Before and Afghanistan

I don't belong to many groups on Facebook.

In general, I'm not a group person. If a bunch of people are doing something or collectively liking something, my tendency is not to do it and definitely not to like it.

I don't even know how I got roped into any groups on FB. But I do receive updates from something called the Global Secular Humanist Movement. And again, I'm not big on movements, unless they are my own.

Last week, they caught my attention with the photo you see above.

A pretty stark, if not overly simplistic (my favorite kind of simplistic), depiction of the country in which we have invested billions of dollars and more importantly, lost hundreds of US soldiers.

There was also a link to a larger article from the Denver Post, a photojournalistic exploration of Afghanistan from the 1960's by Dr. William Podlich, a professor who began a stint with UNESCO based in Kabul.

You can visit the article, but I've taken the liberty of pulling some of the more interesting pictures that show us an Afghanistan before the destructive forces of Islamic extremism.

Of course you can't paint an accurate picture of a country with a just a few photographs, But Dr. Podlich shows us a country of natural beauty. And of a people who seem to be on the road to progress.

I can't help contrasting these images with those of grown men throwing acid in the faces of little girls going to school. Of corrupt Afghani war lords taking our hard earned money and funneling it to the Taliban. Of fathers beating and killing their daughters in the name of some Neanderfuck definition of "honor."

Frankly, it makes me sick.

As you might have guessed this post isn't going to end with a typical funny quip.

However it did occur to me that maybe religious people, all religious people, have it backwards. If the Almighty Being they worship so fervently, allows this kind evil to prevail, and flourish, and destroy everything good in its path, maybe their God isn't the God of Light but actually the Prince of Darkness.

Maybe the religious zealots on this planet are the real Satanists.