Am I missing something?

OK, so I'm reading about how Timmy Taliban kidnapped a gang of Koreans in this article, and now Hamid Karzai is pulling the hospitality card which seems pretty negotiable. If you're waondering where this whole hospitality thing comes in, it has to do with pashtun wali:

There are numerous intricate tenets of Pashtunwali that influence Pashtun social behavior. One of the better known tenets is Melmastia or the notion of hospitality and asylum to all guests seeking help. Perceived wrongs or injustice call for Badal or swift revenge.

See, it's a pashtun thaang.

Melmastia was what kept a SEAL from being handed over to the Taliban when an Afghan was nursing him back to health, and it was also used as a justification to keep from handing Osama bin Laden over as Mullah Omar is quoted here, Handing over bin Laden is like giving up a pillar of Islam"—i.e., impossible—is that they are Pashtun, and the Pashtunwali Code places a huge amount of emphasis not only on giving hospitality, but refuge.

Well isn't that conveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeenient.



"The perpetration of this heinous act on our soil is in total contempt of our Islamic and Afghan values," Karzai told a South Korean envoy during a meeting at the presidential palace, according to a statement from his office.

Echoing Karzai's words, Afghanistan's national council of clerics said the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, taught that no one has the right to kill women.

"Even in the history of Afghanistan, in all its combat and fighting, Afghans respected women, children and elders," the council said. "The killing of women is against Islam, against the Afghan culture, and they shouldn't do it."

Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, replied, "lolz!"



Are these guys for serious? I've never known any religion to be particularly "reality based", but there are observable phenomena available to us, you know things like "Afghan Muslims killing women and children". The Taliban are dirtbags, yes, but most of them are also Afghans and all of them are Muslims. Why do these guys even bother saying stuff like this? That would be like me saying, "Clearly Americans love Japanese food, because in general Americans are thin and in shape." Well, not really, but my point is that it's completely retarded and easily seen to be ridiculous.

Here's another gem:

Pope Benedict XVI also called for the hostages' release, saying the perpetrators should "desist from the evil they have carried out and give back their victims unharmed."

Oh, I have an idea. A bus load of Christians was kidnapped in Whackjobbi Muslimistan. Someone get the Pope on the phone so he can call the Taliban evil, because the Taliban clearly gives a shit about the Pope and all his authority. Why not have the Dalai Lama chime in? The Pope is probably on top of the "People the Taliban would like to gut on the innerwebs" list, and at the bottom of the "People who ought to be lecturing people from other religions about fucked up stuff done in the name of religion" list.

I'm predicting this to go very very badly. I'm also predicting that Korea will somehow blame this on America, because America forced a busload of Korean Christians to drive around Afghanistan even after Koreans were permitted from getting visas to go there. Yeah, it's our fault. We created the Taliban after all, right?

Just thought I'd throw that out there, since today's theme seems to be "saying retarded shit".

Updates later, depending on how this goes…