The Worst Subsidized Stadium- Taliban Field

There was a thread below that criticized subsidized stadiums, I think it was Dunc Mills and Rick Nebiolo. While I am against taxpayer funding for professional spots stadiums, and even got to vote against the tax that helped pay for Coors Field in Denver, this one takes the cake. I don't know if anyone else saw this on CNN last night, but they had videotape of the executions that the Taliban do in the soccer field the international community built for them. Needless to say it's awful to see men hanging from the crossbar on the goal, and women shot in the back of the head with AK's. The worst was the interview with a Taliban guy.


This guy was asked by the CNN reporter why they did executions in the soccer stadium which was supposed to be a place of joy and fun and relaxation. His serious response was that doing justice was a joyous occasion, so doing it in a soccer stadium was very appropriate, as people could watch and be happy and joyous that justice was done. He went on to say that Afghanistan was a poor country, and could not afford to build a new execution facility. He said, seriously, that since the international community criticized the Taliban, they should buy the Taliban new stuff. For every 10 complaints from the international community, one new thing should be purchased for them. So the international community should buy them a new execution facility if they didn't want to see the soccer field used for executions. He was dead serious and had no idea at all how ridiculous his answer was. As cynical as I am about the human condition, I was shocked. There can be no negotiation or mediation with these people, and I hope no Americans continue calling for it. (That means you Jesse.) Whatever we do militarily, we should have nothing to do with these folks.


And I thought making taxpayers pay for all of Denver's new stadia was bad...

I'm just wondering whether the Taliban execute the mentally ill and/or minors like the USA. I guess the vast number of executions of such people in the USA (and of the plainly innocent) must be OK because they're done in private and paid for from your own tax dollars?


I'm not defending the Taliban regime, but the USA does not have the moral highground in this area.


Lookaroundyou.

Gimme a break. Amazing how some people are willing to take any reason they can to hate America. If you believe that America's justice system is somehow on the level with Afghanistan or other reprehensive human rights violators such as China, then you are crazy. Absolutely crazy.


This country has lots of problems, and as a society we've made many moral mistakes, and allowed our government to commit moral mistakes. I understand we have big black marks in our past. This does not change the fact that our laws protect human rights and civil rights with more respect than possibly any other nation in the world. And any nation who is comparable to us on that front has been influenced by us. Those are the facts.


Yes, some states may be more cavalier than others about excecuting convicted criminals, but they were at least given due process! Also, they were not executed for being Christian, or for being a woman who tried to get healthcare or an education, or for reading foreign newspapers that maligned communism, or for writing an expose on the country's prison labor camps, or for selling an ounce of pot. This is what people get executed for in China and Afghanistan. Oh yeah, and trial by jury of peers, due process, right to a lawyer, right to appeal, and all that are replaced with: kangaroo court, and a bill sent to your family for the cost of the bullet to your head.


The american convicts were executed (in the vast majority of cases) for brutal murders in which they were found guilty BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT in a court trial. Whether or not you support the death penalty, (which I don't) you must admit that America's standards for executing people are far and away more just than say, the Khmer Rouge. (sp?)


To say that as a society we have no room to condemn the Taliban because of the flaws in our own justice system, well, it takes a blindness and an agenda-seeking re-telling of the facts so extreme that you must be a complete idiot or think that we are.


I am so sick of people who spout this B.S. and say "as an American you have no right to point the finger at {COUNTRY X} because sometimes your own society has made mistakes in regard to {ISSUE X}". That is such hogwash. And 99% of the time the violations of Country X are so much more egregious than whatever it is the person is claiming america has done.


I'm not a blind jingoistic flag-waver who thinks america can do no wrong, but don't kid yourself, countries like Afghanistan, China, Sudan, Burma, Indonesia, and Russia simply do not hold up when compared to america's record on civil and human rights.


The very fact that you're allowed to claim otherwise without being sent to jail should be proof enough for you.


natedogg

Natedogg fantasised:


"trial by jury of peers, due process, right to a lawyer" ... "BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT"


Many of those executed in America were blatantly innocent, a fact often established BEFORE their deaths. Many of them had incompetent or grossly inexperienced lawyers, or lawyers who were drunk or asleep during their trials.


You also can't get around the fact that the ultimate decision whether or not to execute someone in the US is almost always taken by a politician on grounds of (their own) political expediency rather than by your courts.


And "they were not executed for being Christian"


While being black is not formally the charge for which capital-offence criminals are executed in the US, it is indisputable that their colour plays a huge part in whether or not they die.


Again, I wouldn't defend the Taliban for anything, and I agree with you that the US comes in for much unfair and misguided criticism given its enormous achievements and beneficial actions, but on the issue of the death penalty I'm afraid your country is sick, sick, sick. So much so that I fear it has really no position at all to criticise.


Lookaroundyou.

C'mon.


Maybe they were not executed for being Christian in Afghanistan, but I have read that they are executed for preaching Christianity in Afghanistan, and that gays are executed in Afghanistan for being gay. Women are forbidden from receiving education and a man who fails to keep his beard long enough has committed a serious crime.


Your view of reality, I fear, is warped. You seem to think the fact that the U.S. is imperfect and has done some bad things means that other countries have not been far worse. This is utter hogwash. Many countries have indeed been worse than the US by entire orders of magnitude: on a large scale, most notably, the USSR, Nazi Germany, and Communist China.


Maybe you think the Taliban isn't all that bad. IMO it is too bad they even exist at all. The world would be a better place without them, period.


Our justice system could be improved, and poor and minorities are at a disadvantage in capital murder trials. But that's still far better than the "Sentence first, verdict afterwards" kangaroo courts in certain other lands.


