One thought on “Afghanistan: Anatomy of a massacre”
Leslie Garrett
I spent much of 2000 with the Afghans, traveling all over Afghanistan. The Taliban invited me back, and with UN demeaning terms I rode deep into Herat, Farah, Kandahar, Ghazni Paktia, and Nangarhar; the Northern Alliance allowed me to travel alone in their areas of control. I traveled widely there in 2003 with my 17-year-old daughter. If you send a bareheaded woman in to report on such a situation in Afghanistan, as we see in this news clip, it is evidence that those involved are either ignorant or heedless of the culture and the feelings of the people. Western armies and the western press are day in and day out rubbing northern European tribal prejudices down the throats of others.
The Afghans and Pakistanis do not believe in drinking alcohol at all, after several millennia of literate history they know what people who drink a lot turn into, so they ban it, and this was so especially in Afghanistan. When the Americans and ISAF took Kabul, within months they had large whore houses and bars in place to service Western “servicemen.” These recent American massacres are being explained as the rampage of a lone drunk, because everybody in the West will think that somehow makes more understandable. When AIDS stalks Asia is not allowing hookers to be brought into a place like Afghanistan from Russia and China and the Balkans a war crime?
The Afghans will eventually drive out the Westerners again. That they would fight back is why Afghanistan was chosen. The Afghans had been cut off from the outside world for nearly 200 years by Russian and British colonial borders and armies, they have never seriously attacked anyone, yet this is the forth Anglo-Afghan War. These wars are never about any legitimate concern or problem; look at Vietnam, and how little it really mattered to the USA when a Communist takeover did finally come. These wars are about careers that need action, governments that need an enemy against whom to look tough, and they are about the materials contracts that get paid whether the war is won or lost. The aid industry is an equal player, giving legitimacy to the indefensible, enabling the monsters who portray the whole adventure as one grand service project. When I took a short term contract with the UN, the first thing my boss did was tell me to shave off my beard and to stop wearing Afghan clothes.
Why would any competent and intelligent generals, with a knowledge of military history and even a smattering of experience or learning concerning the people with whom they were sent to deal, ones who were genuinely intent on subduing and winning over the Afghans, why would such men allow foreign prostitutes to be brought in, and brothels and bars to open in Kabul? That would be like doing it in Salt Lake City in the 1930s. The press has ignored all of this. That and they make a point of sending in bareheaded, young, single women reporters to go riding around in the countryside with jeeps full of men. This is very trendy and accepted behaviour in much of the United States perhaps, but both the whore house/bars and the women reporters are out of line to most Afghans. Were the maker of the news item so ignorant of Afghanistan that they did not know better or were they pushing an agenda, trying to change the Afghan people to be more like Australians?
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I spent much of 2000 with the Afghans, traveling all over Afghanistan. The Taliban invited me back, and with UN demeaning terms I rode deep into Herat, Farah, Kandahar, Ghazni Paktia, and Nangarhar; the Northern Alliance allowed me to travel alone in their areas of control. I traveled widely there in 2003 with my 17-year-old daughter. If you send a bareheaded woman in to report on such a situation in Afghanistan, as we see in this news clip, it is evidence that those involved are either ignorant or heedless of the culture and the feelings of the people. Western armies and the western press are day in and day out rubbing northern European tribal prejudices down the throats of others.
The Afghans and Pakistanis do not believe in drinking alcohol at all, after several millennia of literate history they know what people who drink a lot turn into, so they ban it, and this was so especially in Afghanistan. When the Americans and ISAF took Kabul, within months they had large whore houses and bars in place to service Western “servicemen.” These recent American massacres are being explained as the rampage of a lone drunk, because everybody in the West will think that somehow makes more understandable. When AIDS stalks Asia is not allowing hookers to be brought into a place like Afghanistan from Russia and China and the Balkans a war crime?
The Afghans will eventually drive out the Westerners again. That they would fight back is why Afghanistan was chosen. The Afghans had been cut off from the outside world for nearly 200 years by Russian and British colonial borders and armies, they have never seriously attacked anyone, yet this is the forth Anglo-Afghan War. These wars are never about any legitimate concern or problem; look at Vietnam, and how little it really mattered to the USA when a Communist takeover did finally come. These wars are about careers that need action, governments that need an enemy against whom to look tough, and they are about the materials contracts that get paid whether the war is won or lost. The aid industry is an equal player, giving legitimacy to the indefensible, enabling the monsters who portray the whole adventure as one grand service project. When I took a short term contract with the UN, the first thing my boss did was tell me to shave off my beard and to stop wearing Afghan clothes.
Why would any competent and intelligent generals, with a knowledge of military history and even a smattering of experience or learning concerning the people with whom they were sent to deal, ones who were genuinely intent on subduing and winning over the Afghans, why would such men allow foreign prostitutes to be brought in, and brothels and bars to open in Kabul? That would be like doing it in Salt Lake City in the 1930s. The press has ignored all of this. That and they make a point of sending in bareheaded, young, single women reporters to go riding around in the countryside with jeeps full of men. This is very trendy and accepted behaviour in much of the United States perhaps, but both the whore house/bars and the women reporters are out of line to most Afghans. Were the maker of the news item so ignorant of Afghanistan that they did not know better or were they pushing an agenda, trying to change the Afghan people to be more like Australians?