generalspeaking

Culture Collision

What could possibly encourage decent people to decide to overlook incidents that offend the very basis of decent, humane and intelligent behaviour? Most particularly decent people for whom the debased, harmful (to the victims) and truly unforgivable behaviour is seen as vile in their own society whose cultural norms view such morally depraved practises with utter disgust. Those same decent people for whose social contract and national laws view such acts as not only morally disgusting but criminal, as well.

There are some acts of human behaviour that go beyond the pale of social acceptance, to the extent that no society should ever accept them. Raping children is most certainly one of the cardinal sins of any society. And a society and a culture that knows this is a common practise, one that accepts this and does nothing to deter a chronologically-mature man from believing he acts with impunity when he rapes a young boy, sometimes so fiercely as to cause permanent physical damage, is most certainly one that exhibits an intolerable flaw.

As responsible human beings we have an obligation to intercede, to protest, to demand that such harmful and depraved behaviour stop, that it will not be tolerated by decent people. Yet, it would appear that Canadian soldiers stationed in Kandahar province in Afghanistan (where boy-rape is traditional and common) have been personally witness to such degrading inhumanity. Many of the Canadian soldiers in Kandahar have reported these incidents to their commanding officers.

To be informed by their commanders that their job there in Afghanistan is to train the Afghan police and the military in the craft of soldier-hood, in the correct use of the weapons they carry, in military strategy, not in decent human behaviour. Considering the barbarity of the war being conducted in Afghanistan where nothing whatever is considered sacred; neither the welfare of children, of human rights for women, of the sanctity of a mosque, perhaps it should be little wonder that the integrity of human behaviour has been so degraded.

But this does not explain how or why Canada's military elite could remove themselves from their responsibility as decent and responsible human beings. It does not go nearly far enough for a Canadian commander to mention the discomfort Canadians feel in knowing that young boys are being sodomized by Afghan soldiers and police to relieve their boredom, or to satisfy their lust, in the hearing of an Afghan official who then claims he will attend to the matter.

Canadian chaplains, enlisted men and some of their commanding officers have raised the issue, revealing with no uncertainty their disgust at this abuse of children by their Afghan peers, only to find that in a spirit of 'don't rock the boat', they are informed that an investigation has revealed nothing untoward to have occurred. The abusive practise is wide-spread and commonly-occurring. Canada can not afford, for her own self-respect, to pretend it does not.

And no amount of liberal generosity regarding different cultures and different traditions leading to different conclusions about different social mores can erase that reality.

Labels: Canada, Conflict, Particularities/Peculiarities, Social-Cultural Deviations

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, September 19, 2009