Living With Conscience Absent : See No Evil

"'At night we can hear them screaming, but we're not allowed to do anything about it'."
"My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it's their culture."
Gregory Buckley Sr.

"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."
"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."
Dan Quinn, former U.S. Special Forces captain

"Generally allegations of child sexual abuse by Afghan military or police personnel would be a matter of domestic Afghan criminal law."
"There would be no express requirement that U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan report it [other than when rape is used as a weapon of war]."
Col. Brian Tribus, spokesman, U.S. command in Afghanistan

Lucas Jackson -- Reuters

Dan Quinn, in his official status as a Special Forces captain, beat up a U.S.-backed Afghan militia commander. He took particular moral umbrage at the fact that the Afghan military officer kept a boy chained to his bed to service him as a sex slave. American soldiers, however, were given express instructions not to intervene, to ignore abuse by Afghan allies against children.

People like Quinn who ignored those orders faced discipline for their disobedience. The army relieved Quinn of his command after the beating he administered to an ally. He was pulled from Afghanistan and has since left the military. The situation is not forgotten; years later the Army is busy forcibly retiring St. 1st Class Charles Martland, a Special Forces member who had partnered with Quinn in disciplining the Afghan commander.

"The army contends that Martland and others should have looked the other way [a contention that I believe is nonsense]", stated Rep. Duncan Hunter, writing to the Pentagon's inspector general,  hoping to be able to stave off Martland's forced departure from the military. The United States remains invested in its conflict with the Taliban.

Lucas Jackson --Reuters

While American troops are no longer actively engaged in conflict in Afghanistan, U.S. combat trainers are actively engaged in training missions for the Afghan police and military. And as such, see it as a requirement that good relations be maintained through non-interference with Afghan 'customs'. That such customs include pederasty is unfortunate, but since it is a practise among the cultured and the powerful, interfering is forbidden.

As a symbol of the cultural and social advancement of an ancient Muslim fundamentalist society, social values include bacha bazi, interpreted as "boy play". The U.S. military is complicit in this abuse of young boys, overlooking the obvious pathology of pedophilia to disregard Afghan soldiers abusing children even on their military bases.

The American military arms and trains these pedophiles, placing them as commanders of villages  where the village children are then vulnerable to sexual abuse. Although members of the U.S. military may be troubled at the prevalence of this social psychopathy, they have been taught to look away and ease their consciences by telling themselves it is the custom, as barbaric as it may be.

Of a people whose religious devotions acts as no restraint.

"The bigger picture was fighting the Taliban", said a former Marine lance corporal. "It wasn't to stop molestation." The same man recalled the day he entered a room on a base to see three or four men lying on the floor with children among them: "I'm not a hundred percent sure what was happening under the sheet, but I have a pretty good idea of what was going on", he commented.

Of course part of the purpose of being there in Afghanistan was purported to be to help the country civilize itself, to ease the misogynistic burden of women, and the abuse of children. To build health clinics and schools, to teach Afghans the precepts of human rights and democratic action, to help train women in occupations denied them, to advance the prospects of a people anxious to forge ahead to the future. To win 'hearts and minds'.

Lucas Jackson -- Reuters