Now that you've "looked around you" why don't you try looking overseas. Maybe you'll realize that if the US is bad on a scale from 1-10, certain other governments are bad on a scale from 20-100.

The Taliban probably not only executes the mentally ill, they probably execute them FOR BEING mentally ill, just as they execute gays for being gay, as I've read recently.


The US may not have the moral high ground, but it's a slam dunk the Taliban has the moral low ground.


China would imprison you for public statements about how terrible the motherland is, and your re-education would begin with some years at hard labor in a prison camp. The USSR probably would have dealt with your statements by confining you in a state mental institution, and there possibly torturing you with injections of nerve-irritating drugs.


The Taliban would surely execute you if you were an Afghani making such statements about them or about Afghanistan. I don't think you'd have much more to say swinging from a rope in a soccer stadium.


Look around you and count your blessings. You are relatively free, and alive, here in the USA.

Natedogg and M said a lot of what I had to say. But I will indicate to you that I am familiar with how the American criminal justice system works. I have participated in the life and death decisions that are made in capital cases. Yes, many have more experience than I in these matters, but I would guess I am more familiar with the situation than you assumed when writing your post. I am familiar with some of the abuses in our system, but that does not mean I cannot judge the Taliban. Nor does it mean that no American can judge the Taliban.


Your post is philosophically disturbing, and that's what I wanted to mention rather than kick around the details of the American criminal justice system. I have a brain and some capacity for rational thought. I used my mind to come to a judgment about a group of people based on their conduct. Instead of either agreeing or disagreeing with me, you chose to tell me I had no right to judge something which is obviously horrible, based on my citizenship alone. Essentially you would deny me my right to form a judgment about a particular matter because of where I was born. That is an irrational position and does not serve to advance any positive outcome.(Either to improve Afghanistan or the American criminal justice system) For instance, using that logic, you would let the Taliban escape judgment. You would also prevent anyone from judging anything, because the argument you advance leads to the most mushy kind of moral relativism. I suspect you could find some way to prevent anyone from making any judgment about anything given some imperfection in the country in which they live. I am probably not explaining myself well, but your argument is a primitive form of argument that smacks of the most basic forms of tribalism that have served the world so poorly.


No matter how many abuses you can find in our criminal justice system, the American system is distinguishable from the Taliban system. I would also submit to you that abuses in the criminal system go on in every civilized country. Does that mean that nobody in any civilized country can criticize any criminal justice system? So what should we do? Give up and have a system like the Taliban, because "who are we to judge?" Go to some moral relativity that tells us one system is as good as another? Or should we ferret out wrong where we can and try to change it? My vote is for trying to fix what is wrong. And the philosophy and thought process you use in your post is the kind of thinking that will prevent us from doing anything. And in many cases has prevented people from acting to improve problems.

Ahmed Rashid's book Taliban opens with an incredible description of an execution in a stadium. At one point Taliban guards pointed their guns at the crowd in the stadium (10,000 peopl) and threatened to shoot anyone who moved. The spectacle ended with a relative of the victim shooting the prisoner in the back 3 times from a few feet away, and then with the Taliban guards firing three more shots into the twitching body before throwing it into the back of a pick-up and driving away. Of course, with no TV, some entertainment is needed.


(I picked up a copy of Rashid's Taliban on September 12; it's probably pretty hard to find now; find it if you can, it should be required reading.)


By the way, I don't think Jesse posts or lurks here.

Well I don't think you read my posts with much care, and you clearly have not reflected on what you said in your own initial post.


It is so important at the moment not just to assert that the US system of government is better than the Taliban (which it obviously is, by far, and I never said to the contrary), but _why_ that is so. And the difference clearly does not lie in any of the things you referred to in your (disgracefully flippant) initial post, such as executing women. Some of the other posters were much closer the mark than you.


In dealing with this whole horrible situation, success will be critically dependent, among other things, on the US coming to understand what outsiders looking in at it see, and why.


Lookaroundyou.

I agree with most of what you say (e.g. the US is a far better, more just society overall than the Nazis, Stalin, communist China), but I cannot agree that it's irrelevant in the present horrible situation to ask _why_ the Taliban are so bad, and _why_ the system of government of the US is so much better overall, which it is. The differences do not lie in the things posted by HDPM. Introspection is just so important at the moment.


As to your 1-10, 20-100 scale, in relation to capital punishment specifically (which is what I was addressing in my posts) and the justice/fairness or otherwise of its imposition, the US is probably at the bottom end of the top scale: considerably worse than almost any other Western democracy, and worse than many third world countries.


Lookaround you.

I agree that the US is probably at the worst end of the Western democracies in terms of capital punishment. I think it is barbaric and should be abolished except in cases of incorrigibly insane and dangerous persons such as Jeffrey Dahmer--and even then, it should not be a punishment but rather an act of euthanasia to ensure safety for others, much like dogs with rabies must be destroyed.


The injustices in our justice system are many and should somehow be addressed.


I think introspection is indeed important. I just don't buy that we don't have room to criticize others who are doing things that actually are far worse.

I heard that Josef Stalin was asked why Soviet citizens were not allowed the right of free speech. He was said to have replied: "We allow free speech. Any Soviet citizen is perfectly free to come to Red Square and say whatever he wants---once.";-)

Krushchev once told John Kennedy this joke: A man was convicted for running around the Kremlin saying, "Krushchev is a fool! Krushchev is a fool!" The sentence was 20 years: 1 year for insulting the Party Secretary, and 19 years for revealing a state secret.