Sunday, September 2, 2007

Korean Hostages

The Korean Hostage situation raises more interesting questions about the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and the greater middle east and Muslim world. What degree did the popular media and religious leaders assertively pressure for the hostages to be released on religious and civilized humanitarian grounds. If even a small degree of the outrage spent on the Muhammad cartoon fiasco had been spent on proving that Muslims can and will mobilize for positive behavior then the Muslim community could have bolstered its cosmopolitan claims with more much needed credence.

It also could be used by some to say we are not winning either geographical battle space from Taliban friendly forces or the populations hearts and minds.
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It is another example of the reason we need to stay vigilante and proactively address this scourge of intolerance and violence in a region long unable to self-govern with any modern form of accountability.

It also is interesting to notice the South Korean culture with respect to these hostages sense of national character. How likely is that any group of Americans would feel the impulse to apologize to the U.S. government for the hassles they caused.

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