Good News From Afghanistan – Updated!

Chrenkoff comes through again with more good news. This time it’s Afghanistan where there are stories of a new democracy you’re likely not going to hear from the MSM. Yes, indeed, that Afghanistan. I’ll comment more after I’ve read it.

Update: I just had to highlight this section of Chrenkoff’s post for the benefit of certain of my family members who read this. Check out where this guy’s going to school! (Ha!)

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…read this truly inspirational story from “USA Today”‘s Walter Shaprio: “On a reporting trip to Afghanistan in December 2001, six weeks after the Taliban was routed, I met Jawad Sepehri Joya at a Red Cross rehabilitation facility in Kabul. Although he was just 16 and confined to a wheelchair because of polio, Jawad was not a patient. Instead, he was working at his part-time job programming computers for the Red Cross. And in near flawless English, this young man – who had never attended any school, who had been illiterate until 1998 and who had never left Kabul – earnestly confided that he wanted to go to college in America.” Jawad is now attending Earlham college in Indiana on full scholarship.

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What Martial Law Looks Like

Damn few of us in the US really know what it’s like to live in a totalitarian country with martial law in place. Chrenkoff does. 23 years ago today, he was there.

Unofficial Support From The Highest Officials

Imagine for a moment that there was a high-level government operative who, during his tenure, watched over the various departments of the government as they systematically oppressed, kidnapped, raped, tortured and killed his own fellow citizens. All this while, this operative serves as his government’s Chief Spin Officer to the rest of the world, hiding those acts from foreign eyes. When the government is toppled and the truth of all this comes out, the operative is embraced by the highest levels of one of the world’s largest religions, a religion that preaches against oppression, kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder. Can you say, “WTF?” (And no, I don’t mean “World Taekwondo Federation.”)

Well, imagine no further. This one’s real.

I’m having trouble putting into coherent words my feelings on the subject of the top echelons of the Catholic Church – my church! – dedicating their resources to helping Tariq Aziz in his war crimes trial. No, check that. They’re using my resources to help this cretin. This man who no doubt thinks it’s witty and clever to assert, “I never killed anybody by any direct act.” Very nice dodge, Mr. Aziz. Of course not – you and the others in Saddam’s circle had a lot of other people kill your victims without sullying your own hands. That doesn’t make you any less culpable for the acts. If your Christian soul was so pious as you pretend to be, you’d have used one of the several dozen international trips you went on to try to impress the world that the Hussein government was such the granters of paradise to bug the hell out and come clean about what was going on in there.

But no, you didn’t do that. And now you have the temerity to ask the Vatican to assist in your defense. That’s not the part that angers me here the most, not by a long shot. It’s the answer you got to those queries from the Vatican. They said, “sure!”

This is a huge breach of the trust of millions of Catholics around the world. Trust that the Church doesn’t side with thugs, no matter how well dressed or what church they happen to attend on Sundays. Trust that they won’t let someone slide on the lame excuse that their fingerprints aren’t actually on the knives they ordered into use. How am I and my fellow Catholics to trust in these men after all they’ve put us through this year, and now this?