Loading ...KABUL, Afghanistan — 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.
“At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” the Marine’s 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. “My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s their culture.”
And if you decide, as a soldier, you’re not going to turn your head and beat the hell out of the guy who’s sodomizing the kid?
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.
After the beating, the Army relieved Captain Quinn of his command and pulled him from Afghanistan. He has since left the military.
Got that?
Captain Quinn beat up the Afghan man who was actively abusing a young boy and the military relieved him of his command and pulled him from the country.
And by the way, under the UCMJ you have a duty to obey a lawful order, but you also have a duty to disobey an unlawful order. So here’s the question: Is an order to deliberately ignore and assist those engaging in the sexual abuse of young boys lawful?
Because if it is then our government, which issued that order, is no longer worthy of our support as citizens in any way, shape or form.