Chewin in the Chung

I like Scott Adams' blog, but he often gets into things way over his head. This is described best here.

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There is an article from Newsweek: Iraq's Martyr Factory

I have a story that may or may not be related to this topic. At Nankai University in the '88-'89 school year, there was one student from Pakistan. His name was Yaseen. At the neighboring Tianjin University, there was the only other Pakistani in the city, a guy named Shahed. As I found out later, it took Yaseen and Shahed about 3 months to be able to have a polite conversation without getting into some kind of bitter argument. Yaseen was a nice guy, but very traditional and conservative. Shahed had all kinds of radical ideas, like believing that women should be educated and allowed to vote. Yaseen didn't drink, while Shahed saw nothing wrong with sharing a case of beer with Americans, Jews, Hindus, or anyone else who was around and felt like having a beer.

Since I often feel like having a beer, Shahed and I came to be friends. We even had each others' backs at this one incident involving this girl and drunk Yemenis and knives and my-religion-is-none-of-your-damn-business. Good times.

I had this idea to go traveling west at the end of the Spring semester. I wanted to go to Xinjiang, Tibet, and Pakistan. Shahed thought the Pakistan part was a great idea: I could stay at his place near Islamabad, and I'd wear some kind of tribal robes so that everyone would think that I was from some Pakistani mountain tribe known for being real tall. I don't even know if there is such a tribe, but it sounded reasonable (I was 21). So we are talking about travel plans one day and Shahed says:
"Hey! You want to go to Afghanistan to fight the Russians?"
Me: "What?"
Shahed: "Me and my friends do it every summer. It's great."
Me: "That sounds crazy and insanely dangerous."
Shahed: "It's not dangerous. The locals know all of the good ambush points and escape routes."
Shahed: "No wait- It is dangerous if the helicopters find you. But only then."
Me: "Um, thanks for the offer, but no."

Now what's crazier: Fighting foreign occupiers as part of some broad religious duty, or doing it because Summer vacation is boring? I don't know, and I don't know if any of Shahed's friends blew themselves up in a suicide attack on some Russian target. I'm guessing no- I think Semtex was a lot more expensive back then.