{"id":6693,"date":"2015-09-21T10:10:10","date_gmt":"2015-09-21T15:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/?p=6693"},"modified":"2015-09-21T10:10:10","modified_gmt":"2015-09-21T15:10:10","slug":"if-you-replace-devils-with-devils-you-get-hell-on-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/2015\/09\/if-you-replace-devils-with-devils-you-get-hell-on-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"If You Replace Devils with Devils, You Get Hell on Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"KLuceNYTimes\"<\/a>(Photo property of Kirsten Luce<\/a> for The New York Times<\/em>)<\/p>\n

I generally use this space to share stories of people who light a candle rather than curse the darkness, but today I\u2019m highlighting a level of darkness that\u2019s screaming for some light. This horrific story was revealed in a New York Times article by Joseph Goldstein, with the headline: U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies.<\/a><\/p>\n

Here is the article\u2019s opening:<\/p>\n

KABUL, Afghanistan \u2014 In his last phone call home, Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father what was troubling him: From his bunk in southern Afghanistan, he could hear Afghan police officers sexually abusing boys they had brought to the base.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt night we can hear them screaming, but we\u2019re not allowed to do anything about it,\u201d the Marine\u2019s father, Gregory Buckley Sr., recalled his son telling him before he was shot to death at the base in 2012. He urged his son to tell his superiors. \u201cMy son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it\u2019s their culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rampant sexual abuse of children has long been a problem in Afghanistan, particularly among armed commanders who dominate much of the rural landscape and can bully the population. The practice is called bacha bazi, literally \u201cboy play,\u201d and American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene \u2014 in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records.<\/p>\n

The policy has endured as American forces have recruited and organized Afghan militias to help hold territory against the Taliban. But soldiers and Marines have been increasingly troubled that instead of weeding out pedophiles, the American military was arming them in some cases and placing them as the commanders of villages \u2014 and doing little when they began abusing children.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason we were here is because we heard the terrible things the Taliban were doing to people, how they were taking away human rights,\u201d said Dan Quinn, a former Special Forces captain who beat up an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave. \u201cBut we were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did \u2014 that was something village elders voiced to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The policy of instructing soldiers to ignore child sexual abuse by their Afghan allies is coming under new scrutiny, particularly as it emerges that service members like Captain Quinn have faced discipline, even career ruin, for disobeying it.<\/p>\n

After the beating, the Army relieved Captain Quinn of his command and pulled him from Afghanistan. He has since left the military.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest.<\/a> It gets worse. Captain Quinn sounds like he deserves a medal for standing up for the voiceless and powerless victims he encountered. That should, after all, be part of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. It doesn\u2019t make sense to replace the Taliban with other leaders who are just as bad or even worse in some ways. If you replace devils with devils, you just wind up with hell on earth.<\/p>\n

Reporter Goldstein should be applauded for bringing this story to light so the American media and the American people can pressure our government and military to change their way of doing business with the Afghans. The village elders and average citizens whose children are being abused strongly oppose what\u2019s going on, so their principles should carry serious weight. <\/p>\n

