By BEN STODDARD
As a group, the Taliban might be the biggest hypocrites on Earth.
On March 10, an American soldier was accused of killing 16 Afghanistan civilians in a rampage. He’s since been detained and flown out of Afghanistan for a trial. This was met by Afghan protests; that’s fully understandable. Americans and Afghans are both tiring of this war, which is also understandable. What isn’t understandable is the response of the Taliban.
They said the “American Savages” committed this “blood-soaked crime.” Sorry, but how many Afghanistan civilians have the Taliban killed over the last 10 years in suicide bombings?
You can’t blame an entire country for the actions of one soldier after all the people you’ve killed as an organization. The sheer level of hypocrisy is astronomical. It’s as if Hitler declared war on Russia because one Jewish Russian detained 16 German soldiers, didn’t give them any food and eventually gassed them.
Even the Taliban’s counterattack on March 16, which happened at the site of the massacre, killed an Afghan soldier and injured a civilian and two more Afghan soldiers.
Is this what they call revenge?
This is not to say that all Muslims are like the Taliban. Most of them are as peaceful as any regular person. The Taliban taint their image the same way that all extremists and/or fundamentalists taint their own religion’s image.
The people of Afghanistan have plenty of good reasons to want the United States’ armed forces out of their country. The military has tortured prisoners, recently burned the Qur’an, performed numerous raids and plenty more. The Qur’an burning in particular led to a protest that killed 30 people.
Should the United States pull out of Afghanistan sooner? After the recent controversies they probably should. Civilians of Afghanistan are even more upset than before. Many citizens of the United States are growing tired of all this as well. But the Taliban have no right to call anyone savages after all the pain and death they’ve caused over the years.
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