I believe in hope, but how much hope can you have and how real is this hope?
I believe in the idea of hope, but is it enough to just have an idea of hope? Shouldn’t we have real hope?
I believe in the prospects of hope, but how can I trust those prospects? Who will assure me that these prospects will be realized?
I believe that there is hope for my adopted home, the United States, and for my place of birth, Afghanistan. I believe that if we become smarter in dealing with the Afghans, get rid of corruption of our own officials as well as the corruption of the Afghan officials, we can have reason for hope for the people of Afghanistan and for our own people by extension.
I believe that there is hope that we will rid ourselves and Afghanistan of Al Qaida, when we recognize that Al Qaida is foreign to Afghanistan while Taliban are mostly home grown resistance fighters that fight against what they perceive to be foreign invaders. If they work together with Al Qaida, it is because they believe that their enemy’s enemy is their friend.
I believe that there is hope that we will bring peace to Afghanistan and ultimately with it peace to ourselves, when we learn and internalize the Pashto saying that “you can persuade an Afghan to go with you to hell, but you cannot force him to go with you to heaven”.
I believe that there is hope for our long term peace, if we recognize that killing villagers in wedding parties and destroying their lives, their families and livelihood in other bombings should never be waived as collateral damage responded to by: “we regret …” If we recognize that these tragedies destroy lives of human beings and are not just scenes in some virtual video game or war movie. We cannot expect them to forget our atrocities, when we just apologize and blame others for our deeds.
I believe that our future is dependent on the hope that will move us towards making ourselves and our country a better and more responsible nation, not just for our own benefit but for the benefit of everyone that we aspire to support.
I believe that our future can be more peaceful on the hope that our leaders will one day become more responsible and sensitized to the pain of other people.
I believe that Obama’s election is a reason to have hope that this new responsible leaders have taken the reigns of our country. Let’s hope that this hope is not in vain.