Seldom does news reporting bother me much, if at all, but in the past few days I've read several stories about the US soldiers and the dead Taliban and I am furious.
For those of you not in the know, there's a video that's gone viral of US Marines peeing on dead Taliban fighters.
This story says "The Taliban, who have made recent moves to talk an end to the war, described the apparent abuse as "an inhumane and savage act by the American soldiers in Afghanistan."
Really?
I don't think the words "inhumane and savage" are appropriate at all. They are ridiculous. We're talking about dead bodies. The Taliban are "inhumane and savage" to living humans.
A quick search of the terms "Taliban atrocities" turned up this article from 2001. Here are some of the things the Taliban have done, to living people:
"The Taliban killed eight boys who laughed at soldiers, burned an entire family alive, and killed 100 Afghans and hung their bodies from lamp posts to warn would-be defectors.The report also includes allegations of atrocities dating back to September 1996, when the Taliban captured Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul, castrated the country's president and killed and tortured his brother, according to the U.S. Department of Defense."
The Taliban hates women. According to this article "Women have been forced to wear head-to-toe burqas, and those stepping outside their homes without one have been beaten with whips. The Taliban have shut down schools for girls and forbidden women from working."
They seem to be determined to make everyone suffer. "The regime has banned makeup, music, dancing and other recreational activities, sometimes using executions and hand or foot amputations as punishment."
An organization called RAWA is trying to help. "RAWA represents everything that the fundamentalist Taliban regime hates. Founded in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1977 as a feminist organization, RAWA began exposing excesses committed by warring factions that arose after the collapse of the Soviet-backed regime in 1992 and then by the Taliban, which seized power in Kabul in 1996."
A 2010 Time magazine cover showed a woman whose nose and ears were cut off, thanks to the Taliban.
"Our cover image this week is powerful, shocking and disturbing. It is a portrait of Aisha, a shy 18-year-old Afghan woman who was sentenced by a Taliban commander to have her nose and ears cut off for fleeing her abusive in-laws. Aisha posed for the picture and says she wants the world to see the effect a Taliban resurgence would have on the women of Afghanistan, many of whom have flourished in the past few years."
These are living, breathing human beings who are suffering every day, from the nightmare of Taliban rule.
Those marines who peed on the dead Taliban soldiers are heroes, in my book.
