightly driveling style employed by the journalists of tourism. 'Land of Contrasts' was our shorthand for it. ('Jerusalem: an enthralling blend of old and new.' 'South Africa: a harmony in black and white.' 'Belfast, where ancient meets modern.') It was as you can see, no difficult task. I began to notice a few weeks ago that my enemies in the 'peace' movement had decided to borrow from this tattered style book. The mantra, especially in the letters to this newspaper, was: 'Afghanistan, where the world's richest country rains bombs on the world's poorest country.' Poor fools. They should never have tried to beat me at this game. What about, 'Afghanistan, where the world's most open society confronts the world's most closed one'? 'Where American women pilots kill the men who enslave women.' 'Where the world's most indiscriminate bombers are bombed by the world's most accurate ones.' 'Where the largest number of poor people applaud the bombing of their own regime.' I could go on. (I think number four may need a little work.) But there are some suggested contrasts for the 'doves' to paste into their scrapbook. Incidentally, when they look at their scrapbooks they will be able to re-read themselves saying things like, 'The bombing of Kosovo is driving the Serbs into the arms of Milosevic.

Nor did the United States have a strategy for engagement, democratization, secular education, and economic development among the peaceful but demoralized majority populations of the Islamic world.

Now we had peace in Kabul, and we did not see blood and corpses and body parts on the streets anymore. But it was an unhappy peace, a frightened peace. We did not know what was going to happen next.

Of all the dangers that threaten us at the beginning of the third millennium - the degradation of the environment, the increasing undemocratic power of the great corporations, the continuing threats to peace in regions full of decaying nuclear weapons, and so on - one of the biggest dangers of all comes from fundamentalist religion....From the Christian conservatives in the USA to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The Bible says there is a time for peace and a time for war. Now is the time for war. I cannot wait to say it is now a time for peace." — MAJ James Brisson, Chaplain, 1-160th SOAR, 19 October 2001, Afghanistan

What happened? Stan repeats. To us? To the country? What happened when childhood ends in Dealey Plaza, in Memphis, in the kitchen of the Ambassador, your belief your hope your trust lying in a pool of blood again? Fifty-five thousand of your brothers dead in Vietnam, a million Vietnamese, photos of naked napalmed children running down a dirt road, Kent State, Soviet tanks roll into Prague so you turn on drop out you know you can't reinvent the country but maybe you reimagine yourself you believe you really believe that you can that you can create a world of your own and then you lower that expectation to just a piece of ground to make a stand on but then you learn that piece of ground costs money that you don't have. What happened? Altamont, Charlie Manson, Sharon Tate, Son of Sam, Mark Chapman we saw a dream turn into a nightmare we saw love and peace turn into endless war and violence our idealism into realism our realism into cynicism our cynicism into apathy our apathy into selfishness our selfishness into greed and then greed was good and we Had babies, Ben, we had you and we had hopes but we also had fears we created nests that became bunkers we made our houses baby-safe and we bought car seats and organic apple juice and hired multilingual nannies and paid tuition to private schools out of love but also out of fear. What happened? You start by trying to create a new world and then you find yourself just wanting to add a bottle to your cellar, a few extra feet to the sunroom, you see yourself aging and wonder if you've put enough away for that and suddenly you realize that you're frightened of the years ahead of you what Happened? Watergate Irangate Contragate scandals and corruption all around you and you never think you'll become corrupt but time corrupts you, corrupts as surely as gravity and erosion, wears you down wears you out I think, son, that the country was like that, just tired, just worn out by assassinations, wars, scandals, by Ronald Reagan, Bush the First selling cocaine to fund terrorists, a war to protect cheap gas, Bill Clinton and realpolitik and jism on dresses while insane fanatics plotted and Bush the Second and his handlers, a frat boy run by evil old men and then you turn on the TV one morning and those towers are coming down and the war has come home what Happened? Afghanistan and Iraq the sheer madness the killing the bombing the missiles the death you are back in Vietnam again and I could blame it all on that but at the end of the day at the end of the day we are responsible for ourselves. We got tired, we got old we gave up our dreams we taught ourselves to scorn ourselves to despise our youthful idealism we sold ourselves cheap we aren't Who we wanted to be.

Hardly anyone in Washington or at Langley yet saw the full significance of bin Laden and al Qaeda. When President Clinton signed Executive Order 12947 on January 23, 1995, imposing sanctions on twelve terrorist groups because of their role in disrupting the Middle East peace process, neither al Qaeda nor bin Laden made the list.31

The administration had spent $4.5 billion on the 2001 war in Afghanistan, including $390 million just to replace a bomber, a tanker, two helicopters, and two unmanned aerial vehicles that crashed during operations. Yet the administration would not propose to spend even 10 percent of the war’s cost on Afghanistan’s recovery or to secure the peace with new Afghan forces.

