parallaxicality
04-June-2008, 07:56 PM
was the 30th anniversary of the start of the war in Afghanistan. I feel bad. I meant to commemorate it, but I didn't know the exact date, and it happened to fall right after my birthday.
When I say the "war in Afghanistan", I don't mean the current war. That's just the bit we're involved with right now. Afghanistan has effectively been fighting a war nonstop since 1978, when a military coup overthrew a previous dictator (who had himself overthrown Afghanistan's first quasi-democratic government in 1973), leading to invasion by and ten-year war with the Soviet Union, a five-year period of bloody anarchy, a civil war between the Taliban and the remnants of the anti-Soviet mujahadeen, and finally the current conflict triggered by 9/11.
It's not my intention to place blame or invoke politics in this post, but I wanted to raise awareness of this dark anniversary in the hopes that we might give some thought to the long-suffering and unfairly maligned people of Afghanistan.
When I say the "war in Afghanistan", I don't mean the current war. That's just the bit we're involved with right now. Afghanistan has effectively been fighting a war nonstop since 1978, when a military coup overthrew a previous dictator (who had himself overthrown Afghanistan's first quasi-democratic government in 1973), leading to invasion by and ten-year war with the Soviet Union, a five-year period of bloody anarchy, a civil war between the Taliban and the remnants of the anti-Soviet mujahadeen, and finally the current conflict triggered by 9/11.
It's not my intention to place blame or invoke politics in this post, but I wanted to raise awareness of this dark anniversary in the hopes that we might give some thought to the long-suffering and unfairly maligned people of Afghanistan.