Sunday's New York Times story by Joseph Goldstein appearing on Page A1 above the fold in Monday's print edition contains absolutely appalling news.
Goldstein's report — originally headlined and appearing in print as "U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Afghan Allies' Abuse of Boys", and currently carried online as "U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies" — asserts that "American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene — in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records," in known instances of "sexual abuse of children," particularly young boys. In excerpts following the jump, we will see that Goldstein describes that stance as a "policy" several times (bolds are mine):
“At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” the Marine’s father, Gregory Buckley Sr., recalled his son (Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr.) telling him before he was shot to death at the base in 2012. He urged his son to tell his superiors. “My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s their culture.”
Rampant sexual abuse of children has long been a problem in Afghanistan, particularly among armed commanders who dominate much of the rural landscape and can bully the population. The practice is called bacha bazi, literally “boy play,” and American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene — in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records.
... soldiers and Marines have been increasingly troubled that instead of weeding out pedophiles, the American military was arming them in some cases and placing them as the commanders of villages — and doing little when they began abusing children.
“The reason we were here is because we heard the terrible things the Taliban were doing to people, how they were taking away human rights,” said Dan Quinn, a former Special Forces captain who beat up an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave. “But we were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did — that was something village elders voiced to me.”
... The policy of instructing soldiers to ignore child sexual abuse by their Afghan allies is coming under new scrutiny, particularly as it emerges that service members like Captain Quinn have faced discipline, even career ruin, for disobeying it.
... When asked about American military policy, the spokesman for the American command in Afghanistan, Col. Brian Tribus, wrote in an email: “Generally, allegations of child sexual abuse by Afghan military or police personnel would be a matter of domestic Afghan criminal law.” He added that “there would be no express requirement that U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan report it.” An exception, he said, is when rape is being used as a weapon of war.
The American policy of nonintervention is intended to maintain good relations with the Afghan police and militia units the United States has trained to fight the Taliban. It also reflects a reluctance to impose cultural values in a country where pederasty is rife, particularly among powerful men, for whom being surrounded by young teenagers can be a mark of social status.
... the American policy of treating child sexual abuse as a cultural issue has often alienated the villages whose children are being preyed upon.
... “As far as the young boys are concerned, the Marines are allowing it to happen and so they’re guilty by association,” Mr. Buckley said. “They don’t know our Marines are sick to their stomachs."
Mr. Buckley's son Gregory was killed when one of the serially abused boys "grabbed a rifle and killed Lance Corporal Buckley and ... (two) other Marines."
Goldstein gives no indication that this "policy of treating child sexual abuse as a cultural issue" was in place before 2009, i.e., before Barack Obama became President. It's reasonable to believe that if he and the Times had hard evidence that the "policy" goes back any further, they would have presented it so they could blame the situation at least partially on despised (by the Times) former President George W. Bush.
Longtime national security reporter Bill Gertz has a resume which includes over two decades at the Washington Times and the Washington Free Beacon and six highly acclaimed books. Gertz played a key role in the late 1990s in exposing Clinton administration and Clinton donors' role in the U.S. sale of missile technology to China.
Here is the usually reserved Gertz's tweeted reaction to Goldstein's story concerning who he believes is ultimately responsible (HT Twitchy):
Another observation: In 2004, the Times placed the prison abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq on its front page for 32 consecutive days. The focus of many of those front-page reports consisted of "what did they know and when did they know it?" exercises directed at then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush, up to and including demands that Rumsfeld resign over the scandal (he offered to do so, twice; Bush refused Rumsfeld's offers).
No one has ever shown that it was top-down U.S. "policy" 11 years ago to abuse Iraqi prisoners. But, according to Goldstein and the Times, allowing the "boy play" and other sexual abuse to take place in Afghanistan clearly has been. Especially compared to Abu Ghraib, which, according to summary coverage found at the BBC, involved abusive and criminal behavior on the part of roughly three dozen U.S. military members and contractors, the current horrors seem worthy of at least an additional month of front-page Times coverage.
There's also the question of how much visibility the rest of the establishment press will give the Times report. The press couldn't get enough of the Abu Ghraib story 11 years ago. The experience-based guess here is that they'll mostly ignore the "boy play" — especially if evidence that Gertz is correct about White House knowledge and involvement begins to accumulate.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