From thwarting reconstruction efforts and economic development in war-ravaged Afghanistan to offering lifelines to embattled anti-Western governments in Sudan and North Korea, China has opposed the actions and goals of the U.S. government. Indeed, China is building its own relationships with America’s allies and enemies that contradict any peaceful or productive intentions of Beijing.

but every year a wreath is still laid at the memorial statue repeating the same old lies they told us a hundred years ago about bringing peace and prosperity to places like Afghanistan? … Does anyone out there really believe a bunch of guys used to sit around the Tim Hortons in Kandahar saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Canada. Can we have two double-doubles to go with democracy?” …

Most people don’t appreciate just how peaceful an era we live in. None of us was alive a thousand years ago, so we easily forget how much more violent the world used to be. And as wars become more rare they attract more attention. Many more people think about the wars raging today in Afghanistan and Iraq than about the peace in which most Brazilians and Indians live. Even more importantly, it’s easier to relate to the

The Saudi royals were embarrassed by complaints about bin Laden and angry about his antiroyal agitation. Yet Prince Turki and other senior Saudi princes had trouble believing that bin Laden was much of a threat to anyone. They saw him as a misguided rich kid, the black sheep of a prestigious family, a self-important and immature man who would likely be persuaded as he aged to find some sort of peaceful accommodation with his homeland. But bin Laden was stubborn.

In search of the past, I have travelled halfway around the globe, from Canada to Afghanistan, from a world of peace, material comfort and technology to a country that lives in the shadow of its history - a place whose only relevance to the rest of the world depends on the value and extent of a Westerner's life and "security". It may be illusionary, self-indulgent or bizarre, but I still think digging into the grave of history might lead to an understanding of the present.

The cultural forces that help politically sustain both the militaristic and the corporate function of the Deep State, however, are growing more irrational and antiscience. A military tradition that glories in force and appeals to self-sacrifice is the polar opposite of the Enlightenment heritate of rationality, the search for peace, and a belief in the common destiny of mankind. The warrior-leader, like the witch doctor, ultimately appeals to irrational emotionalism; and the cultural psychology that produces the bravest and most loyal warriors is a mind-set that is usually hostile to the sort of free inquiry of which scientific progress depends. This dynamic is observable in Afghanistan: no outside power has been able to conquer and pacify that society for millennia because of the tenacity of its warrior spirit; yet the country has one of the highest illiteracy rates on earth and is barely out of the Bronze Age in social development. p 260

The Costs of War Project at Brown University reports that over 6,800 US troops have died in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. In addition, the Costs of War Project says at least 6,780 US contractors, rarely counted, should be included in the American death toll. Suicides by American veterans number into the thousands and are not counted in battle-related deaths. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan citizens have died as well. Total dollar costs for the wars will exceed $4 trillion. I predict it will cost even more since the total tally won’t be in for decades. And it’s not over yet. Even in 2013 we still had over 100,000 Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan. And we’re not about to close down the biggest embassy in the world in Baghdad. There are no plans to actually leave either country. Yet there are plenty of plans to maintain and to expand our presence worldwide as we deal with Syria, Lebanon, Iran, or wherever our US Empire chooses. Killing hundreds of thousands of the so-called enemy makes no sense given that most of them had no involvement in 9/11. This is pure bloodlust.

During these years of loss and sorrow, I have had to reconcile myself to the truth about my father, Osama bin Laden. I know now that since the first day of the first battle against the Soviets in Afghanistan, my father has been killing other humans. He admitted as much to me, back in those days when I was his tea boy in Afghanistan. I often wonder if my father has killed so many times that the act of killing no longer brings him pleasure or pain. I am nothing like my father. While he prays for war, I pray for peace. And now we go our separate ways, each believing that we are right.

The fears of militarization Holbrooke had expressed in his final, desperate memos, had come to pass on a scale he could have never anticipated. President Trump had concentrated ever more power in the Pentagon, granting it nearly unilateral authority in areas of policy once orchestrated across multiple agencies, including the State Department. In Iraq and Syria, the White House quietly delegated more decisions on troop deployments to the military. In Yemen and Somalia, field commanders were given authority to launch raids without White House approval. In Afghanistan, Trump granted the secretary of defense, General James Mattis, sweeping authority to set troop levels. In public statements, the White House downplayed the move, saying the Pentagon still had to adhere to the broad strokes of policies set by the White House. But in practice, the fate of thousands of troops in a diplomatic tinderbox of a conflict had, for the first time in recent history, been placed solely in military hands. Diplomats were no longer losing the argument on Afghanistan: they weren’t in it. In early 2018, the military began publicly rolling out a new surge: in the following months, up to a thousand new troops would join the fourteen thousand already in place. Back home, the White House itself was crowded with military voices. A few months into the Trump administration, at least ten of twenty-five senior leadership positions on the president’s National Security Council were held by current or retired military officials. As the churn of firings and hirings continued, that number grew to include the White House chief of staff, a position given to former general John Kelly. At the same time, the White House ended the practice of “detailing” State Department officers to the National Security Council. There would now be fewer diplomatic voices in the policy process, by design.

There is a morally flawed understanding of ‘peace.’ In much of the world (again, thanks to the left), peace has been so narrowly defined as to be morally irrelevant. It essentially means not having troops fighting in a foreign country. Thus, because the United States has troops fighting in Afghanistan and recently had troops fighting in Iraq, it is considered a ‘threat to peace.’ But Iran, with no troops on foreign soil, is not considered a threat to peace, even though it sustains terror movements, murders its own people, seeks to annihilate Israel, props up the mass murdering Syrian regime and is rapidly developing a nuclear weapon.

