In one of your editorials ("Odd Logic in Afghanistan," March 24), you label the Taliban leadership of Afghanistan as "goofy" and their government as "weird" for having ordered the sacrifice of 100 cows as omen for the destruction of ancient Buddha statues. Few people in the world, including hundreds of millions of devout Muslims who respect other religions, including Buddhism, would disagree with you on this. You, indeed, are right.
Yet, you miss some important points.
You conveniently omit the larger picture -- the one behind the making of the hate-mongering Taliban. This creature did not appear overnight on the world stage nor unassisted by a highly skilled, yet malicious, doctor. I distinctly remember during my days at BYU, back in 1987, when by chance one evening, I happened to watch a PBS documentary on the Mujahedeen of Afghanistan, who were then fighting the Soviet army. (Much of today's Taliban leadership was once part of the overall Mujahedeen, who managed to force the Soviets out of Afghanistan in 1989.) The documentary showed how one particular Mujahedeen batallion had among them an apparently teen-age Russian soldier, captured in one of their offenses. The "freedom fighters" -- as then President Ronald Reagan and much of America were calling the Mujahedeen -- had, after capturing the poor Russian lad, shot his kneecaps as a means to prevent his escape, thus having permanently crippled the young man. They had then put a leash on his neck and dragged him about as they pleased. The reason he was not executed, one "freedom fighter" said, was that he had yet to confess being a Russian. You see, the young man was so traumatized that he had lost his ability to speak. Upon his confession, he was to be promptly killed.
You are rather mistaken by only criticizing the Taliban and irresponsible by not reporting the whole picture behind the grizzly events in Afghanistan. You omit the fact that American tax money to the tune or more than $2 billion supported the once "freedom-loving" thugs, some of whom are now Taliban thugs. Our CIA trained these people in the 1980s and readily supplied them with guns and money, simply because they were fighting our nemesis, the Soviets. Long before the Taliban decided to destroy ancient Buddhas, the CIA assisted their forerunners by providing conditions for a free reign to kill, maim, destroy, trade in heroin and propagate a new form of religious fundamentalism -- one which the far majority of devout Muslims worldwide detest. In their zeal to defeat the Soviets, Ronald Reagan and the CIA even accommodated the joining of thousands of non-Afghan anti-communist religious zealots from around the world. Among these was the now infamous Osama bin Laden and others implicated in terrorist activities against America.
Based on a recent article by The New York Times, some of the foreign terrorists involved in killing Americans by a massive explosion in the World Trade Center in New York City had their multi-entry American visas issued to them by CIA agents, who several years earlier had encouraged them to propagate anti-Soviet hatred among American Muslims. You merely point the finger and call the Taliban "goofy" and "weird" -- which they are -- whereas in light of America's shortsighted, and based on the outcome of its actions, criminal operations in Afghanistan, the real weirdoes are none other than Washington policy-makers. The goofballs are we, the people who voted them in office.