I got involved in an argument about time and emotional impact last year at StellarCon with Bill Fortschen (co-author of 1945 with Newt Gingrich.) His position was that over time, the emotional impact of a human disaster lessens. He used as an example an archaeology dig he participated on in Russia. They had found the skeleton of what was probably a Mongol slave girl from around the 13 th century. She was probably of Circassian extraction and about thirteen. She had died from a blow to the head.

At the dig they found this very cool; here was an interesting (if sad in abstract) historical relic, complete with bits of surviving textile and a few grave offerings of the crudest sort. They gathered around and had their pictures taken.

Later, at another site, they happened upon the remains of a child's doll. But this was tangled into the grass of the steppe and scattered around it were the shell casings from AK-47s; the owner of the doll had fallen victim to one of the innumerable nearly invisible massacres perpetrated by the "people loving" communists of the Soviet Union.

This, of course, was a human tragedy. But it was a tragedy, rather than an interesting historical relic, because it was so real, so present . Time had not yet healed this wound.

I argued that the two were similar in form and that, as writers, it was certainly possible to make the two synonymous in tragedy. But my heart really wasn't in the argument, I knew what he was talking about and was, at best, quibbling.

However, I got to thinking about Bill's argument again watching the video from the Taliban attempted jail-break and reading the quote from the Northern Alliance commander that "they were all to be killed." And I realized that for Bill's argument to be valid, one has to be literate, or at least numerate. And that is, in context of the Afghanistan war, hugely important and easy to overlook. Because if you are reading this, you are literate.

That seems like a fatuous statement, but it's important to remember that to a person who is not numerate, who has no "feel" for the distance involved in numbers, when he or she is told about two facts, disparate in time, they are identical . If one is "unhealed" by time, the other is as well, no matter how far removed in time they actually are.

For the illiterate, "time" is like a foreign language. If I say to you "the Batak killed two thousand people and ate them doa years ago" and "the Uzbeks ran over their enemies with tanks and killed at least two thousand who had surrendered by burying them alive sey years ago" it has the exact same emotional impact . Even though one took place two hundred years ago and the other less than five. (And in both cases the number involved is hyperbolic.)

So for the majority of the fighters in Afghanistan, 85-90% of whom are illiterate, the Prophet died just before the oldest person that they know. His end was, at most, one generation ago. And the "injustices" that were visited upon him are recent, present and raw. It's as if your Grandmother had spoken to Jesus. They have no concept of any time "deeper" than just before their grandparents birth.

For the majority of the fighters in Afghanistan, the sack of Tashkent, when the Mongols pulled every single inhabitant out and cut off their heads after raping the women, is as recent, present and raw as the Holocaust. Indeed, the Holocaust was far away and only happened to "Yehudim," whereas Temujin cut off heads right there . And it happened to their ancestors .

These are things that the people of the Middle East remember as if they are yesterday. They are the memories that they have to replace Valley Forge and the Alamo. To them, Tamerlane is as psychologically recent as Davie Crockett. More so, we know that Davie Crockett is in the "past" and half-legend. Think John Wayne in the Sands of Iwo Jima. But with piles of human skulls.

So when some Northern Alliance Uzbek kills all the Taliban Chechen and Saudi "tourists", especially after they surrendered under oath and then revolted, keep in mind that they are simply responding to their historical and ethnic imperative. To them, this is the way that war is fought as taught by Temujin (who, speaking of the Duke, was once played by John Wayne in one of his cheesier roles.)

It's a cultural thing. And the only way to change the culture is to teach them the difference between two and three.