THE MORAL IMPERATIVE FOR STOPPING RADICAL ISLAM
- AUGUST 8, 2010
The Taliban Method
The murder of 10 aid workers in Afghanistan reveals the brutal nature of our enemy.
The barbarity of Islamic extremists has become a commonplace event, but the apparent murder last week of 10 aid workers in Afghanistan, including six Americans, is especially notable as an education in the nature of our enemy.
The doctors, nurses and technicians were on an expedition to deliver eye care in the remote northern reaches of Afghanistan when, according to an Afghan eyewitness who escaped, they were lined up by men in red beards and summarily executed with AK-47s. Led by American doctor Tom Little, of Delmar, New York, the group had been working for the International Assistance Mission, a Christian outfit that has operated in Afghanistan since 1966 but does no proselytizing.
The 10 were unarmed and had turned down an offer of an Afghan military escort on grounds that they had long been able to do their charity work without incident. A Taliban spokesman took credit for the murders, saying the group was discovered with a Bible and that “the punishment for spying is death.”
The murders are a window on the threat that thousands of Afghans face every day if they dare to cooperate with the Afghan government. The assassinations and disfigurements (cutting off ears or arms) are a war tactic, designed to make it harder for the government to collect intelligence and deliver services to win over the population. The attacks on aid workers are likewise intended to isolate Afghans from Western assistance that could improve their lives.
In the logic of today’s antiwar pessimism, the aid-worker murders are being portrayed as a sign of how badly the war is going. But they are more significant for revealing the Taliban method and the fate that will befall our Afghan allies if we let the Islamists once again overrun the country. Tom Little had worked in Afghanistan for decades, and the best way to honor him and his colleagues is to leave behind a country in which Taliban brutality can’t prevail.
The main U.S. strategic purpose in this war is self-defense in denying an al Qaeda sanctuary. But our cause also includes the moral imperative of preventing Islamic radicals from a victory that would give them rein to maim and murder thousands of innocents.
