Militants hang 8-year-old boy in southern Afghanistan

Source: CNN

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- An 8 year-old boy was hanged by militants in Afghanistan's Helmand province after the boy's father -- a police officer in the southern city of Gereshk -- refused to comply with militants' demands to provide them with a police vehicle, officials said.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the hanging, saying "this action is not permitted in any culture or any religions," according to a statement Sunday, which provided details of the incident.

Karzai said he has ordered local authorities to root out the militants and arrest them "as soon as possible."

The boy was kidnapped Friday. It was unclear when he was killed.

Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/07/24/afghanistan.militants.hang.boy/index.html

...plus the kidnapping and killing of a child, to say, "Can we leave there now?"

I can respect someone who's a pacifist and therefore wouldn't support military action, but what I cannot respect is a knee-jerk Can we leave there now? response to a reported murder. It suggests indifference, to say nothing of a short attention span, to what's happening around the world and specifically in areas where the Taliban terrorize the population.

as opposed to areas where the US military terrorizes the population, of course.

So, is it somehow 'better' if they are terrorized by the US? Is it a kinder, gentler terror? :eyes:

...catch you saying the U.S. military "terrorize" people.

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If you want us to send an MP unit to arrest these thugs if the Afghan police and Army can't, fine. But, that's no reason for us to keep 100,000 plus troops there.

are not as heinous as hanging an 8 year old child- and yes, I'd rather be blasted to kingdom come than hung.

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Class act. You respond to the taliban hanging a child by saying the u.s is just as bad. There is no comparison between what we do and what they do. We shouldn't be there, war is hell and we need to pull out. But to even begin to compare, let alone say we do the same shit just shows what little you know.

thanks.

Thanks.

What happened was appalling. But clearly we've been there for years attempting to bring democracy and minimize the brutality of a culture that is willing to do this type of thing to their own children, and to beat and kill their women. We aren't making things better there and are sacrificing our own society and soldiers in a useless losing effort. That country has it reputation as an empire killer for a reason. It is long past time for us to leave. We can't afford it and we are FAILING.

I'm not saying I agree with you, but you've got a position based on principles, and you're willing to stand behind them.

HAHAHAHAHA, no.

I see someone's pining for the fnords.

You do realize that Karzai stole the election, right?

corrupt as it is, is preferable to the Taliban run version.

Or do you propose we police the entire world?

Can we get the FUCK OUT NOW?

we have made no difference there, and we never will. Why do we keep flushing money away in that toilet and Iraq?

no one ever thought we would. Our post-WWII military strategy is to just knock out the government, replace it with a puppet government that uses 'nation building' as a way to raise funds for their Swiss bank accounts, and the underlying problems of the population are ignored in the hopes that a ballot box will magically make them all resolve themselves.

Democracy might have worked to civilize Japan and Germany, but it is an alien concept to many of the world's cultures, including most that have been severely afflicted with Islam. Hell, Europeans had to get away from Europe to try it over here.

We have two choices: Babysit them for centuries and take loads of casualties in the process, or get the hell out of their way and let them do what comes naturally.

If I were Queen of the Universe, or even the USA, dog help us, I'd've used much of the money poured into the military machine there to build schools and medical/health care facilities, promote education, viable jobs beyond opium and banditry, etc. It is fucked up.

There are more contractors there working on infrastructure etc then there are soldiers. My sister works for a contractor there. We've spent millions building infrastructure and paying bribes and attempting to create a better place but it's like throwing money into a blackhole. We leave and yes it will remain a messed up place run by drug lords just like it is now. We left Vietnam a mess. Not that that's something anyone should be eager to repeat.

Right now were talking about cutting benefits for the most vulnerable here. Our infrastructure is crumbling. Public schools failing. We cannot afford to be in this war.

family is still such a mess.

We are the problem.

Not sure if you read the message of my post, not just the subject line, as I wrote more there.

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and it will be the norm after we have left.

It was a mess before the Soviets arrived. It's been a mess for at least 50 years. We can't afford it. We don't understand it. We can not fix it. Leave. Now. Before we fuck it up some more.

Afghanistan was a fairly prosperous, modern, socialist state before the west decided to fund the religious whackos.