Out in the lost world were hundreds of soldiers who had been sent abroad before the end of it all and could not be brought home. In the wilds of Afghanistan and the ancient cities of Iraq, they were making their way. At bases in Europe, they were holding their ground against the locals only by firepower. When that ran out, they would be taken. Peace corps kids in Africa realized they could not swim home, would never see home again. Tourists all over Asia, the Caribbean, stranded in airports, forgotten in consulates, lived long enough to face the terror of permanence in strange lands. Cruise ships drifted full of plague dead, a few unlucky souls left alive on some.

For that entire journey across the rough terrain of Afghanistan, I never stopped praying that everything of the world could be peaceful, that all lives might return to normal. I believe that wish is universal for every woman who is a mother. For all the horrible happenings that have occurred since I left Afghanistan, I can only think and feel with my mother's heart. For every child lost, a mother's heart harbors the deepest pain. None can see our sons grow to men. None can see our daughters become mothers. No longer can we see the smiles on their faces, or wipe away their tears. My mother's heart feels the pain of every loss, weeping not only for my children, but for the lost children of every mother.

The link between belief and behavior raises the stakes considerably. Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them. This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live. Certain beliefs place their adherents beyond the reach of every peaceful means of persuasion, while inspiring them to commit acts of extraordinary violence against others. There is, in fact, no talking to some people. If they cannot be captured, and they often cannot, otherwise tolerant people may be justified in killing them in self-defense. This is what the United States attempted in Afghanistan, and it is what we and other Western powers are bound to attempt, at an even greater cost to ourselves and to innocents abroad, elsewhere in the Muslim world. We will continue to spill blood in what is, at bottom, a war of ideas.

I can hardly believe that our nation’s policy is to seek peace by going to war. It seems that President Donald J. Trump has done everything in his power to divert our attention away from the fact that the FBI is investigating his association with Russia during his campaign for office. For several weeks now he has been sabre rattling and taking an extremely controversial stance, first with Syria and Afghanistan and now with North Korea. The rhetoric has been the same, accusing others for our failed policy and threatening to take autonomous military action to attain peace in our time. This gunboat diplomacy is wrong. There is no doubt that Secretaries Kelly, Mattis, and other retired military personnel in the Trump Administration are personally tough. However, most people who have served in the military are not eager to send our young men and women to fight, if it is not necessary. Despite what may have been said to the contrary, our military leaders, active or retired, are most often the ones most respectful of international law. Although the military is the tip of the spear for our country, and the forces of civilization, it should not be the first tool to be used. Bloodshed should only be considered as a last resort and definitely never used as the first option. As the leader of the free world, we should stand our ground but be prepared to seek peace through restraint. This is not the time to exercise false pride! Unfortunately the Trump administration informed four top State Department management officials that their services were no longer needed as part of an effort to "clean house." Patrick Kennedy, served for nine years as the “Undersecretary for Management,” “Assistant Secretaries for Administration and Consular Affairs” Joyce Anne Barr and Michele Bond, as well as “Ambassador” Gentry Smith, director of the Office for Foreign Missions. Most of the United States Ambassadors to foreign countries have also been dismissed, including the ones to South Korea and Japan. This leaves the United States without the means of exercising diplomacy rapidly, when needed. These positions are political appointments, and require the President’s nomination and the Senate’s confirmation. This has not happened! Moreover, diplomatically our country is severely handicapped at a time when tensions are as hot as any time since the Cold War. Without following expert advice or consent and the necessary input from the Unites States Congress, the decisions are all being made by a man who claims to know more than the generals do, yet he has only the military experience of a cadet at “New York Military Academy.” A private school he attended as a high school student, from 1959 to 1964. At that time, he received educational and medical deferments from the Vietnam War draft. Trump said that the school provided him with “more training than a lot of the guys that go into the military.” His counterpart the unhinged Kim Jong-un has played with what he considers his country’s military toys, since April 11th of 2012. To think that these are the two world leaders, protecting the planet from a nuclear holocaust….

The most important thing that is happening in the world right now is the emerging of the new man. Since the monkeys, man has remained the same, but a great revolution is on it's way. When monkeys became man, it created the mind. With the new man, a great revolution will bring the soul in. Man will not just be a mind, a psychological being, he will be a spiritual being. This new consciousness, this new being, is the most important thing, which is happening in the world today. But the old man will be against the emerging of the new man, the old man will be against this new consciousness. The new man is a matter of life and death, it is a question of the survival of the whole earth. It is matter of survival of consciousness, of survival of life itself. The old man has become utterly destructive. The old man is preparing for a global suicide right now. Rather than allowing the new man, the old man would rather destroy the whole earth, destroying life itself. The old destructive man is preparing right now for a third world war. The global economical and political elite and the war industrial complex in the U.S, which runs the foreign policy of the U.S, is right now promoting for a third world war. The U.S. has over thrown the democratically elected government in Ukraine in an secret operation by the CIA, the world's largest terrorist organization, and replaced it with a fascistic regime, a marionette for the U.S. The war industrial complex is now desperately trying to promote the third war by demonizing, lying and blaming Russia. We see the same aggression and lies from the U.S. that we have seen before against Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Venezuela and Iran. President Eisenhower warned against the war industrial complex, which he considered the largest threat to democracy. President John F. Kennedy also warned against a "secret conspiracy" against democracy. The war industrial complex consists of the international banks, oil companies, war industry, democratically elected politicians, conservative think tanks, international mainstream media and global companies, who make profits from human suffering and wars. The European governments and the mainstream media also cooperate with the war industrial complex to bring the world into disaster. But this time it will not work as the time for wars is over, and peace loving people and people who represent the new man are working against this kind of aggression.

