A timely reminder of what is at stake
QALAI SAYEDAN, Afghanistan: With their teacher absent, 10 students were allowed to leave school early. These were the girls the gunmen saw first, 10 easy targets walking hand-in-hand through the blue metal gate and on to the winding dirt road.
A 13-year-old named Shukria was shot in the arm and the back and teetered into the soft brown of an adjacent wheat field. Zarmina, her 12-year-old sister, ran to her side, listening to the wounded girl’s precious breath and trying to help her stand. But Shukria was too heavy to lift and the two gunmen, sitting astride a single motorbike, suddenly sped closer.
And then compare the ghastly indifference of the NY Times.
In Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Indonesia, the Philippines, Holland, France and Britain, these people hate. They hate us. They hate women and girls who fail to submit. They hate gays. They hate Hindus, Christians and Sikhs. They are ruthless, sadistic killers, who cloak their blood-lust under a veneer of piety.
If we play the ostrich for domestic political reasons, we will pay heavily at home and abroad. We will break faith with these girls, and their sisters wherever they are. Having broken that faith, we will never be able to nurture a healthy alternative to the death cult. Those who need to take risks to effect change will fear that we will leave them when we tire of the sacrifice. They will not put their necks on the line. And they will be right. And it will haunt us.
Until now, 1937 has always been something I had to imagine. Now, I’m beginning to know how Churchill felt.
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