Jonathan Couturier and the Useless War

Photo: Fred Thornhill, Reuters

They brought Jonathan Couturier home today. Back from the war he considered useless.

And who I wonder could blame him?

Army staff and National Defence headquarters officials were told in 2007 that young boys had allegedly been sexually abused by Afghan security forces at a Canadian base in Afghanistan, but the concern at the time was that the incident might be reported in the news media,

I've written about this moral swamp before. About what they do to the dancing boys.

And the women who are raped.

And how they raise the hopes of little girls....only to dash them.

In the span of about one year, the 15-year-old, named Sitara, has been yanked out of school, off a path that hinted at promise, and sold by her father for 700,000 Afghanis (about $15,000) into a marriage that, already, she has “nothing left for.”

But this is the absolute limit.

Former Cpl. Travis Schouten told military officials he had witnessed an Afghan boy being sodomized by two Afghan security personnel at Canada’s Forward Operating Base Wilson in Afghanistan in 2006. Another soldier also came forward to a Toronto newspaper to report a similar occurrence at the same base in 2006. A military chaplain talked about the abuse in a report sent up the chain of command at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa. Two other chaplains have also come forward to state that soldiers came to them upset about such abuses.

Because it happened right in front of our noses, and we did NOTHING to stop it.

I saw a story yesterday on CNN about a poor little shoe shine boy in Kabul. And it practically broke my heart. I want to help those children so much. And we must never abandon them.

But who can save OUR kids from this doomed mission?














Jonathan Couturier dead at twenty-three.

And who can say it was worth it?