During Bill Clinton’s presidency, the Palestinian terrorist Yasser Arafat was invited to spend more time in the White House than any other foreign leader—thirteen invitations.303 Clinton was dead set on helping the Israelis and Palestinians achieve a lasting peace. He pushed the Israelis to grant ever-greater concessions until the Israelis were willing to grant the Palestinians up to 98 percent of all the territory they requested. And what was the Palestinian response? They walked away from the bargaining table and launched the wave of suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks known as the Second Intifada. And what of Osama bin Laden? Even while America was granting concessions to Palestinians—and thereby theoretically easing the conditions that provided much of the pretext for Muslim terror—bin Laden was bombing U.S. embassies in Africa, almost sank the USS Cole in Yemen, and was well into the planning stages of the catastrophic attacks of September 11, 2001. After President George W. Bush ordered U.S. forces to invade Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, respectively, bringing American troops into direct ground combat with jihadists half a world away, many Americans quickly forgot the recent past and blamed American acts of self-defense for “inflaming” jihad. One of those Americans was Barack Obama. Soon after his election, Obama traveled to Cairo, Egypt, where he delivered a now-infamous speech that signaled America’s massive policy shifts. The United States pulled entirely out of Iraq despite the pleas of “all the major Iraqi parties.”304 In Egypt, the United States actually backed the Muslim Brotherhood government, going so far as agreeing to give it advanced F-16 fighters and M1 Abrams main battle tanks, even as the Muslim Brotherhood government was violating its peace treaty with Israel and persecuting Egypt’s ancient Coptic Christian community. The Obama administration continued supporting the Brotherhood, even when it stood aside and allowed jihadists to storm the American embassy, raising the black flag of jihad over an American diplomatic facility. In Libya, the United States persuaded its allies to come to the aid of a motley group of rebels, including jihadists. Then many of these same jihadists promptly turned their anger on the United States, attacking our diplomatic compound in Benghazi the afternoon and evening of September 11, 2012—killing the American ambassador and three more brave Americans. Compounding this disaster, the administration had steadfastly refused to reinforce the American security presence in spite of a deteriorating security situation, afraid that it would anger the local population. This naïve and foolish administration decision cost American lives.

The Soviet collapse in 1989 was even more peaceful, despite the eruption of ethnic conflict in the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Never before has such a mighty empire disappeared so swiftly and so quietly. The Soviet Empire of 1989 had suffered no military defeat except in Afghanistan, no external invasions, no rebellions, nor even large-scale Martin Luther King-style campaigns of civil disobedience. The Soviets still had millions of soldiers, tens of thousands of tanks and aeroplanes, and enough nuclear weapons to wipe out the whole of humankind several times over. The Red Army and the other Warsaw Pact armies remained loyal. Had the last Soviet ruler, Mikhail Gorbachev, given the order, the Red Army would have opened fire on the subjugated masses. Yet the Soviet elite, and the Communist regimes through most of eastern Europe (Romania and Serbia were the exceptions), chose not to use even a tiny fraction of this military power. When its members realised that Communism was bankrupt, they renounced force, admitted their failure, packed their suitcases and went home. Gorbachev and his colleagues gave up without a struggle not only the Soviet conquests of World War Two, but also the much older tsarist conquests in the Baltic, the Ukraine, the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is chilling to contemplate what might have happened if Gorbachev had behaved like the Serbian leadership – or like the French in Algeria.

But Holbrooke brought to every job he ever held a visionary quality that transcended practical considerations. He talked openly about changing the world. “If Richard calls you and asks you for something, just say yes,” Henry Kissinger said. “If you say no, you’ll eventually get to yes, but the journey will be very painful.” We all said yes. By the summer, Holbrooke had assembled his Ocean’s Eleven heist team—about thirty of us, from different disciplines and agencies, with and without government experience. In the Pakistani press, the colorful additions to the team were watched closely, and generally celebrated. Others took a dimmer view. “He got this strange band of characters around him. Don’t attribute that to me,” a senior military leader told me. “His efforts to bring into the State Department representatives from all of the agencies that had a kind of stake or contribution to our efforts, I thought was absolutely brilliant,” Hillary Clinton said, “and everybody else was fighting tooth and nail.” It was only later, when I worked in the wider State Department bureaucracy as Clinton’s director of global youth issues during the Arab Spring, that I realized how singular life was in the Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan—quickly acronymed, like all things in government, to SRAP. The drab, low-ceilinged office space next to the cafeteria was about as far from the colorful open workspaces of Silicon Valley as you could imagine, but it had the feeling of a start-up.

