Marine Lance Cpl. Gregory T. Buckley, 21, of Oceanside, N.Y., died Aug. 10 in Garmsir, Afghanistan, while supporting combat operations. He was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force. There is an incredibly disturbing story in the New York Times this week where soldiers have reported being told by American officials to ignore the rape and abuse of Afghan boys at a base by Afghan officers so not to interfere with a cultural practice. The boys were brought to the base to be raped as part of what Afghans call bacha bazi, literally “boy play.” Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father that he would lay on his bunk at night and listen to the screaming of the boys as they were sexually abused by Afghan officers. Buckley went to his superiors and was allegedly told not to interfere. Buckley was later shot to death by an Afghan policeman at the base in 2012.
Buckley’s father believes that his son’s effort to stop the raping of the boys was a factor in his killing.
It is a disgusting report, but should be read by every American. We should then resolve to confirm every American official who maintained this policy and guarantee that they are removed immediately from government and military service, including any Defense, Intelligence, or State officials who had knowledge of the policy and did nothing to stop it. The question is whether there will be a true and independent investigation to confirm if these accounts are true and, if so, who was responsible for this policy.
Sexual abuse of children is a rampant and open problem in Afghanistan, particularly among armed commanders. Dan Quinn, a former Special Forces captain, was disciplined after he beat up an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave. Quinn was relieved of his command after he roughed up the Afghan officer. The Army is also trying to forcibly retire Sgt. First Class Charles Martland, a Special Forces member who joined Captain Quinn in confronting the commander and is himself a Bronze Star recipient for valor for his actions during a Taliban ambush. The incident occurred when, in September 2011, an Afghan woman appeared with physical bruises on the base with her son who was also limping. She explained that he son was prized as a sex slave by Afghan officers because of his looks and that one of the Afghan police commanders in the area, Abdul Rahman, had abducted the boy and chained to his bed to be used as a sex slave. When she tried to save her son, she was beaten. Captain Quinn summoned Abdul Rahman and Rahman reportedly admitted it but laughed when told that it was unacceptable. Quinn then threw him to the ground and Rahman complained to American authorities who relieved Quinn and Martland — no doubt signaling to other Afghan officers that raping of children would be allowed.
Col. Brian Tribus, a spokesman for the military insisted: “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.”
By the way, the man involved in the killing of Buckley was an Afghan police commander named Sarwar Jan who was himself a notorious figure accused of rampant abuse and corruption. Buckley had complained that Jan has moved a large number of “tea boys” into the same barracks as the Marines to be used as sex slaves. Two weeks after Buckley sent a report on Jan’s sex slaves, one one of the older boys with Mr. Jan — around 17 years old — grabbed a rifle and killed Lance Corporal Buckley and the other Marines.
During later proceedings related to the shooting, the Marine Corps indicated that it might not allow evidence of Jan’s penchant raping boys as a “classified matter.”
Jan of course was promoted to a higher-ranking police command in the same province.
For years, many of us have criticized the continuing loss of American lives and treasure to prop up the corrupt Afghan government despite widespread abuses of children, women, and religious minorities. However, to have U.S. officials looking the other way as Afghan officials chain and abuse child sex slaves would represent a point of moral relativism that few would have thought possible for our nation. This warrants congressional investigation and, if found to be found, the termination of every official who helped maintain this policy.
Update: The Army has refused to rescind or reverse the discharging of Quinn.
Source: NY Times
Mairbair,
Actually no, Sharia law does not allow this practice. The Taliban outlawed it due to their strict adherence to Saharia law. This is a cultural practice. Once the Taliban were gone from the region, Batcha Bazi was reinstituted.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/afghanistans-choice-fanatics-or-pederasts/
“The Taliban had a deep aversion towards bacha bazi, outlawing the practice when they instituted strict nationwide sharia law. According to some accounts, including the hallmark Times article “Kandahar Comes out of the Closet” in 2002, one of the original provocations for the Taliban’s rise to power in the early 1990s was their outrage over paedophilia. Once they came to power, bacha bazi became taboo, and the men who still engaged in the practice did so in secret.”
