daveman
Diamond Member
Everywhere you go, people are just people.I was in the Air Force. The assignment to Oman was voluntary, but the trip to Iraq and Afghanistan wasn't so much. But it had to be done, and I was the guy to do it, so I went.
What I learned from the Omanis, and from an Iranian kid whom I met there (he desperately wanted to get an American visa so he could go the the US and study) was that they're just like us -- only saddled with political and religious leaders who force hatred of Jews upon them.
Mr. Abdullah, an Omani national whom I worked with in the US Embassy in Muscat, once said to me in a discussion about Israel, "Mr. David, why can't people just get along?"
Mr. Abdullah is a wise man.
Wow, that really is awesome stuff.
And it also mirrors my own experience.
I will always remember sitting on a balcony in Damascus with a Syrian family. They were all speaking English to be polite to their guests, but they got into a big argument which got very heated - was it about Israel? No. The US? No. They were arguing about why the kids school had such poor teachers.
It was the mirror image of discussions I hear in Finland every week!