First of all….kudos on getting a Beatles reference in there…..if I cannot throw some history atcha then I will get a Rock reference in……
This post is a disturbing one…..we have all heard a story or two about some action that was taken by our troops that is not too kosher….acts of savagery, etc…..and those reports I seldom report on simply because no one who was not there has no idea what happened to promote the action being reported. My belief is that if someone has not faced the decisions that must be made in combat then who are they to judge. Most Americans have no F*cking idea.
I read a report a couple of days ago and waited to see if the media would pick up on it….so far not much…..
Let me say here this is NOT about something that US Troops have done but rather something they witnessed…..sexual abuse by the Afghan army…..
“I picked him up, threw him to the ground multiple times and Charles did the same thing,” Dan Quinn, who was a U.S. Army captain at the time, told CNN. “We basically had to make sure that he fully understood that if he ever went near that boy or his mother again, there was going to be hell to pay.”
The actions of Quinn and the other soldier, Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland, against the American-backed police commander displeased their superiors in the U.S. military.
Quinn says he and Martland were relieved of their duties shortly afterward. Quinn has since left the military and Martland is now being involuntarily separated from the Army.
Would like to hear the excuse for allowing this sort of abuse to continue?
“The reason we weren’t able to step in with these local rape cases was we didn’t want to undermine the authority of the local government,” Quinn said. “We were trying to build up the local government. Us acting after the local government fails to can certainly undermine their credibility.”
The New York Times reported this week that U.S. soldiers and Marines in Afghanistan have been instructed not to intervene in the abuse of Afghan boys by U.S. allies, even in some cases in which it’s taken place on military bases.
The Pentagon denies that telling soldiers to look the other way is official practice.
“We have never had a policy in place that directs any military member, or any government personnel overseas to ignore human rights abuses,” spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said. “Any sexual abuse, no matter who the alleged perpetrator and no matter who the victim, is completely unacceptable and reprehensible.”
That my friends is called “cover your ass (CYA)”! If true then why were these two soldiers relieved of duty?
There is more denial……
“I personally have served multiple tours of duty in Afghanistan and am absolutely confident that no such theater policy has ever existed here, and certainly, no such policy has existed throughout my tenure as commander,” Gen. John Campbell wrote in a strongly worded statement released Tuesday.
These two soldiers deserve a medal for their action….not relieved of duty and basically called liars by their commanders.
But what is the source of this abuse?
Source: The Rape of Afghanistan by Justin Raimondo — Antiwar.com
While I was researching this I found another report…this one in “the Daily Beast”………
U.S. Marines preparing to go overseas are given a detailed training session about the Marine Corps’ own rules against sexual assault. But they are offered practically no guidance on what to do if they witness rape and other sexual abuses by “local nationals” in other countries, including Afghanistan, where child rape is common.A 45-minute scripted presentation given to Marines as part of their pre-deployment process doesn’t say that they shouldn’t report sexual assaults in the countries where they’re serving. But it explains that laws and norms about sexual relations vary from country to country, and that in Afghanistan in particular, sexual assault is a “cultural” issue, and not a purely legal one.The Daily Beast obtained a copy of the script for the training session, which includes a set of PowerPoint slides and instructions about what those leading the session are supposed to say on sexual abuse in other countries.
Seems to support the allegation that US Troops should just look the other way…..Then the prez of Afghanistan had to weigh into the dialog……….
Afghanistan’s president wants the world to know that he’s as outraged as anybody by the widespread practice of abusing young boys and that he’s going to do something about it. President Ashraf Ghani says the rape of boys as young as 6 is “unacceptable” and that his government will stamp it out “to the extent to which the authority of the state can be harnessed,” the New York Times reports. “Six-year-, 8-year-, 10-year-olds are raped, and I’m not going to tolerate this.” He was speaking after reports that US troops had been told to ignore the abuse of boys by their Afghan allies, reports the Times, which notes that the sexual abuse of boys was banned by the Taliban but is now once again common among powerful Afghans, including commanders in the security forces.
In a video conference with military commanders yesterday, Ghani ordered them to “recognize sexual abuse of children as one of the severest crimes and violations of human rights,” Foreign Policy reports. The US military, meanwhile, denies that troops were told not to do anything about abuse involving the Afghan forces they work with, the AP reports. Gen. John Campbell, chief of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, issued a statement saying he expects “any suspicions of sexual abuse will be immediately reported to the chain of command, regardless of who the alleged perpetrators or victims are.”
I understand the necessity for troops to observe cultural situations….but this one I am on the side of the troops that took matters into their own hands…..you want to hold someone up as a hero….then these troops are HEROES!
This is a situation that needs further investigation…..but will it get it? It needs the media to look into this as deep as possible……but will they?
What say you?