This area of the Middle East hasn’t changed one lick since Aristotle described them as a bunch of backward goat herders.
When are we going to stop this madness?
We need to get rid of these people, all of them both Republican and Democrat and replace them with people who don’t have Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Wellesley College degrees. Those fools have ruined our country.
Just remember sharia law permits this evil. In fact as you study sharia law you realize how right Ben Carsen is when he said that sharia is not compatable with our Constitution. Anyone who claims to be a muslem should be viewed through the points of sharia. And never allowed to become president.
U.S. Army “nation building” is still going strong. Your tax dollars hard at work.
The U.S. military failed to stop construction on a $14.7 million warehouse facility in southern Afghanistan,
despite delays in the project that made it clear it likely would barely be used by coalition forces.
The U.S. Army began investigating why the military spent nearly $36 million to construct a well-appointed 64,000-square-foot headquarters
in southwestern Afghanistan that commanders in the area did not want and has never been used.
These facilities could be used by locals for the sex and drug business or maybe some ISIS hookups too. I don’t mean to give them ant ideas though.
There is some commentator on CNN named Poppy. I can see where she is coming from.
Annie,
The Taliban also punished poppy growers.
Now, the US protects the poppy fields.
More successful US intervention…
… Death, torture, maiming, violence.
Add child rape to the list of accomplishments.
… These are accomplishments, right?
Well, look at what we’ve done there…
Which is the perverted…
… The perverted ‘custom or the turning a blind eye to it?
The perversion doesn’t exist in a vacuum…
… Good men ordered to not say something.
They followed orders.
LisaN
You assist the practice by politicizing it. American liberal woman are not silent, nor are American conservative women. Complacency affects us all, especially when those in power, who can do something, choose to bow and scrape, to placate the animals that run these countries. This is not something as personally stupid as politics. This is something that should be before the World Court in the Hague, something the US, Obama, Boner, and the reset of these ‘leaders’ should be orchestrating.
Send out the word to wax the perverts. Then when the Afghanis complain, tell them to take it up at the World Court in the Hague. Let them plead their case about how their sacred customs include torturing and sexually abusing children. The place to deal with this is in the open. However, the ball has to get rolling. Secret medals and promotions for the US servicemen and women who bring home some scalps. If the US goes to war to free peoples, start with the children. If the US military can slaughter innocents by the hundreds of thousands and call it collateral damage then it surely can figure out a way to clean the scum from under the rocks in the countries they are supposed to be protecting and assisting. How about ‘Just say No’?
Cultural clashes among Muslim terrorists:
http://www.unz.com/isteve/islamist-jihadist-from-britain-complains-about-his-syrian-co-workers/
Was this a U.S. Base in Afghanistan?
This is so morally repugnant I cannot fathom it, if true.
This shows the futility of neo-Wilsonian liberal interventionism.No significant difference between W and Obama when it comes to interventionism-Obama destroyed Libya and Syria. Snowden revelations forced US officials to admit that CIA trained and supplied 10,000 anti-Assad fighters sent into Syria over the last several years.
http://youtu.be/BAhKz3y7mJk
Here’s a liberal woman speaking about women’s rights as human rights, worldwide.
http://www.cwgl.rutgers.edu/docman/coalition-building/620-legacy-of-vienna-feminism-and-human-rights/file
Legacy of Vienna: Feminism and Human Rights
And which nation within our state? I thought we had pluralism…
“However, to have U.S. officials looking the other way as Afghan officials chain and abuse child sex slaves would represent a point of moral relativism that few would have thought possible for our nation.”
The fact that jingoism like this is accepted by a “public interest” law professor is quite telling.
Issac – With all of the abuse and slave selling and killing of women and children, notice how American liberal women libbers are loudly silent?
I’m still trying to figure out what the American war on women is in the U.S.
Yet, the U.S. is the one who apologized for human rights violations. Uh huh, makes perfect sense, especially if your a liberal thinker.
Another “hands off” order. Afghan opium cultivation rose 7% in 2014. Afghanistan produces some 90 per cent of the world’s illicit opiates. Sex & drugs…..Hands off. The reasoning is, it might start another war.
So, they hate us for our freedom, right?