Sympathy For The Devil

Afghan doctor stoned for examining female patient without chaperone | Fox News:

A doctor was reportedly thrown from a balcony and stoned by an angry mob in Afghanistan for treating a female patient in an examining room without a chaperone. It’s not clear whether Dr. Ajmeer Hashimi was killed or severely injured and sent out of Afghanistan for medical attention, Afghan officials told the New York Times.
The female patient is reportedly in good condition at a women’s shelter. The assault occurred in Sar-i-Pul, a government-held town in the northern part of Afghanistan.
There are conflicting reports on the incident, but the provincial police chief, Abdul Raouf Taj told the Times that local villagers stormed a private clinic when they heard the doctor was treating the woman-- a midwife named Mahboba-- alone in his exam room.
Police arrived to escort the doctor and patient out of the office but while the woman was protected from serious attack, Hashimi was thrown from a second-floor balcony into the outraged crowd below and stoned, according to Nabila Rahimi, a local legal affairs official.
In many parts of Afghanistan women are customarily not allowed to be examined by male doctors unless a close male family member is present. Stoning is the punishment for adultery under Shariah law.
Taj said there was no indication that the victims’ relationship was anything other than professional.

Personal background note:

When I was sixteen, I dated a 15 year-old girl named Sheryl.  We were driving up and down main street ("Dragging The Gut") in my Daddy's 1962 Plymouth (ugliest car since the 1949 Studebaker!) and talking, when I mentioned something about "everybody has the right to go to hell in their own handbasket".

She shrilled:  "ARE you telling me to go to Hell!?"

She was just 15, I was 16, and I already knew there was no good answer to that question.

Two minutes later she told me she was dating another boy, George, who was driving his daddy's 1963 Plymouth (much prettier) and that she wanted me to marry her, because George had said he wanted to marry her but she liked me better.

I quite distinctly recall thinking at that moment:   WHY AM I HERE?

I took Sheryl home, and never saw here again.  (I later learned that she married George and they typically celebrated Saturday Nights by loud drunken fights, which sometimes included Sheryl throwing knives at George while he cowered behind a cutting board.)

George is, as far as I know, still trying to help Sheryl get over her Bi-Polar tendencies.

Psychologists call that "being an enabler".

Now, I just read this article about an Afghan being stoned for trying to help a patient.  I'm thinking about culture, you see, and how the culture that I consider reasonable isn't always shared by others, no matter how charming or friendly they may seem "most of the time some of the time when it suits their purpose".

I'm thinking about the American men and women serving their country in Afghanistan, and I realized I have the same question I first had in 1962:

WHY ARE WE THERE?

They are crazy people, they are offended if anyone calls them on their insanity, and the more we try to support them, the more they feel justified in treating us as if we are interlopers.

I was lucky that I got out of Sheryl's life early.  We've been in Afghan for how long?  And we're still trying to be "helpful"?

Psychologists call that "being an enabler".

Maybe we should just call it "being useful idiots".