Peaceful Taliban peacefully display dangled, dead bodies — but peacefully

OPINION:

The Taliban strung up the bodies of three deemed criminals and left them to dangle from a couple of cranes parked in the northeast Herat section of Afghanistan, for all to see, a la 1990s regime style.

But it was entirely peaceful and professional.

As a President Biden might say: These guys aren’t nearly as dangerous as Corn Pop.

One can’t help reminiscing on reports from September.

Just a few weeks ago, AFP wrote in a headline: “US says Taliban ‘businesslike and professional’ in Afghan evacuation.”

Ahh, the good old days.

“The United States … praised the Taliban as businesslike and cooperative in facilitating the first evacuation of Americans from Afghanistan since the US military withdrawal,” AFP wrote on Sept. 9. 

And the story contained this quote from National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne: “The Taliban have been cooperative in facilitating the departure of American citizens and lawful permanent residents on charter flights from [Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport]. They have shown flexibility and they have been businesslike and professional in our dealings with them in this effort.”

Did we mention they were businesslike?

How about professional — and cooperative?

Nary a sign of dangling dead bodies anywhere.

That was so September.  

Now it’s October, and it’s time to get over September.

On Tuesday, three bodies of men who allegedly tried to break into a man’s home, and who were then killed, were strung up for public display. That follows another dangling body display in Herat of a couple weeks ago, when an alleged kidnapper was shot and killed by police, along with his alleged accomplices. The alleged kidnapper’s three accomplices were hung up to dangle for public view in other parts of the city.

In case you missed it in Herat, you could catch the second showing down the road.

“The aim of this action is to alert all criminals that they are not safe,” a Taliban member told The Associated Press, by way of explaining all the dangling bodies.

Make sense.

Of course, another country with another course of governance might try for the same aim by, oh, say, arresting the alleged criminals and holding hearings in a court of law to determine their guilt or innocence, and then dishing out the punishments accordingly. But why bother with all that when there are perfectly good cranes parked nearby?

That the Taliban calls such savagery its culture only makes the savagery all the worse.

That the United States, thanks to Biden and his chest full of toy Cabinet members, actually jumped in bed with these savages makes America’s betrayal of U.S. citizens, U.S. allies and Afghan innocents all the more disheartening.

This White House went out of its way to make the case that the 2021 Taliban was not the same as the 1990s Taliban — that the new version of the Taliban was one of peace and professionalism. Did we say cooperative and businesslike, too?

And all the sane people in the world shook their heads in disagreement and warned of the savagery that would come.

Here it is.

Dangling, dead bodies everywhere.

But to this White House, no doubt, the bodies are peacefully at rest, peacefully blowing in the gentle breeze, peacefully being prepared for burial by the peaceful, peacemakers of the Taliban.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.