http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/world/asia/us-soldiers-told-to-ignore-afghan-allies-abuse-of-boys.html

Horrible, just horrible

Quote :

"U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies 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.”"

Quote :

"The policy has endured as American forces have recruited and organized Afghan militias to help hold territory against the Taliban. But soldiers and Marines have been increasingly troubled that instead of weeding out pedophiles, the American military was arming them in some cases and placing them as the commanders of villages — and doing little when they began abusing children. “The reason we were here is because we heard the terrible things the Taliban were doing to people, how they were taking away human rights,” said Dan Quinn, a former Special Forces captain who beat up an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave. “But we were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did — that was something village elders voiced to me.”"

Here is a documentary on this cultural practice which was posted here some time ago:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/dancingboys/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/dancingboys/etc/synopsis.html

So, I guess the first bold sentence deserves a hearty LOL?

9/25/2015 7:21:27 PM

http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/11/19/us-afghan-dancingboys-idUSISL1848920071119

This one has quotes from the pederasts boasting about their lechery and perversion... very revolting

9/25/2015 10:44:29 PM

yeah, i don't care how realpolitik you are, this is morally bankrupt.

9/26/2015 11:15:17 AM

We lost the war on terror because terror actually grew during our war. We fought on the side of terror, fertilized it, and even became it.

9/26/2015 8:44:45 PM

I think there are examples of that. I think that, on balance, the opposite is true. Unfortunately, just as an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, an ounce of poison is also worth a pound of cure.

The bigger problem, though, is not what we promoted and actively did wrong, but what we omitted and/or failed to accomplish: stability.

9/27/2015 1:06:14 PM

In Peace Corps Benin, we're told to ignore sexual molestation, harassment, and assault by male teachers against female students. It's ubiquitous, and happens at every school in this country. It's considered appropriate in the local culture, more or less; more importantly, the last time a PCV tried to report it to Peace Corps, she was murdered by the teacher in question.

Obviously we find "ignore it" to be a difficult pill to swallow, and I still don't know whether I think it's a good policy. On the one hand, the problem is much too large for us to handle as a whole; in the meantime, we're defenseless if other teachers would rather slit our throats than stop fucking 14 year old students. On the other hand, it's reprehensible and damages individual lives and the country as a whole.

The Marine in question wasn't defenseless, of course, but his Afghan allies are packing, too, and they outnumber him. Meanwhile it's hard enough to find Afghan soldiers who aren't secretly plotting the next green on blue attack without also pissing them off by taking away what may be, in their mind, a fundamental right in their culture.

Meanwhile the alternative is the Taliban, who may or may not be anti-raping-little-boys but are pro-numerous-other-horrible-things.

The problem in both cases is a culture that is unacceptable in its current form. I don't subscribe to the modern idea that cultures can be inferior or superior. At least in some key respects, a culture that condones raping young people is inferior. A few hundred years ago we would have met this problem by eradicating the culture in question, but I do subscribe to the modern idea that genocide is bad. Which leaves us with the bigger problem of "How do you change a culture?" Which requires a more detailed response than, "Raping boys is sick."

9/28/2015 6:49:28 AM

Quote :

"Which leaves us with the bigger problem of "How do you change a culture?" Which requires a more detailed response than, "Raping boys is sick.""

That's the 2nd of the 2 problems here. The first problem is how we handle this on our end.

I would have to imagine a soldier would find it harder to summon the resolve to fight for his country, if his commanders and leaders are telling him to let kids get raped. Something's wrong when a soldier gets punished for doing the unquestionably right thing.

Regarding the 2nd problem... culture changes naturally through appropriation and assimilation. I don't think we can change their culture by prescribing changes, it's not acceptable to just wipe them out, we have to engage them positively on some level, including just setting a good example (see above paragraph) and hope some activist inside the culture does the necessary organization to foment change.

9/28/2015 12:52:26 PM

education changes culture. period. no culture advocates harming children, they just don't know what they are doing is causing permanent harm. We put our boys into youth football which is just as if not more damaging. Its simply because most people don't know that letting little boys bang their heads together is causing permanent harm.

