Edward Snowden is likely too preoccupied with his own fate to pay much attention to other news.
So we’re not sure the man who’s boasted to the world of leaking classified information about two National Security Agency anti-terrorist programs has read about what happened to two young boys — one 10, one 16 — in southern Afghanistan. At the same time Snowden was defending his actions from the comfort of a five-star Hong Kong hotel, the two boys were beheaded by the Taliban as they scrounged for leftover food for their families. The killings were meant to send a warning to villagers about cooperating with the Afghan government.
“I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things,” said Snowden, explaining why he exposed data-mining programs aimed at capturing, well, the sort of people that behead two young boys whose only crime was accepting food from police. It’s too late to ask these Afghan boys, but we suspect they might have said the same of a society run by the Taliban.
Nor were these beheadings unusual in the way we think any beheading is unusual. To the contrary, Reuters reports that last summer a 16-year-old in the same area was accused by the Taliban of spying for the government — and was beheaded and skinned. A month later, a 6-year-old girl and 12-year-old boy were kidnaped and beheaded.
This is the nature of the enemy we are at war with. But for a certain set of moralists, only America can be at fault. So we wring our hands about the morality of drone strikes on the Taliban and al Qaeda leaders, while men such as Snowden and Pfc. Bradley Manning betray their nation by leaking info in an attempt to harm our war effort.
Meanwhile, two boys in Afghanistan are murdered by our enemies in a gruesome way. Something Edward Snowden might ponder as he seeks a society he’s willing to live in — and is willing to have him.