Publisher’s Point: The Courage Of A 14 Year Old Girl

How in the world does one begin to fathom what would motivate a Taliban gunman to shoot a 14 year old Pakistani girl in the head because she wants to go to school? The simple answer is evil, something we faced down routinely in Iraq. On our camp, which is where the fledgling Iraqi Special Forces was formed and trained, there was an inside job that resulted in the deaths of more than a dozen trainees. They were all kidnapped and beheaded, and the head of one was sent in a box to his widow.

Insurgents would also control and manipulate whole neighborhoods through fear, the worst example being a “feast” that was thrown by Al-Qaeda, and the “entrée” was one family’s nine year old child, who had been missing. They roasted him, and told those present that the same thing would happen to their children if they cooperated with the Coalition.

I am not being gratuitous, here, in my description of evil. I have no desire to shock or alarm any reader of Athens Now. But it is so easy, (in the current climate of political correctness that is insisting that FBI training manuals no longer make any references to terrorism and Islamofacism,) to forget what we are really up against.

Then along comes this gutsy little girl named Malala Yousafzai, who does what teens do throughout the West: she posts videos of herself online, and rather than blather on about what she is going to do this weekend, makes quite the case for something we in America take for granted, i.e., the opportunity for girls, (and boys, for that matter,) to go to school.

And what is the response of the “courageous servants of Allah?” A plot is hatched to silence Miss Malala forever by murdering her in cold blood. Only, Miss Malala survives, the Brits spirit her out of Pakistan and back to the UK where she gets the best of care, and surgeons say she is not only going to survive, she is going to recover.

And the Taliban’s response? They vow that they will hunt her down, no matter where in the world she is hiding, and they will not rest until they have completed their mission and stilled her voice. That might take some doing, though, because throughout Pakistan there have been demonstrations, and little Malala and her plight has gone “viral” on the Internet. Muslims, Christians, Jews and secularists everywhere are denouncing the Taliban’s actions, and as unbelievable as it sounds, the Taliban is whining about it, essentially saying that they are the victims here.

To say that the Taliban has been exposed once again for its insane hatred of freedom and maniacal insistence upon control is an understatement. The question is, will we grow weary in well-doing, first of all in resisting those who would usurp our own Constitution and replace it with something else, as well supporting those in other lands whose freedoms are so routinely quashed through fear? At the end of the day, I believe evil springs from fear, and the only thing that casts it out is love. May God have mercy on both little Malala and her malevolent maurader, and may justice, true justice spring out of this assault on a child.
By: Ali Elizabeth Turner