George W. Bush finally said farewell last night and one of his gloats was his pronouncement that “Afghanistan has gone from a nation where the Taliban harbored al-Qaida
and stoned women in the streets to a young democracy that is fighting
terror and encouraging girls to go to school.” It seems Bush missed the NYTimes report the day before about young women in Afghanistan who had acid thrown in their faces because they dared to attend school.
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — One morning two months ago, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside them on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question.
“Are you going to school?”
Then the man pulled Shamsia’s burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Scars, jagged and discolored, now spread across Shamsia’s eyelids and most of her left cheek. These days, her vision goes blurry, making it hard for her to read.
Bush will never understand the unnecessary destruction, hate, and death he purposefully brought into the world.
We can only hope and pray President Obama will, in some way, be able to start to heal the mortal damage done by the United States under Bush’s legacy of indiscriminate cruelty.