Assholes 10, Benevolent Heroes 0

[lame54]

http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/unarmed-team-doctors-executed-afghanistan

Unarmed Medical Team Executed in Afghanistan
By karoli Monday Aug 09, 2010 12:00pm

A group of ten medical professionals chose to go there anyway, bringing eyeglasses and toothbrushes to the remote villagers for the very first time. On their way back, they were ambushed by the Taliban and executed. The Taliban's excuse? They claimed that they were preaching Christianity and trying to convert them.

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.

Dan Terry, 64, was another long Afghan veteran. A fluent Dari language speaker like his friend Little, Terry first came to Afghanistan in 1971 and returned to live here in 1980 with his wife, rearing three daughters while working with impoverished ethnic groups.

Dr. Thomas Grams, 51, quit his dental practice in Durango, Colorado, four years ago to work full-time giving poor children free dental care in Afghanistan and Nepal

Dr. Karen Woo, 36, the lone Briton among the dead, gave up her job with a private clinic in London to work in Afghanistan.

Another victim, Glen Lapp, 40, a trained nurse from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, had come to Afghanistan in 2008 for a limited assignment but decided to stay, serving as an executive assistant at IAM and manager of its provincial eye care program, according to the Mennonite Central Committee, a relief group based in Akron, Pennsylvania.

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. Afghanistan is eternally stuck in the dark ages, Nothing can help the place.

[Chan790]

7. Horseshit. n/m

[kestrel91316]

2. They murdered MENNONITES???? That takes a special kind of evil.

Those people are saints.

[gratuitous]

4. Will we take advantage of this?

As much as I mourn my brothers and sisters, unarmed and truly paying the ultimate price for their country, I believe these folks would have gladly traded their lives for a chance at peace in Afghanistan. Right this minute, a lot of people are contemplating the special brand of cowardice it takes to execute unarmed people and then lie about it by branding them as spies. This could be a moment the United States seizes to turn a lot of people against the Taliban.

Instead, we'll probably take a figurative piss on their grave, and use this as an excuse for even more violence and retribution carried out in the names of some actual peacemakers.

[SoCalDem]

3. It's a religious war

their islamic soldiers are killing our christian soldiers..

They don't WANT outside intervention

Their weird interpretation of Islam prefers death to life..

There are not enough do-gooders in the world to stop the carnage.

While I admire the intentions of the people who went there to help, I wish they had turned their attention to the many impoverished who live here:(

[tom_paine]

5. The total score for all of human history is Assholes 9,741,343,210,498; Benevolent Heroes 15

and we can argue about the 15.

[lame54]

6. 9,741,343,210,498 and climbing

[lame54]

8. .

[another saigon]

9. the hypocrisy of this country is astounding

US Response:

<snip>

Hillary Clinton's statement:

"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."


I bet a lot of Afghans and Pakistanis are "heartbroken" when we drop bombs on them and their loved ones then call them terrorist/insurgent/militant etc.

I believe these kind doctors would still be alive if the US were not hell bent on an Afghan Occupation.

RIP. :(