Taliban beheads 4 'US spies'

[sabra]

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1956772,00.html


Taliban beheads 4 'US spies'

Kandahar - Taliban militants beheaded four Afghans they accused of spying for the US military in southern Afghanistan, a local government official and the insurgent group said on Friday.

The beheaded corpses of the men were found on Thursday in Shajoy district of insurgency-hit Zabul province where the rebels launch almost daily attacks on US troops and government targets, the official said.

The men were kidnapped from their homes on Tuesday, local administration spokesperson Gulab Shah Alikhil said.

Two were found in one village and two in another.

[ewagner]

1. Is there any question

as to why Afghanistan is known as "The Graveyard of Empires"?

[liberalmike27]

2. We should all be aware of one thing.

Beheading is a way that they punish people in their country. It seems a gross way to do things, but it amounts to killing people, just as we do when we feel criminal acts have done here. I do not support the death penalty here, or there, but it is par for the course in the middle east. Hell, they cut off hands, feet, and other things for various crimes too. Primitive, yes, but dead is dead.

In a discussion the other night, my mom was falling for the hype on the two dead soldiers in Iraq, that were mysteriously (I can't figure this one out, why didn't they fight knowing what was going to happen, why were they out there alone?) kidnapped. She commented on how terrible they were for mutilating the bodies. I asked her what she thought happened when we dropped bombs on houses. The truth is, many of the men, women, and children that are civilians, especially the kids, are uninvolved in any sort of attacks on our citizens. Often they are coerced into the acts by the insurgents. Just the same, when our huge bombs hit, they are splattered, and it is very inhumane. One has to decide if we too are monsters for not doing things with a smaller, more organized force that might spare civilian casualties. But we enter into these events, these strikes from the sky knowing full-well that we are going to splatter little children.

We are trained by television brainwashing to view these people as unworthy victims. But they are someone's family, and many deeply care about them. The longer we stay, and do this, the more people will hate us. The extreme hatred that we cause by splattering people, and the frustration of the freedom fighters there must be tremendous, and I suppose if you look at things from their side, which we rarely do, we are just as bad as they are.

[gratuitous]

4. You make a good point

We deplore the beheadings, and rightly so. But when was the first, last or anytime in between you saw a serious discussion about the morality of American military tactics, dropping bombs on people who can't fight back, can't get away, and don't even realize that death is raining down from the sky until the bombs start exploding?

To one of your other points: I understood from the early reports (and this is always a dicey thing to trust), that the captured American soldiers had been involved in some kind of ambush or fire fight. They might have been taken prisoner while unconscious or incapacitated and unable to do anything about it. I suppose there's also a psychological aspect to it: Self-denial that anything truly bad is going to happen to oneself. Also, if I'm alive, I might still figure a way to get out of this. So I'll allow myself to be taken prisoner now, but I'll have a chance later to escape or turn the tables on my captors.

[Yupster]

7. I also deplore the beheadings

of the school teachers and principals in southern Thailandthat the local Muslim militants are practicing. It's just their way of killing anyone they don't agree with.

Also, an Iraqi farmer supposedly said he saw the two soldiers being led away which assumes they were conscious. I agree that every American soldier should know they will be tortured and have their heads sawed off should they be captured. I would sure think they'd know that by now.

However I understand the psychological thing you mention. One of the most horrible crimes I've ever read about was the so called "Witchita Massacre," where two brothers broke into a home where five college friends were staying. The brothers never saw any of the five before.

They ordered the five (2 women, three men all in their 20's) to strip maked and go into a closet. Then one at a time brought them out to be sexually assaulted and beaten with a golf club. Then they were brought out two at a time to perform whatever sex acts the brothers ordered.

Then one at a time they were driven to ATM's where their bank accounts were emptied. Then they were stuffed into the trunk of their car, driven to a snowy high school football field and ordered to kneel down in a row still naked. Then one brother executed each one with a shot to the back of the head.

One woman miraculously survived as the bullet glanced off a metal broach in her hair. It fractured her skull but didn't enter it. She regained consciousness, and crawled to a home where she got help.

The two brothers are on death row.

The amazing part to me is that the five never did anything to resist. They were completely compliant. Even lined up on their knees in the snow, when the first shot was fired and the first man fell over spouting blood from his head, the other four just remained in line waiting to be shot. The survivor said one man begged but didn't move. The others remained silent.

I hardly ever believe in the death penalty, but I sure do for these two brothers.

Just as one last aside. The surviving woman was given herpes by one of the brothers.

[Igel]

8. There's a lot of that.

Some has different probable explanations.

The guy who saw the soldiers being led away either agreed with what would happen, or was afraid he'd experience true freedom. Or he was merely humiliated, and, well, for some people the right to be free from humiliation trumps another's right to life.

The 5 that were humiliated, tortured, and killed were hopeful that if they complied, they'd be left to live. Fools; they assumed that everybody was like them, and couldn't understand otherwise. Better to die trying to wound the bastards than expect mercy from pigs.

But we also have the Jew that was killed in Paris last winter while his kidnappers/torturers/murderers' neighbors listened to his cries for help. Either they simply didn't care, or they were afraid both to talk to the torturers, or afraid of the torturers. The quotes--they were fairly extensive--showed no remorse. Just 'but poor us, what could *we* do?'

It's not just their way of killing people they disagree with in Thailand. It's their way of killing people they disagree with for selected reasons, for a decided purpose. Many of the people these poor benighted fascist murderers kill die for little more than Jews died for in Germany. Slight differences in power that threaten a belief or ideology, disagreements in religion, mere consumption of oxygen best reserved for better people. Who go around murdering, natch. But the goal is to be shifted to a country where the 'proper' order of things is preserved; most of the dead are just to serve 'ethnic' cleansing, to ensure proper submission to an improved local hierarchy, or as pawns to get others to go away so that the correct hierarchy may be put in place.

[frylock]

10. beheading folks from the safety of an f-16 is far more humane

</sarc>

[daleo]

11. Yes, excellent points

We in the west are squeamish about close up killing but relatively unbothered (at a visceral level) by explosions, shootings, and the like done from far off. Except on 911, when the horror of explosions and collapsing buildings came home.

[leftchick]

3. this can not be

the chimp regularly says "the Taliban are gone"!

[Mz Pip]

5. Too bad BushCo cut and ran from Afghanistan

Looks the Taliban is back and as nasty as ever.

Mz Pip
:dem:

[Yupster]

6. As long as they have a haven in Pakistan to retreat to

they'll always be around.

Pretty standard guerrilla operations. Can't beat them as long as they have a haven.

[Igel]

9. Yes.

And as long as the trainers are allowed to train with impunity on both sides of the border, the toadstools will constantly return.

They're called Disciples for a reason. No docents, no disciples.

[nealmhughes]

12. Why did we not declare war on al Qaeda and the Taliban?

Then we wouldn't be farting around in Iraq. The US had every right to declare war on al Qaeda and then give the Taliban conditions they could not stomach and then get the job done. If that is possible in Afghanistan/NWF Pakistan...

[raysr]

13. We don't need no

stinking "Geneva Convention", right "Georgie????!"