Back in America, Donald Trump had, as a candidate, preached the virtues of withdrawal. “We should leave Afghanistan immediately,” he had said. The war was “wasting our money,” “a total and complete disaster.” But, once in office, Donald Trump, and a national security team dominated by generals, pressed for escalation. Richard Holbrooke had spent his final days alarmed at the dominance of generals in Obama’s Afghanistan review, but Trump expanded this phenomenon almost to the point of parody. General Mattis as secretary of defense, General H. R. McMaster as national security advisor, and retired general John F. Kelly formed the backbone of the Trump administration’s Afghanistan review. In front of a room full of servicemen and women at Fort Myer Army Base, in Arlington, Virginia, backed by the flags of the branches of the US military, Trump announced that America would double down in Afghanistan. A month later, General Mattis ordered the first of thousands of new American troops into the country. It was a foregone conclusion: the year before Trump entered office, the military had already begun quietly testing public messaging, informing the public that America would be in Afghanistan for decades, not years. After the announcement, the same language cropped up again, this time from Trump surrogates who compared the commitment not to other counterterrorism operations, but to America’s troop commitments in Korea, Germany, and Japan. “We are with you in this fight,” the top general in Afghanistan, John Nicholson, Jr., told an audience of Afghans. “We will stay with you.

Whatever world would say; however, as a fact, Russia, in the leadership of Vladimir Putin has given a historical, lesson and the silent defeat to the United States of America in both ways, the diplomatic and war strategy. After, retreating from Afghanistan by the American made Taliban including Bin Laden. Since that and the Iraq war till present, USA has lost its incredibility in world eyes and failed to build peace, harmony, and equality within small and large states of the world. Now, Donald Trump, even though his political speeches meet hard critical responses, but it seems that he will restore, and achieve the American image of justice and peace for everyone. Otherwise, the failure is its destiny that, may collapse the unity within states of it, as in the Soviet Union.

The Guardian further notes, in an unintentional rebuke to Cyrus Vance who claimed to Archbishop Romero that the Carter Administration was seeking “peaceful and progressive solutions” in El Salvador, that “the arming of one side of the conflict by the US [which began under Carter] hastened the country’s descent into a civil war in which 75,000 people died and 1 million out of a population of 6 million became refugees.” And, while Vance in his letter decried the violence on both sides of the political spectrum in El Salvador, it was in truth the forces which the United States funded which carried out the lion’s share of the violence. Thus, as El Salvador’s Truth Commission would later conclude, “85% of ‘serious acts of violence’ were attributed to the state” which the United States backed throughout the conflict. In truth, the United States’ “Salvador option,” or option of creating, training, and arming indigenous paramilitary death squad units to destroy local insurgencies, really began in Colombia in the early 1960s, was then carried out in Vietnam, and continues to this day in countries such as Afghanistan and Syria. And so, Romero’s words to Carter shortly before his death ring as powerful and true as they did then, and they continue to be ignored by successive US presidents.

The ten most violent countries in the world in 2014 – Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan and North Korea – are all among the least capitalist. The ten most peaceful – Iceland, Denmark, Austria, New Zealand, Switzerland, Finland, Canada, Japan, Belgium and Norway – are all firmly capitalist.

Despite progress since the Cold War in reaching negotiated settlements in civil wars, efforts to consolidate peace with effective governance have proven challenging in places as diverse as the Congo, Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq, Central Africa, and the Middle East.

The world has a ridiculously short attention span. It cannot stick to any one cause for more than a few days. They forgot about Palestine, they forgot about Afghanistan, they forgot about Jallianwala Bagh, and they’ll soon forget about Ukraine as well. The world forgets, but the suffering of the people continues. Don't be that world my friend, be a better world, a civilized and responsible world, only then we'll be able to prevent another Palestine crisis, another Afghanistan crisis, another Ukraine crisis, otherwise these events will keep recurring until everybody is six feet under.

what they saw as a British retreat from Basra. The initial British arrogance in Iraq, based on their belief that unlike the Americans they knew how to deal with peacekeeping because of long experience in Northern Ireland, had long faded as they found themselves locked in battle with the Mahdi army, the murderous followers of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and other extremist militias. Without enough troops to deal with the situation they had ended up making a secret deal with the Mahdis to be able to withdraw in peace. On 2 September 2007 British troops left Basra Palace, their last base in the city, for the airport in a retreat described by one officer as ‘utter

Jewish Ideas Daily In Defense of the Nation-State By Diana Muir Appelbaum Friday, October 5, 2012 In [Daniel Gordis’] new book, The Promise of Israel: Why Its Seemingly Greatest Weakness Is Actually Its Greatest Strength, Gordis weaves the work of political theorists and historians into a compelling case for the nation-state in general and Israel in particular. … the governments that have produced human rights such as personal liberty and the rule of law have most often been ethnically based nation-states … Gordis quotes intellectual historian Mark Lilla, who notes that while Western Europeans have forgotten “all the long-standing problems that the nation-state, as a modern form of political life, managed to solve,” … [Zionism] remembers the wisdom of borders and the need for collective autonomy to establish self-respect and to demand respect from others. … European and American opposition to Israel … reflects the fact that Israel is the archetypal nation-state, and nation-states have fallen from favor in intellectual circles. Until recently, republics have arisen only in small city-states and, usually, only briefly. Apart from these cases, in all of human history only a few ways have been found to organize political life. There is the intense and appalling tribalism of Afghanistan. There are empires in which conquering Herrenvolk oppress conquered peoples. There are dictatorships and monarchies in which individuals may have comforts or privileges but not rights. There has been the universalizing ideology of Marxism, which has produced brutality and death on an unimaginable scale. Then there is the nation-state. The nation-state gives no assurances of the universal peace and justice promised by Marxism, Islam, or the human rights movement. It claims merely that it will attempt to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for its citizens. The nation-state does not claim it will bring peace or justice to the whole world, only that it will work to bring these benefits to a particular people living on a particular piece of land.

