KABUL, Afghanistan - In his last phone call home, Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father what was troubling him: From his bunk in southern Afghanistan, he could hear Afghan police officers sexually abusing boys they had brought to the base.
“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 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.”
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. – From the New York Times article: U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies
By Michael Krieger: It would be bad enough if U.S. wars overseas were merely a gigantic waste of taxpayer money. Although they certainly are that.
It would be bad enough if U.S. wars overseas resulted in the inadvertent deaths of countless innocent civilians and unimaginable humanitarian crimes. Although they certainly do.