Today I enjoyed a delicious meal at the best Afghan Restaurant in Portland, Maine. (Although I'm not a food critic, I can say this with some authority in that it is definitely the only Afghan Restaurant in Portland and probably the only one in Maine.) Unfortunately, the restaurant seems to be known not for its excellent food but for a court case involving its owner. As I understand it, ostensibly well-intentioned government employees, alleging "child abuse" took the Mohammad Kargar's son away from him for a year and a half. The "child abuse" consisted of the owner kissing his infant son on the penis.
It didn't matter to ignorant uncivil servants that this practice is described very common if not almost universal in Afghanistan: I was told they separated the boy from his father for 18 months. It's not surprising that the same government that destroyed villages in Vietnam to save them would devastate a family to "protect" it.
Although I know almost nothing about the Afghans, their customs cannot possibly be more perverse than the Americans'.
