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Afghanistan's dirty little secret

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by YankeeFan, Aug 31, 2010.

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  1. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    Joel Brinkley, the former Pulitzer Prize winning correspondent for the New York Times takes a look at Afghanistan's dirty little secret.


     
  2. Smash Williams

    Smash Williams Well-Known Member

    There was a fabulous, if horrifying, documentary on either PBS or the Smithsonian Channel a year or two ago.
     
  3. Boomer7

    Boomer7 Active Member

    This practice isn't confined to Afghanistan. I remember reading something similar about Pakistan years ago.
     
  4. poindexter

    poindexter Well-Known Member

    That sounds like an awesome good time.
     
  5. Big Circus

    Big Circus Well-Known Member

    It's awful, but after reading those quotes, all I can think of is the South Park episode where Cartman joins NAMBLA. "I may have found the dream boy of the decade!"
     
  6. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    It's awful. It's been going on for centuries. But, though it's known to anyone who's spent time there, it's unknown to most people in the West.

    Why?
     
  7. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    Not unknown to anyone who read The Kite Runner.
     
  8. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    I just threw up a bit in my mouth reading that. We need to send Jenna Laine over there to expose the whole thing.
     
  9. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    Exactly. Though the most "uncomfortable" passage involves an only slightly older boy, not a grown man. (And he was only half Pashtun -- though he certainly identified with his Pashtun side.)
     
  10. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    You're bad. Would you have even remembered to make that reference if her name hadn't come up again the other day?
     
  11. Smash Williams

    Smash Williams Well-Known Member

    Because we've only had the sort of lightning-fast communication that makes proving something like this for the past 20-40 years?

    Because this happens in mostly exceedingly isolated areas of the world?

    Because we don't know everything that's going on in our own backyard? And most people don't care about anything beyond that?

    There are a million reasons, all of them true. And there is some uncomfortable truth to the idea that imposing one society's morals on another is the worst type of colonialism. People in other parts of the world find some thing we allow equally horrifying.

    Now personally, I find the entire practice absolutely horrific (particularly because many of the boys end up dead and don't know what they're getting in to when originally recruited or sold by their families). But I also get squeamish about applying my values to people from other societies. After all, the age of consent is arbitrary and varies by as much as 4-6 years between states. All these things we deem absolutely wrong are really just lines in the sand and not an absolute written on the earth's core or on our forearms.
     
  12. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    It took you a while, but you got to the answer.

    And I hate to say it, but some practices are so inhumane, that they need to be put to end. And we should feel no shame in pointing out how barbaric some "traditions" are.

    This is not Magellan or Columbus trying to convert "savages". This is accepted, systematic, generational rape of young boys. Any civilized society should condemn it. Should work to end it. And should not be intimidated by tribal or Islamic "customs".

    I'm always reminded by how Major General Charles Napier dealt with Hindu "custom":


    "You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."


    Custom ended.
     
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