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.
Even my dogs have enough smarts to come in out of the rain.
That's why I'm a little concerned about what will happen when the Taliban is exterminated. If there's no one left but the backward nomads, there won't be any intelligent, forward-thinking Afghans left to rebuild a nation.
Afghanistan was at one time a thriving, healthy country, with education, medicine, industry. Who can replace all that now? Or maybe the ones who are left don't even want it anyway.
The jokes that Polynesians played on a gullible Margaret Meade are still fodder for misinformation in lesbo-fascist "Women's Study" courses on American Campuses--even though they've been laughed out of the park due to more rigorous scholarship.
So, not only are we bombing The Evil Taliban because they beat women, now we are bombing them because they beat kids? Why don't we send in one of the State Child Protective Services to fight them? That organization regularly kills children and destroys the lives of their parents. And they do it for peanuts.
In the meantime, does anybody know when we're going to go after those who committed the attacks of September 11th?
I wonder what an Afghani anthropologist could make of the way Americans raise their children? Hmmmmm? Chubby, illiterate, couch potatoes, MTV, early sexual activity, abortion, condoms, Little League parents rioting, and worst of all--the dreaded Soccer-Mom phenomenon.
Finally, the post was not "this is why we are bombing them." It isn't. They've been doing this for decades, perhaps centuries. Whatever. We're bombing them because of something that happened about 7 weeks ago, you may remember it, this incident in NY?
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