NEW YORK TIMES: … “At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” the Marine’s father, Gregory Buckley Sr., recalled his son telling him before he was shot to death at the base in 2012. He urged his son to tell his superiors. “My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s their culture.”
Rampant sexual abuse of children has long been a problem in Afghanistan,particularly among armed commanders who dominate much of the rural landscape and can bully the population. The practice is called bacha bazi, literally “boy play,” and American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene — in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records…
Cation under photo: Dan Quinn was relieved of his Special Forces command after a fight with a U.S.-backed militia leader who had a boy as a sex slave chained to his bed… (more)
EDITOR: We are proud of our solders for their desire to intervene to prevent such disgusting abuses. Nor do we blame our armed forces leadership for having to look away.
But we do blame George W. Bush and Dick Chaney for botching our intervention in Afghanistan with their abysmally ignorant ‘nation building’ approach. Our job was to kick the ass of Al Qaeda and be in and out within six months, much like George H. W. Bush did with Desert Storm in Iraq. (His and Bill Clinton’s mistakes were lack of follow up over the years to come.)
We can’t even right all of the wrongs in the USA or even here in Lancaster (notably the Convention Center rip off and those soon to be perpetrated through the CRIZ program), let alone trying to force our values upon the rest of the world.