The country was a war zone even before the US invaded. What makes you think anything in the US could make a difference? No other world power, including the British Empire, was able to change that region of the world.

and pacifying the TAPI pipeline route for another ten years.

:argh:

It just takes a bit of effort and an open mind. You have to assume that what you see is rational on some terms and forms part of an internally coherent system while simultaneously trying to sort out the occasional acts that are anomalous or aberrant in terms of that system. Your task is to settle on what the system is given the data--not what you think the system should be or how you, in your cultural world, view the system or the data.

What's left you assume as a hypothesis and then make predictions: Acts that violate that system should be rare and dealt with in terms of that system, and any responses made by people accepting that system must be fairly consistent and predictable.

As an American, this bothers me. Knowing that much rural thinking views things in terms of clans and in/out groups, but that ultimately honor and guilt is as much a collective as an individual affair, this makes sense. The policeman didn't do what he had an obligation to do; those under his authority, indeed his heir, were threatened; for not yielding and for not obeying his obligation to his clan and tribe and to the ummah, his guilt was collectively punished. With minor changes it's the kind of system that's worked for thousands of years in large swathes of the world, and the only way it would have survived is it provides a culture sufficiently adapted and functional to let the people bearing the culture to survive. Declaring that insane declares it irrational and pretty much predicts that by now it should have vanished by virtue of being dysfunctional.

It doesn't mean I have to think that the system and the acts are good or proper. I rather abhor them and wish that the culture upholding such a system had imploded, clearing the way for some other culture I consider less vile. But I cleanly divide between opining about the culture's worth and trying to understand what the culture is.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the hanging, saying "this action is not permitted in any culture or any religions," ...

The Mayor of 6 square blocks and a safe corridor to the airport of Kabul has spoken.

We should have gotten out of Afghanistan a long time ago, but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. We have to stay there until Raytheon and General Dynamics has made all the money there is to be made off the fiasco, and we're bankrupted, just like the Soviet Union was.

Halliburton and Xe do all the fighting, yet you and I are still on the hook for the expenses.
First rule of Privatization:
Privatize the profit, publicize the expense.

that place is so remote and surrounded by such incurable ignorance we can do nothing. we can not change the ancient tribal traditions no matter how Abysmal they may seem to us. especially when they are motivated to even commit even more horrid actions simply because we are there.

secular Pakistan is doomed to fall sooner or later, sooner because we are there. you don't have to be psychic to know the results of that.

Those who hung little boy, are nothing more than fucking animals.......

i can promise you that very few people on any side of a war will back the kidnapping and hanging of an 8year old. Wanting to fight the US and it's bitches is one thing, but killing kids is not something young foreign fighters are going to leave their home countries to join. The Taliban and other militant groups survive because they have the backing of the populace, this tragedy will only create a division- i hope.

All they have to do is to be terrified of the ones who did the hanging. Terrified people keep their "place".

... "What manner of evil monsters are these Insurgents?"... I was the first to post. I also asked, 'Am I the only one outraged by this?"... I say this here not to 'toot my own horn', but to point out that the usual non-western posters are very quick to vehemently condemn any and all ISAF killing of civilians in Afghanistan, but when it comes to things like this, or any other Muslim innocents killed by the Taliban, the condemnations are few, if any. I will say that I feel that the 'West' should leave Afghanistan ASAP (abandon is a better word as the entire enterprise was doomed from the start). I will also say that the US should immediately leave Iraq as well as pull our forces out of Europe and South Korea.

to have foreign occupiers randomly bombing people and acting as kingmakers?

Most people would rather be oppressed by their own kind than an outsider, and occupations tend to increase feelings of nationalism and unites otherwise warring factions. Look at the commies and nationalist in China in World War II.

Can you imagine something so brutal? Hanging a scared little boy? How can these people live with themselves? Is it even possible to convince yourself that an 8 year old boy is an enemy worth killing?

Even during the holocaust one of the main reasons they moved to gas chambers was so the soldiers didn't have to actually kill the people because that kind of killing changes you forever. I remember watching a whole history channel documentary on the subject. Just terrible stuff.

They don't know when he was hanged or who hanged him.

I really hope this is propaganda.