Posted on 11/05/2001 1:09:17 PM PST by Anamensis
The following is an excerpt from Kurtz's most recent column in National Review. These are the Pashtun, the tribe that makes up the Taliban:
Charles Lindholm, an anthropologist at Boston University, has written an important but little-known account of Pashtun life in Northern Pakistan (which is all but indistinguishable from Pashtun life in Afghanistan). In Generosity and Jealousy, Lindholm describes the rearing of Pashtun boys and girls — particularly boys — and the picture Lindholm paints will surprise, puzzle, and distress most Americans.
The Pashtun unhesitatingly beat their children — slapping them hard across the face simply for stumbling or bumping into something. For coming home late, spilling tea, or for almost any other reason, a Pashtun child may find himself tied up and hung from the rafters of the house. Not only do adults see nothing wrong with publicly beating a child, they freely show pleasure in doing so. Children are encouraged to beat each other as well. Lindholm gives the example of a six-year-old girl who spilled a bowl of curd. Her father punished her by making her do deep-knee bends while holding her ears until she collapsed. "He then asked her elder siblings to kick her, which they did with gusto." The story itself was told to Lindholm with pride and glee, much as are stories of Pashtun wife beating (and by the way, Pashtun wives give almost as good as they get).
It might seem odd to mete out such severe punishments for stumbling or for dropping some food. But Pashtuns don't sanction behaviors that might disturb an American — stealing from outsiders, lying, or fighting. On the contrary, a boy who steals a toy from his uncle's house might find his own father helping him to pull off the theft. For the Pashtun, the world is filled with deceit, and one must learn to fend for oneself, with only immediate family immune from betrayal (and sometimes not even them). What is odious to a Pashtun is not theft, or lying, or fighting, but weakness, carelessness, and clumsiness — anything which diminishes an individual's power and self-command.
Boys roam in groups in which they constantly jockey for power and learn to fight. A boy running to his family when he's been beaten by a playmate may be beaten again by his father for his weakness. Mothers make no effort to see that playthings are shared. On the contrary, the stronger children will be encouraged to take from the weaker. Siblings regularly betray each other's misdeeds to their parents and are rewarded by being allowed to beat the miscreant. Children lie and pass blame without qualm. "Survival of the fittest," says Lindholm.
Older children are generally left to themselves. They huddle and shiver in the rain, since no one tells them to change into dry clothes. In summer the dirt and heat cause boils and running sores, which the children accept as of a piece with the ordinary depredations of life. In effect, Pashtun children are left to toughen themselves up, so as to endure without complaint the stresses of existence in a hostile and dangerous world. They learn that all men are equal — equally free to dominate their weaker fellows. The Pashtun therefore cultivate a fierce and defiant independence, a thirst for dominance, and a reluctant but occasionally necessary willingness to acknowledge a stronger hand.
Have you seen something linking the "Stone Age" Taliban to the attacks carried out on September 11th? I've seem plenty of bloody footprints leading up to the palaces of Saudi oil shieks, to firing ranges in Wales, to mosques in London, Germany and the United States, to college campuses in the USA and other Western Countries, to car dealerships in Egypt, but NONE to the, now smokey, holes of Afghanistan.
You say they won't "cough up" Osama? Well, our government wouldn't cough up the Shah either; and the Iranian government had quite a list of horrors for which they wanted to try him too. Were they justified in doing what they did to punish us for our intransigence in your opinion?
One certainly doesn't feed them, does one? I have some ideas of what we should do to them, but I suspect that my fellow FReepers aren't ready (yet) for my views....
Right, just ask the Russians. The last thing we need is a large ground presence in Afghanistan -- that could set against us not only Pushtuns but also Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazara, Kabulwallahs, and those strange pale, blue-eyed folks of Nuristan. We need to keep in mind our expressed objectives: Destroy OBL and al Qaeda root and branch, and punish the Taliban for supporting and harboring the terrorists. We need to keep in mind what our objectives are not: Reforming Afghanistan (i.e., making them like Americans), deciding the way their nation, government, and cultures will operate, and developing the country (so it looks more like America, in which the people can be more comfortable after they are reformed). Our advantage in achieving our objectives in that country is our technology. Use it incrementally -- as we seem to be intent on doing -- and this event will last longer than our political will. Use it quickly and with overwhelming violence in conjunction with repeated company and battalion size insertions in ways that feature our firepower and the Pushtun will soon be asking himself and his cousin why they are bleeding for those Saudis, Egyptians, and Algerians living in caves over there in the next valley.
No, these are our allies, too...
I've listened to Afghan women discuss that they were forced to leave their homelands if they wanted to work and earn a living. I've heard Afghan women say that women are denied medical care because only a woman can touch them and yet no women are allowed to work as doctors. And they can be whipped for showing an ankle or beaten if they are seen without a burka. This is very much a sick society, it doesn't need "demonization" it just is demonic. I believe this is how the children of the Taliban are raised. We also can't forget the Taliban is using the children as shields to protect a filthy rich Arab who has done nothing for them, they will allow them all to suffer and die because for the acts of bin Laden.
Muslims in general seem very predisposed to using children as human shields. You see it in the Palestinians all the time who will send out very young children to throw rocks at soldiers with guns. Any "religion" or whatever you call it, that would do such a thing is worse than barbaric. Their own children are nothing but pawns to use in their dirty wars and terrorist acts.
My dear Fitz, may I suggest that you audit a "Wimmyn's Study" course offered by any "elite" US university? You will be pleased, I'm sure, to hear the hair-raising tales of what it's like--and what it has always been like-- to be a woman in America.
I'm sure the Marxist Afghan Women's Project is extremely pleased to see the Great Dummy doing their dirty work for them.
I'd much rather be The Great Satan than The Great Dummy any day.....
There's a difference between someone hiding in our country after the fact and someone continuing to operate and orchestrate terrorism WHILE hiding in another country, wouldn't you say?
As for the "demonization" accusation, this was not intended (by the anthropologist at least) to demonize the Afghanis, it was offered by Kurtz as an explanation for why they are so tough and a warning about what we are up against.
I had to take a course like that. And you know what? No matter how much they tried to make the housewife of the 50s look like a victim, (poor thing, trapped in the home, bored, watching tv) no matter how hair-raising they tried to make the consequences of rebellion look (dirty looks, disrespect, men sneering at them, lower wages) the words "machine gun" and "death penalty" and "flogging" just never come up. Even Gloria Steinem, try though she might, was unable to make the torture of high-heeled shoes comparable to having your hand chopped right off.
You're right, there will always be the second guessers, no matter how Afghanistan turns out. That's another reason to do what's good for us, not for Afghanistan. I believe what's good for us is to limit our objectives to the destruction of OBL and al Qaeda and the punishing of the Taliban for supporting and harboring them. Then we must move on to the next target, for clearly OBL is not the only -- or even the most dangerous -- terrorist in that part of the world. Like it or not, we are limited in what we can accomplish by "political will" and "public opinion."
You must have missed the delightful series of lectures by Alice Walker about the prevalence of clitorectomy in the American South, when masses of American women had their little pinkies chopped off because Southern men couldn't fulfill their needs.
Well, I understand that a person can't sit in on every lecture.....
I expect to see Shoeless George, flanked by several of these hearty women, waving a copy of Das Kapital and saying: "In my heart I know that nobody could really mean all these harsh, overly-complicated things. Communism is a peaceful philosophy that was perverted by a tiny group of fanatics. Well, we're going to win their philosophy back for them even as we smoke Evil and Terrorism out of their holes....."
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