thebigp

Bacha Bazi and the Afghan Drawdown--see no evil, hear no evil---47fh., b4
The recent outrage over reports of systematic child rape by Afghan security forces may be justified, but sadly there is little novelty to the reports themselves.
"The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan," that explored at length the pedophilic practice of bacha bazi--the keeping of boys by Pashtun men for sex. What did seem new about the Times report was its claim that soldiers and Marines had been told to look the other way when confronted with the rape of children more or less in their midst. In one of two harrowing cases discussed by the reporter. a Marine, Lance Corporal Gregory Buckley Jr., told his father in a telephone conservation that he could hear screams of the victim at night, two weeks before being shot to death in 2012 by one such victim in a so-called insider attack.
Army Special Forces officer, Capt. Dan Quinn, was relieved of command after throwing to the ground a m*****a commander who had kept a local boy chained to his bed. Quinn has since of left the Army, which is still pursuing disciplinary action against a second soldier involved in the incident, Sgt. First Class Charles Martland.
It is reasonable to question what on earth has happened to the moral compass of commanders who, upon to hearing that one of their officers has used physical force against an Afghan commander who is raping young boys, chooses to discipline the officer whose moral instincts, at least, seem beyond reproach.
Gen. John Campbell, released a statement on September 22 in which he claimed, "I personally have served multiple tours in Afghanistan and am absolutely confident that no such theater policy has ever existed, throughout my tenure as commander.
There was, indeed, no such policy in 2009 and 2010 when I served in Afghanistan as a Marine. We received res no guidance or training—official or otherwise—dealing with the matter. Though the Afghan Army has its problems, including corruption and surely sexual assault as well, lost in the discussion this week is a fine but important distinction: The crisis of systematic child rape primarily involves Pashtuns who have joined the police or government-backed m*****as in the eastern and southern parts of the country during the period when Americans have been focused on their own departure.
In an interview that what Lance Corporal Buckley said to his father about hearing the screams of victims at night was something he himself had experienced on roughly two-thirds of the patrol bases he had Stayed on while reporting on the is Afghan security forces.
Anderson says of the disconnect he witnessed between the grim reality in Helmand, where the police were at least as feared by the locals as the Talban and rosy reports sent to Kabul and beyond.
Michael Skerker, a professor in the Leadership, Ethics, and Law Department at the U.S. Naval Academy, pointed out the condescension behind such an assumption. "Is this really the local culture?" ' he said in an interview. "Are parents giving their children. selling their children, encouraging them to have sex with an adults? Or is it criminal in Pashtun culture?"
The fact that the Pashtun-dominated Taliban have long used reports of rapes committed by government agents as a recruiting tool—indeed, among the elements of Mullah Omar's rise to power was his reputation for taking violent action against those who kidnapped and raped children—indicates that Pashtun parents, like parents everywhere, disapprove of seeing their children raped.
While it would be both unreasonable and unrealistic for American commanders to expect their troops to be knights-errant of liberal democracy, going out into the land search of wrongdoing with a general mandate to eliminate all evil, it is nonetheless unconscionable that commanders in at least some cases felt they were supposed to tolerate systematic child rape among the Afghans they were responsible for advising.
But actually defeating the Taliban, as opposed to departing Afghanistan as quickly as possible. hasn't been a goal of the U.S. military or the Obama administration for years now. In the haste to get American troops out of the country, good news going up the chain of command has been smiled upon and bad news quietly deemphasized. A lot of evil has been ignored in the effort to wind down what the president once referred to as "the good war."
source-weekly standard (10/5/15), aaron maclean, greory buckley jr, dan quinn, chales martland, times, john campbell, michael skerker,