The New York Times Whitewashes a Murderer and Rapist
Our Betrayal is Complete
“Sir, you have a visitor at the front gate,” said my interpreter.
It was 2008, and it was my very first deployment to Afghanistan. I was stationed in Kapisa, the smallest province in Afghanistan, right next to Kabul.
“Ok, brother, give me ten minutes.”
My interpreter escorted the Afghan into my meeting room after he had been thoroughly searched. He was an older gentleman from a village deep into the Nijrab valley.
After exchanging the standard five-minute-long Pashto greeting, we got down to business.
“What can I do for you, my friend?” I asked.
The village elder didn’t hesitate.
“Your contractors are dead,” he whispered in Pashto. “The Taliban hung them from a tree.”
I was in my early 30s, trying my best to jump-start reconstruction projects in a poverty-stricken province. Despite ample warning from my contractors, I insisted they continue building the road despite repeated threats to their lives.
“Sorry, you either do the project or you walk,” I had told them after they had tried to ask for more money for security
The elder, who was related to one of the men, looked at me in the face and said, “We needed security, but you refused.”
Then the elder pulled out his Flip phone and showed me the pictures of the contractors hanging from the same tree.
This was the first time I was acquainted with the Taliban’s perverted version of justice. It wasn’t very dissimilar from the groups I fought in Iraq. The groups who murdered thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians.
Those pictures are seared into my mind. I will always remember them. I’ve made a lot of bad calls in my military career, but this one always sticks out. Had I listened to the Afghans, perhaps those contractors would’ve survived.
The people responsible for murdering my contractors, along with 2K+ Americans and 70K Afghan soldiers, are now in charge. They’re gang raping women, conducting public floggings, and murdering our Afghan allies who they had promised amnesty. They are implementing a draconian gender apartheid regime.
The Taliban wouldn’t have won the war nor murdered my friends and partners without Sirajuddin Haqqani, a terrorist drenched in American blood.
It’s puzzling to me, though not all surprising, why The New York Times decided it was time to give this despicable man the “moderate” treatment in a series of essays published this morning.
Of course, this isn’t the first time that the New York Times has given Siraj the microphone.
Siraj wrote the little ditty a few months before the Taliban killed their way into power. Siraj, ever the moderate, has since helped implement the most grotesque government imaginable.
I’m going to do a deep dive into this fluff piece and thoroughly debunk all this nonsense, which the author, Christina Goldbaum, could’ve done if she had actually interviewed anyone who fought Haqqani. I’m not really sure why she didn’t interview any American or Afghan combat veterans. Or, hell, even a Gold Star mother. Instead, she tried to paint Sirajuddin Haqqani—who she repeatedly describes as a “moderate”—in the most favorable light imaginable, aided by turncoats like Barnett Rubin and other pro-Haqqani voices inside the American intelligence community.
But today, I just want to say how heartbreaking this coverage is to a generation of American combat veterans. Less than 3 years after Biden’s cowardly retreat, the New York Times does the dirty work for them, fluffing up the credentials of the Minister of Interior who is responsible for implementing a gender apartheid regime.
Why are they doing this? The American government, aided by Barnett Rubin, wants to normalize relations with the Taliban and would like Sirajuddin Haqqani—a man drenched in American blood—to be the face of a kinder, more “moderate Taliban.”
For American and Afghan combat veterans, it is further proof that America has turned its back on a generation of its combat veterans. Sure, everyone will thank us for our service. But they won’t mind shaking hands with men who killed them in droves.
Over the last 48 hours, former President Donald Trump has (justifiably) received a litany of criticism for his grotesque comments about slain soldiers and his desire for more authoritarian general officers. However, what’s worse: his comments or President Biden’s relationship with the very group that aided the 9-11 attacks, is gang-raping our Afghan sisters, and executing our Afghan allies?
Shameful.
I looked up Barnett Rubin and then tried to read the NYT article but was unable to access without a subscription. I believe you. It seems people will do anything for a buck! I find it more and more difficult to believe in corporate media. Where is the integrity? Where is the intestinal fortitude? Hang in there, mr. Selber!!