Monday, April 13th. a perspective on the world.

I'm not overly religous, living as secular life as the next person still there may be lessons to learn from faith. Easter and Passover have passed, let the Sugar Buzz commence. OK not funny but the ir-religious celebrations aside and the reflections on life death portrayed both in Christian and Jewish beliefs mirror and oppose each other. There is more to the message than the salvation of people. It was salvation, but at great cost. The First Born of the Egyptians and the First Born of God both died over the Passover Season.

Perhaps one lesson to be viewed is that we can be given a gift that comes at great cost to another. The cost of that gift, not in monetary measure, makes the gift more valuable than coins.

In Iraq, the tribal groups and religious sects have been given the opprotunity to be free from a central controling government of criminally minded people.

The costs, the lives of American, British, and Other Nations soldiers. Now it is for the Zorastrians, Christians, Jews, Kurds, Shittes and Sunnis to come together for a common good and work together. Yet they have long memories of conflict and distrust they must overcome first. What they do not have is a history however short of cooperation and peaceful co-existance amongst the tribes and sects. That now is a lesson they must learn from the history of others if they can, otherwise this experiment in self determination they have been provided is doomed to failure at their own hands.

Afghanistan; again a different time, place and mindset from Iraq and many more different human equations. The Afghanistan tribes make for as much variation within that geopolitical entity as you will find in Western Asia. From the religious extremes as displayed by the Taliban to the need for modernizing its infrastructure and lifting the spirit of the people from decades of turmoil.

The Afghan peoples; all the different tribal and culturally diverse groups too need to seek a comon ground and stand together to throw off the shackles of the limited mindset that would be imposed by the Taliban and Al Queada. The Afghan tribes have a history of being resolute against a common foe just as much as they've a history of working against each other for their limited immediate desires and goals. The Taliban & Al Queada have been weakened but not erradicated. Now it is up to the Afghan Peoples to stand and work together to climb out of their dispare and poverty. the World hasn't passed Afghanistan by, so much as Afghanistan has turned inward and ignored the world untill it was forced open.

Forced Open First by the Soviet conflict there in the 1980's followed by the decades of enforce enslavement by a midieval mindset of the Taliban. To now comming to grips that their country is not thier own to decide the destiny there of. The Government in Kabul can not govern the nation due to how it percieves itself.

There may be some similarities of Afghanistan and the American West from 1865 to 1900when the U.S. Army was more of a Constabulary Force; Keeping a peace imposed upon tribal groups. It wasn't untill the tribal entities fighting against the strenght of the U.S. Army where brough to their knees by deaths, sickness, isolation and poverty that the American west was delcared passified.

Still it was a conflict which lasted well over the 35 year time span of 1865 to 1900. It was a ideological, religous and cultural conflict. The first skirmishes of which were fought beginning with the movement westward of European colonialists.
There are many similarities to be drawn upon; from the British & French Canadian experiences to the Spanish & later French Mexican experiences.

The lessons to be learned are several. Our world is not as civilized as we may wish. The freedoms we and others desire will come at great costs, lives and fiscally. The realization that you can not kill an idea by killing the messager and the need to destroy the means of retribution of an enemy to your goal.

Passover for the Isrealites was the opening of a gate way to their freedom from enslavement. The costs was the leaving of Egypt to wander in the deserts of Sinai; The loss of the Egyptian first borns and of Pharoah's Army. Egypt was denied the means of retribution upon the Isrealites. Yet it took Generations for the Isrealites to achieve their goal of a nation.

Easter for Christians is a watershed moment when realization is made that the death of the messanger does not mark the death of the message he brought. The Ressurection symbolizes the rebirth of the message and the hundreds of years afterwards demonstrate how the message can be borne out to others.

Justice and freedom aren't just ideals and abstract concepts; Justice can be with held and freedom denied. But without people willing to risk all to allow others to experience even the faintest of glimers of justice and freedom. The hope of a more peaceful and free future for many will never occur.

Even Mahatma Ghandi realized that he could loose his life by standing and expressing his message. Just as Jesus of Nazareth and John the Baptist had. But without the few willing to stand and deliver we would not have the examples needed for us to learn from and do the same for others. Still freedoms for those in Iraq and Afghanistan can not be won with the rifle and bayonet. The Iraqis and Afghans now need stand for themselves as well and strive for the change they need regardless of the costs both immediate and for future generations.

The immediacy of Easter and Passover has passed now it is time for the harder work to commence for those who would wish to be free.