A troubling expose in tomorrow's New York Times -
In his last phone call home, Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father what was troubling him: From his bunk in southern Afghanistan, he could hear Afghan police officers sexually abusing boys they had brought to the base.
“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.”
This story goes through a laundry list of human rights violations - including child rape (male and female), honor killings of young girls, child sexual slavery (young boys being chained to beds) - while U.S. military officers were told to "look the other way".
If this is their local culture in Afghanistan (as the U.S. military commanders apparently argued), is it really worth fighting for and saving?
Link to the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Questions for thought -
- At what point do we have to drop the view that all cultures are created equal? If this truly is the local culture, why are we fighting for it? Just for a proxy war with the Taliban?
- What commanders in our military authorized this "look the other way" policy, and how will they be held accountable - both for the damage done in Afghanistan as well as the ruined careers of the U.S. military officers who attempted to speak up?