The Use and Abuse of Culture (and Children): The Human Terrain System’s Rationalization of Pedophilia in Afghanistan.

By DAVID PRICE – ROBERTO J. GONZÁLEZ

OCTOBER 9, 2015

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/09/the-use-and-abuse-of-culture-and-children-the-human-terrain-systems-rationalization-of-pedophilia-in-afghanistan/

"Over the past eight years, news reports gradually revealed that Afghan soldiers and police officers allied with US military forces are sexually abusing young boys held against their will—sometimes on US military bases. Last month, Joseph Goldstein (2015) published a front page story in the New York Times under the headline “US Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies,” which opened with the disturbing story of Lance Corporal Gregory Buckley Jr., who was fatally shot along with two other Marines in 2012. Buckley was killed after he raised concerns about the American military’s tolerance of child sexual abuse practiced by Afghan police officers on the base where he was stationed in southern Afghanistan. Buckley’s father told the Times that “my son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s their culture.”

The Times story provides the now standard boilerplate narrative that adult men having sex with young boys–some as young as twelve years old–exemplify a culture complex known as bacha bazi, or “boy play.” But it also includes vignettes of US soldiers walking into rooms of Afghan men bedded with young boys, a young teenage girl raped by a militia commander while working in the fields, and the story of a former Special Forces Captain, Dan Quinn, who was disciplined after beating an Afghan militia commander who was “keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave” (Goldstein 2015). The article recounts a number of harsh disciplinary actions taken against other US soldiers and Marines who attempted to stop such abusive practices.

The military’s position is that these are local cultural practices, like differences in dress, diet, or musical preferences, and American forces should look the other way and not interfere with these cultural differences. According to a recent report by Shane Harris (2015), Marines are offered little direction if they witness rape or other forms of sexual abuse by local people in other countries. Harris obtained a copy of training materials in which sexual assault is explicitly described as a “cultural” phenomenon in Afghanistan."

Please read the remainder of the article at:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/09/the-use-and-abuse-of-culture-and-children-the-human-terrain-systems-rationalization-of-pedophilia-in-afghanistan/

Commentary by Greg Krasovsky on a related article: http://countercurrentnews.com/2015/09/marines-forced-to-retire/# 

"Buckley, Quinn and Martland are heroes for refusing to ignore child abuse and rape.

Their colleagues - fellow soldiers and Marines - who looked the other way (just following orders!) are the ones who dishonored their uniforms and violated a true warrior's code of conduct and honor.

If you're a real man of honor and see a crime being committed, especially a war crime against children, then you have no choice but to intervene, even if at risk to yourself or against your comrades at arms and so-called allies.

Otherwise, you're no better than the perpetrators who you've allowed to harm an innocent man, woman or child.

My heart goes out to the poor & innocent people of Afghanistan who've endured so much death, pain and suffering at the hands of colonial powers and foreign invaders & occupiers over the centuries."