9/28/2015 1:20:09 PM

^ Education falls under "positive engagement"

but I o.O at:
"We put our boys into youth football which is just as if not more damaging"

9/28/2015 3:10:24 PM

See? Americans are shocked by that statement in the same way Afghanis would probably be shocked to hear about how sexual abuse causes long lasting damage to children. Its all a matter of education just at different levels. The level of education that determines their cultural practices is low, but our high level of culture-determining education could still improve.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sports/concussion-watch/76-of-79-deceased-nfl-players-found-to-have-brain-disease/
http://www.bu.edu/cte/about/what-is-cte/
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/appi.ajp.2008.07111774

9/28/2015 4:22:17 PM

I don't think anyone is shocked to hear someone say playing football can cause damage. Claiming that it is "just as if not more damaging" is the problem here.

Are you saying that if you took 1000 boys and had them play football for a few years and a 1000 other boys and raped them for a few years that a higher percentage of the boys playing football would have longer lasting ill-effects?

Because if that's what you're saying, you're going to have to provide a lot more proof than just evidence that football is bad.

But that's of course not the point of this thread, so really football shouldn't be discussed here in the first place

9/28/2015 4:53:31 PM

That's also the highest level, so playing for an additional 5-10 years with only the strongest and fastest colliding. So you've got to rape the kids as hard as possible well into their late 20s and maybe 30s

[Edited on September 28, 2015 at 6:10 PM. Reason : Rule #1]

9/28/2015 6:09:54 PM

on the plus side sounds like they whooped the hell out of the perp

9/28/2015 9:02:42 PM

Quote :

"We put our boys into youth football which is just as if not more damaging."

Haha, this is one of the stupidest fucking things I've ever read. I'm taken aback, even given my abysmally low expectations of The E Man. That's sort of comment that would scrape the bottom of the YouTube comment and WRAL GOLO barrels.

9/29/2015 11:15:33 PM

Youre just proving my point though. The idea that your culture is superior is so deeply entrenched that you are unable to even entertain the idea that something that damaging to kids could be so widely acceptef here. In 50 years when football as we know it has been abolished people will look back on it as savagery. Concussions arent just something that can happen in football they are part of the game.

9/30/2015 12:31:20 AM

Youre just proving my point though. The idea that your culture is superior is so deeply entrenched that you are unable to even entertain the idea that something that damaging to kids could be so widely acceptef here. In 50 years when football as we know it has been abolished people will look back on it as savagery. Concussions arent just something that can happen in football they are part of the game.

9/30/2015 12:31:20 AM

Youre just proving my point though. The idea that your culture is superior is so deeply entrenched that you are unable to even entertain the idea that something that damaging to kids could be so widely acceptef here. In 50 years when football as we know it has been abolished people will look back on it as savagery. Concussions arent just something that can happen in football they are part of the game.

9/30/2015 12:31:20 AM

You made a point that playing football as a child is as damaging or worse than than being raped.

You did NOT originally make the simple point that Americans aren't as sensitive to football injuries. You are trying to make that point now because you've realized your first point is indefensible and most likely incorrect

9/30/2015 10:54:37 AM

Quote :

"Regarding the 2nd problem... culture changes naturally through appropriation and assimilation."

And here we run into the problem we face with so many cultures, but which a certain strain of conservative Islam has mastered. Cultures can't appropriate nor assimilate new ideas if new ideas are socially unacceptable (or even potentially criminal).

People are irrationally defensive of their cultures everywhere, of course. It's why the dumber sort of American is terrified of all the Mexicans. For a lot of people it isn't even about jobs, it's about some abstract dread that new people are changing American culture. Which is probably true. It was true when the Italians, Poles, Irish, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Norwegians, and Germans arrived in various parts of the US, too. We got upset, then assimilated the changes, and we got over it. America is tolerably good at this, maybe the best in the world. Certainly better than Europe, which was bad on cultural assimilation even before the current crisis. Obviously better than Asia, where immigration just isn't an option and even those things taken from other cultures must be significantly weirded-up. And many, many miles ahead from Afghanistan and similar places, where going outside of the cultural norm can get a price on your head.

9/30/2015 1:56:52 PM

Quote :

"Youre just proving my point though. The idea that your culture is superior is so deeply entrenched that you are unable to even entertain the idea that something that damaging to kids could be so widely acceptef here."

No, you fucking idiot, that has nothing to do with what we're saying.

9/30/2015 7:22:50 PM