In the last 13 years, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, when compared to our two world wars, Korea, and Vietnam, have not resulted in staggering numbers of Americans killed. But the deaths of non-Americans as a consequence of our sanctions, invasions, and bombings are numbered in the hundreds of thousands. We may not be counting, but the Muslim world is. Recipients of such violence and their families have long memories.

Back then, I had no idea what would actually happen. That Pakistan and Afghanistan would ultimately become more all consuming than any relationship I had ever had. That they would slowly fall apart, and that even as they crumble, chunk by chunk, they would feel more like home than anywhere else. I had no idea that I would find self-awareness in a combat zone, a kind of peace in chaos. My life here wouldn't be about a man or God or some cause. I would fall in love, deeply, but with a story, with a way of life. When everything else was stripped away, my life would be about an addition, not to drugs, but to a place. I would never feel as alive as when I was here.

(Government, Economic, Corporate, and Social Structure/Formation) Militaristic Wars, Invasions, and Occupations (e.g., Iraq, Afghanistan) Secret Wars (e.g., Mexico, North Africa) Government Overthrows (e.g., Libya, Central America, Chile) Illegal Assassinations Drone Bombing (e.g., Pakistan, Yemen) Use of Radioactive Weapons (e.g., Fallujah) World’s Largest Military Budget Leader in Weapons Sales Privileging of Wealthy and Powerful (e.g., No Prosecution) Corporate and Institutional Corruption, Fraud, and Crime (e.g., Priceless)

irritatingly moralistic. Democratic globalism sees as the engine of history not the will to power but the will to freedom. And while it has been attacked as a dreamy, idealistic innovation, its inspiration comes from the Truman Doctrine of 1947, the Kennedy inaugural of 1961, and Reagan’s “evil empire” speech of 1983. They all sought to recast a struggle for power between two geopolitical titans into a struggle between freedom and unfreedom, and yes, good and evil. Which is why the Truman Doctrine was heavily criticized by realists like Hans Morgenthau and George Kennan—and Reagan was vilified by the entire foreign policy establishment for the sin of ideologizing the Cold War by injecting a moral overlay. That was then. Today, post-9/11, we find ourselves in a similar existential struggle but with a different enemy: not Soviet communism, but Arab-Islamic totalitarianism, both secular and religious. Bush and Blair are similarly attacked for naïvely and crudely casting this struggle as one of freedom versus unfreedom, good versus evil. Now, given the way not just freedom but human decency were suppressed in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the two major battles of this new war, you would have to give Bush and Blair’s moral claims the decided advantage of being obviously true. Nonetheless, something can be true and still be dangerous. Many people are deeply uneasy with the Bush-Blair doctrine—many conservatives in particular. When Blair declares in his address to Congress: “The spread of freedom is … our last line of defense and our first line of attack,” they see a dangerously expansive, aggressively utopian foreign policy. In short, they see Woodrow Wilson. Now, to a conservative, Woodrow Wilson is fightin’ words. Yes, this vision is expansive and perhaps utopian. But it ain’t Wilsonian. Wilson envisioned the spread of democratic values through as-yet-to-be invented international institutions. He could be forgiven for that. In 1918, there was no way to know how utterly corrupt and useless those international institutions would turn out to be. Eight decades of bitter experience later—with Libya chairing the UN Commission on Human Rights—there is no way not to know. Democratic globalism is not Wilsonian. Its attractiveness is precisely that it shares realism’s insights about the centrality of power. Its attractiveness is precisely that it has appropriate contempt for the fictional legalisms of liberal internationalism. Moreover, democratic globalism is an improvement over realism. What it can teach realism is that the spread of democracy is not just an end but a means, an indispensable means for securing American interests. The reason is simple. Democracies are inherently more friendly to the United States, less belligerent to their neighbors and generally more inclined to peace. Realists are right that to protect your interests you often have to go around the world bashing bad guys over the head. But that technique, no matter how satisfying, has its limits. At some point, you have to implant something, something organic and self-developing. And that something is democracy. But where? V. DEMOCRATIC REALISM The danger of democratic globalism is its universalism, its open-ended commitment to human freedom, its temptation to plant the flag of democracy everywhere. It must learn to say no. And indeed, it does say no. But when it says no to Liberia, or Congo, or Burma, or countenances alliances with authoritarian rulers in places like Pakistan