No doubt there aren\u2019t any easy solutions here, but the United States should not be complicit in enabling or ignoring the rape of children. That much is clear.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Photo property of Kirsten Luce for The New York Times) I generally use this space to share stories of people who light a candle rather than curse the darkness, but today I\u2019m highlighting a level of darkness that\u2019s screaming for some light. This horrific story was revealed in a New York Times article by Joseph […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":488,"featured_media":6694,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,52,46,38],"tags":[120,114],"class_list":["post-6693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-events-2","category-media","category-military","category-pro-life-2","tag-media","tag-military"],"yoast_head":"\nIf You Replace Devils with Devils, You Get Hell on Earth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"(Photo property of Kirsten Luce for The New York Times) I generally use this space to share stories of people who light a candle rather than curse the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/2015\/09\/if-you-replace-devils-with-devils-you-get-hell-on-earth\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"If You Replace Devils with Devils, You Get Hell on Earth\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"(Photo property of Kirsten Luce for The New York Times) I generally use this space to share stories of people who light a candle rather than curse the\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/2015\/09\/if-you-replace-devils-with-devils-you-get-hell-on-earth\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Christopher Closeup\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-09-21T15:10:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/121\/2015\/09\/KLuceNYTimes.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"675\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"464\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Tony Rossi\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Tony Rossi\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/2015\/09\/if-you-replace-devils-with-devils-you-get-hell-on-earth\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/2015\/09\/if-you-replace-devils-with-devils-you-get-hell-on-earth\/\",\"name\":\"If You Replace Devils with Devils, You Get Hell on Earth\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2015-09-21T15:10:10+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-09-21T15:10:10+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/#\/schema\/person\/9215d33862959dfe2334a97a802ebf1d\"},\"description\":\"(Photo property of Kirsten Luce for The New York Times) I generally use this space to share stories of people who light a candle rather than curse the\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/2015\/09\/if-you-replace-devils-with-devils-you-get-hell-on-earth\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/2015\/09\/if-you-replace-devils-with-devils-you-get-hell-on-earth\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/2015\/09\/if-you-replace-devils-with-devils-you-get-hell-on-earth\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"If You Replace Devils with Devils, You Get Hell on Earth\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/\",\"name\":\"Christopher Closeup\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/#\/schema\/person\/9215d33862959dfe2334a97a802ebf1d\",\"name\":\"Tony Rossi\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ef58b23d79989facf5779819377620d3?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ef58b23d79989facf5779819377620d3?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Tony Rossi\"},\"description\":\"After graduating from St. John's University in New York with degrees in Communications and English, Tony Rossi found a job at the Catholic media organization, The Christophers, that allowed him to indulge his interest in religion, media, and pop culture. He served as The Christophers' TV producer for 11 years, and is currently the host and producer of the organization's radio show\/podcast Christopher Closeup, writer and editor of their syndicated Light One Candle column, and producer\/scriptwriter of the annual Christopher Awards ceremony.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/author\/tonyrossi\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"If You Replace Devils with Devils, You Get Hell on Earth","description":"(Photo property of Kirsten Luce for The New York Times) I generally use this space to share stories of people who light a candle rather than curse the","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/2015\/09\/if-you-replace-devils-with-devils-you-get-hell-on-earth\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"If You Replace Devils with Devils, You Get Hell on Earth","og_description":"(Photo property of Kirsten Luce for The New York Times) I generally use this space to share stories of people who light a candle rather than curse the","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/2015\/09\/if-you-replace-devils-with-devils-you-get-hell-on-earth\/","og_site_name":"Christopher Closeup","article_published_time":"2015-09-21T15:10:10+00:00","og_image":[{"width":675,"height":464,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/121\/2015\/09\/KLuceNYTimes.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Tony Rossi","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Tony Rossi","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/2015\/09\/if-you-replace-devils-with-devils-you-get-hell-on-earth\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/2015\/09\/if-you-replace-devils-with-devils-you-get-hell-on-earth\/","name":"If You Replace Devils with Devils, You Get Hell on Earth","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/#website"},"datePublished":"2015-09-21T15:10:10+00:00","dateModified":"2015-09-21T15:10:10+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/#\/schema\/person\/9215d33862959dfe2334a97a802ebf1d"},"description":"(Photo property of Kirsten Luce for The New York Times) I generally use this space to share stories of people who light a candle rather than curse the","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/2015\/09\/if-you-replace-devils-with-devils-you-get-hell-on-earth\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/2015\/09\/if-you-replace-devils-with-devils-you-get-hell-on-earth\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/2015\/09\/if-you-replace-devils-with-devils-you-get-hell-on-earth\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"If You Replace Devils with Devils, You Get Hell on Earth"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/","name":"Christopher Closeup","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/#\/schema\/person\/9215d33862959dfe2334a97a802ebf1d","name":"Tony Rossi","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ef58b23d79989facf5779819377620d3?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ef58b23d79989facf5779819377620d3?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Tony Rossi"},"description":"After graduating from St. John's University in New York with degrees in Communications and English, Tony Rossi found a job at the Catholic media organization, The Christophers, that allowed him to indulge his interest in religion, media, and pop culture. He served as The Christophers' TV producer for 11 years, and is currently the host and producer of the organization's radio show\/podcast Christopher Closeup, writer and editor of their syndicated Light One Candle column, and producer\/scriptwriter of the annual Christopher Awards ceremony.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/author\/tonyrossi\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/488"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}