Victims of Afghan massacre gave years of service (Medics lined up and shot in Afghanistan)

Yahoo News ^ | August 8, 2010 | Kristen Wyatt and Robert H. Reid,

[Mrs. Don-o]

KABUL, Afghanistan – One gave up a lucrative practice to give free dental care to children ... Others had devoted whole decades of their lives to helping the Afghan people through war and deprivation.

The years of service ended in a hail of bullets in a remote valley of a land that members of the medical team had learned to love.

The bodies of the 10 slain volunteers - six Americans, two Afghans, a German and a Briton - were flown Sunday back to Kabul ... friends and family bitterly rejected Taliban claims the group had tried to convert Afghans to Christianity.

[snip] "We are heartbroken by the loss of these heroic, generous people," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in Washington. She condemned the Taliban for the deaths and what she called a "transparent attempt to justify the unjustifiable by making false accusations about their activities."

The group had spent two weeks treating villagers in a remote valley in northern Afghanistan for eye diseases and other ailments before being ambushed by extremists on their way back to Kabul.

[snip]

Team leader Tom Little, an optometrist from Delmar, New York, had been working in Afghanistan for more than 30 years. He and his wife, Libby, reared three daughters in Kabul, sticking it out through the Soviet invasion of the 1980s, and the vicious civil war of the 1990s, when Afghan warlords rained rockets on the city.

[Spokesman] Nedam said the medical group had never talked of religion with Afghans.

"Their mission was humanitarian, and they went there to help people," said Nedam...

"He [Dr. Tom Little] was part and parcel of that culture," said David Evans of the Loudonville Community Church, New York, who had worked with him to deliver aid.

[RJR_fan]

Of the Taliban, and of those who enable/tolerate/permit their continued existence.

[patriot08]

You can’t help these people.
Give it up. Foolish to try.

[freekitty]

This is so sad.

[Red Boots]

If we say, “The Muslims”, speaking in general how are we different than the murderers who say “The Christians”.

Well, one is words; and the other is an actual act of murder for one... if you can't see a difference, I don't know what to tell you.

[skeeter]

We're not friends.

Grizzly man was an idiot. These people were saints. You ought to be able to see the difference.

[kenmcg]

These folks were martyred doing God’s work. God bless them and prayers that the savages who perpetrated this act are caught by their countrymen and dealt with accordingly. Wishful thinking I suppose.

[TexasRepublic]

Eph 2:8-9 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.

[gandalftb]

All foreigners going to Afghanistan are going to a land peopled by a desperate and murderous enemy to all outsiders.

By killing to most kind and generous and caring outsiders, the enemy more effectively demonstrates their cold-blooded lethality and grim determination to rule the country.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Afghanistan is a land dominated by desperate murderers of the Taliban sort and also of the warlord/opium trade/tribal sort. Some of the common people there support the murderers--- but not all.

Remember that two Afghanis were part of--- and died with --- this medical mission group. And there are many in Afghanistan who were and are friends and cooperators with the medical mission people, who helped them and were helped by them for 30 years or more.

So there are 2 sides. More than 2 sides. As always, we try to distinguish between the executioners and the victims.

[little jeremiah]

Sigh - will get to this tomorrow. Makes me want to cry without stopping for a long time, because then I think of so much other suffering as well.

[Mila]

I know that it is a term that is often used, but in my estimation these people were saints. What they were doing was totally selfless and motivated by their love for their fellow man. I hope it is some comfort to their families to know that they are now in the loving embrace of God.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Amen.

[gandalftb]

Fear or dislike of foreigners is pretty widespread, a large majority of Afghans.

The few that are welcoming, largely just want the wealth we bring.

Altruism is in very short supply. One big difference with all other nations I know of is the lack of a nationalistic spirit. There is intense loyalty to their clan and little sense of national loyalty.

Afghans overwhelmingly prefer national anarchy and sub-tribal clans.

The internal competition for wealth is the biggest societal driver in Afghanistan and is the base cause of all the conflict and murderous behavior.

In Afghanistan, all the weak are victims sooner or later.