The idea and principle of religious tolerance, based on the Christian virtue of charity and its “neutral principles of law” approach to religious law, is so inimical to Sharia because religious tolerance prohibits discrimination in favor of Islam. Islam traditionally eschews missionary work of conversion by persuasion and ultimately resorts to the sword. It does not hesitate to destroy the symbols of other religions, like Buddhist statues in Afghanistan198 or Catholic monasteries in Iraq,199 regardless of historical importance or present-day practice. The killing and harassment of religious minorities in Muslim lands are well documented. Moderate Muslims claim that Islam is a religion of peace. Yet historically Islam has never spread into a nation peacefully, but only by the sword.200 This religious conversion by the sword is called jihad. As Andrew McCarthy points out, We still don’t get what jihad is. Jihad, whether it is done through violence, or whether it is done by stealthier measures, is always and everywhere about Sharia. It is about the implementation of Sharia, the spread of Sharia, and the defense of Sharia. Sharia is the Islamic legal and political framework. We would like to think of Islam as just another religion, just a set of religious principles that’s separate from our secular or societal life. It’s anything but. It is a full service, comprehensive, political, social, and economic system—a military system—that happens to have some spiritual elements. But its ambitions are actually authoritarian in the sense that you have a central Islamic state that controls everything, and it’s totalitarian in the sense that it really does want to control everything, every aspect. Jihad leads to implementation of Sharia law in all lands for all people. That’s what makes Sharia so dangerous. The two are inextricably intertwined. You can’t combat one of these without combatting both of them.

Breaking Tweet Whatever world would say; however, as a fact, Russia, in the leadership of Vladimir Putin has given, a historical lesson and silent defeat, to the United States of America, in both ways, the diplomatic and war strategic, after retreating from Afghanistan by the American made Taliban including Usama Bin Laden. Since that and the Iraq war till present, USA has lost its incredibility in world eyes and failed to build peace, harmony, and equality within small and large states of the world. Now, Donald Trump, even though his political speeches meet hard critical responses, but it seems that he will restore, and achieve the American image of justice and peace for everyone. Otherwise, the failure is its destiny that may collapse the unity within its states, as in the Soviet Union.

Whatever the world would say, however, as a fact, Russia, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, has given a historical lesson and a silent defeat to the United States of America, in both ways, the diplomatic and war strategic, after retreating from Afghanistan by the American-made Taliban, including Usama Bin Laden. Since then and the Iraq War until the present, the USA has lost its incredibility in the eyes of the world and failed to build peace, harmony, and equality within small and large states of the world. Now, Donald Trump, even though his political speeches meet hard critical responses, seems to restore and achieve the American image of justice and peace for everyone. Otherwise, failure is its destiny and may collapse the unity within its states, as in the Soviet Union.

Clearly, the “peace dividend” that dominated Washington rhetoric after the end of the Cold War—taking the money spent on the military and moving it to projects at home—is long gone. (Thanks to Afghanistan and Iraq, the dividend never paid out.) The money we hoped to spend on improving the climate, or education, or ending income inequality will get sucked into bolstering our forces in Europe, even as we “pivot” to concentrate more firepower in the Pacific.

Don't Despair - Victory Is Near *** O' God, show me the way So that I could tell Those who pray to one God, Those who follow their prophet Those who recite their Holy Book But neither people nor leaders In their lives Act on that as its context Kashmiris breathe In the tyranny of democratic beasts Palestinians live In the occupation of Zionists And cruel occupiers For decades and decades Alas, the Muslim world And United Nations Stayed: Dumb, Deaf, and Blind Except for issuing words of condemnation On the unjust, oppressive rapes, And killing practices and deeds The Muslim States and rulers And the Armed Forces are unique and brave, Only for murdering their people And damaging unity and resources To stay in power Such rulers destroyed Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Iran Spending trillions of wealth The Muslim States fought wars In the interests of those who preach  Justice, equality, honesty, harmony,  And peace, never learn themselves.  How they can apply justice  For Palestinians and Kashmiris? Otherwise, peace was a destiny And the destination of the Muslim State And entire humanity In such a scenario as Kashmir,  And Palestine will be bearing cruelty Unjust, oppression, and bloodshed We belong to Allah And to Him, we shall return Oh, Palestine, oh, Kashmir Do not despair Victory is near.

The years between the end of the Second World War and 2010 or 2011, Pinker designates the long peace.19 It is a peace that encompassed the Chinese Communist revolution, the partition of India, the Great Leap Forward, the ignominious Cultural Revolution, the suppression of Tibet, the Korean War, the French and American wars of Indochinese succession, the Egypt-Yemen war, the Franco-Algerian war, the Israeli-Arab wars, the genocidal Pol Pot regime, the grotesque and sterile Iranian revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, ethnic cleansings in Rwanda, Burundi, and the former Yugoslavia, the farcical Russian and American invasions of Afghanistan, the American invasion of Iraq, and various massacres, sub-continental famines, squalid civil insurrections, blood-lettings, throat-slittings, death squads, theological infamies, and suicide bombings taking place from Latin America to East Timor. Alone, broken, incompetent, and unloved, the Soviet Union lumbered into oblivion in 1989. The twentieth century had come to an end.

Instead of bringing stability and peace, the United States inadvertently built a corrupt, dysfunctional Afghan government that depended on U.S. military power for its survival.

Every second I am dying inside, for Ukraine. I'm dying for Afghanistan, I'm dying for Palestine, I'm dying for Kashmir. Even my pen pours blood. And this bleeding won't stop till I put an end to the bloodshed of the innocents.

-Whatever the world would say; however, as a fact, Russia, in the leadership of Vladimir Putin, has given historical lessons and the silent defeat to the United States of America in both ways; the diplomatic and war strategy. After retreating from Afghanistan by the American-made Taliban, including Bin Laden since that and the Iraq war till present, the USA has lost its incredibility in world eyes and failed to build peace, harmony, and equality within small and large states of the world. Now, Donald Trump, even though his political speeches meet hard critical responses, but it seems that he will restore, and achieve the American image of justice and peace for everyone. Otherwise, the failure is the destiny that may collapse the unity within states of it, as in the Soviet Union.

Afghanistan and such targeted countries are a context of the USA's awkward policies, legal hegemony, and legitimate victimization and destruction of other nations for its interests, in the mirror of so-called civilization and global peace.

The Taliban announced their new plan in a policy editorial published in Al Samood, in January 2006: Let the Americans and their allies know that even though we lack equipment, our faith has been unshakable. And with the help of Allah the Almighty, we have created a weapon which you will not be able to face or escape, i.e. martyrdom operations. We will follow you everywhere and we will detonate everything in your face. We will make you terrified, even from vacant lands and silent walls. We know we are inevitably heading towards death, so let it be a glorious death by killing you with us, as we believe in the words of the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him): “The heretic and his killer will be united in the fires of hell.” We have thus prepared many suicide operations that even will involve women, and we will offer you the taste of perdition in the cities, villages, valleys and mountains with Allah’s help.2

The Taliban might be abhorrent, but did the movement pose a direct threat to the United States? If the Afghan war could be settled only by peace talks that included as much of the Taliban as possible, as many at the highest levels of the Obama administration came to believe after 2010, why was this daunting project left to a secret cell of negotiators and not made a higher, more explicit priority of the United States, as were the comparably risky negotiations with Iran and Cuba undertaken during Obama’s second term?

Washington hasn’t won a major conflict since World War II and yet its defense sector is the biggest and most profitable in the world. Failure and defeat in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan has not taken a toll on owning 37 percent of the global share of arms between 2015 and 2020, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

The Bamiyan Valley below was carpeted by lush farming fields. Babi said they were green winter wheat and alfafa, potatoes too... It was autumn, and Laila could make out people in bright tunics on the roofs of mud brick dwellings laying out the harvest to dry... Beyond the village, beyond the river and the streams, Laila saw foothills, bare and dusty brown, and, beyond those, as beyond everything else in Afghanistan, the snowcapped Hindu Kush. The sky above all of this was an immaculate, spotless blue. "It's so quiet," Laila breathed... "It's what I always remember about being up here," Babi said, "The silence. The peace of it. I wanted you to experience it. But I also wanted you to see your country's heritage, children, to learn of its rich past. You seem some things I can teach you. Some you can learn from books. But there are things that, well, you just have to *see* and *feel*.

After Netanyahu was defeated in the 1999 election, his more liberal successor, Ehud Barak, made efforts to establish a broader peace in the Middle East, including outlining a two-state solution that went further than any previous Israeli proposal. Arafat demanded more concessions, however, and talks collapsed in recrimination. Meanwhile, one day in September 2000, Likud party leader Ariel Sharon led a group of Israeli legislators on a deliberately provocative and highly publicized visit to one of Islam’s holiest sites, Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. It was a stunt designed to assert Israel’s claim over the wider territory, one that challenged the leadership of Ehud Barak and enraged Arabs near and far. Four months later, Sharon became Israel’s next prime minister, governing throughout what became known as the Second Intifada: four years of violence between the two sides, marked by tear gas and rubber bullets directed at stone-throwing protesters; Palestinian suicide bombs detonated outside an Israeli nightclub and in buses carrying senior citizens and schoolchildren; deadly IDF retaliatory raids and the indiscriminate arrest of thousands of Palestinians; and Hamas rockets launched from Gaza into Israeli border towns, answered by U.S.-supplied Israeli Apache helicopters leveling entire neighborhoods. Approximately a thousand Israelis and three thousand Palestinians died during this period—including scores of children—and by the time the violence subsided, in 2005, the prospects for resolving the underlying conflict had fundamentally changed. The Bush administration’s focus on Iraq, Afghanistan, and the War on Terror left it little bandwidth to worry about Middle East peace, and while Bush remained officially supportive of a two-state solution, he was reluctant to press Sharon on the issue. Publicly, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states continued to offer support to the Palestinian cause, but they were increasingly more concerned with limiting Iranian influence and rooting out extremist threats to their own regimes.

This is the balance of possibilities and limits. The possibilities: reaching the top, hitting on a great idea, realizing a vision of justice and peace, or just getting through the deployment and getting home. The limits: an uncertain course, unstable footing, the dangers of this place, waning physical and emotional stamina. We have hopes, dreams, goals we seek to make real in our lives. We struggle with fear, loneliness, hardship. We must navigate the obstacles while keeping our sights on all that is possible.