Fort Worth Soldier Zachary Boyd Battles Taliban In Pink Boxers

I am sure the Fort Worth Star-Telegram covered this story, since it involved a Fort Worth soldier. I no longer get the Star-Telegram so I no longer get to marvel at that paper's odd need to mention the Fort Worth connection, no matter how tenuous, to a celebrity or person in the news. You could be married to someone who once lived in Fort Worth and that would be enough of a connection for the Star-Telegram to need to mention it.

Long ago I webpaged some examples of that paper's goofiness, including funny uses of their patented "Green With Envy" verbiage. As in towns far and wide are green with envy because a soldier from Fort Worth battled the Taliban in Afghanistan out of uniform, clad in pink I Love NY boxer shorts and flip-flops.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates (if I were like the Star-Telegram I would somehow insert that Gates was a neighbor of mine when I lived in Washington) heaped praise on a Fort Worth soldier on Thursday. Earlier this month a picture was snapped of the soldier hurrying to defend his post, wearing pink boxers and flip-flops.

Secretary Gates yesterday said he wants to meet the soldier and shake his hand the next time he visits Afghanistan. Gates said, "Any solider who goes into battle against the Taliban in pink boxers and flip-flops has a special kind of courage. I can only wonder about the impact on the Taliban. Just imagine seeing that a guy in pink boxers and flip-flops has you in his cross-hairs. What an incredible innovation in psychological warfare."

Army Specialist Zachary Boyd, 19, ran out of his sleeping quarters May 11 to help his other platoon members who were under fire from Taliban positions shooting at their base in Kunar Province in eastern Afghanistan. A photographer was on the scene. When the picture showed up on the front page of the New York Times, Zachary told his mom and dad, here in Fort Worth, that he might lose his job if President Obama saw that he was out of uniform.

To which Secretary Gates said, "I can assure you that Specialist Boyd's job is very safe indeed."

The Taliban & Mentally Ill People Everywhere

That's an Afghan Taliban killing an Afghani woman. The Afghani woman had committed the horrendous crime of having polish on her fingernails.

What sort of twisted world do we live in where there are barbarians like this? It's not a capital crime to murder someone, but it is a capital crime to wear fingernail polish.

In this morning's Dallas Morning News there was an article about the Taliban in northwest Pakistan banning female education. More than 40,000 girls have been kicked out of school.

In their ultimatum, the Taliban warned parents against sending their daughters to school, declaring female education to be "un-Islamic."

In one week, this past December, the Taliban beheaded 13 people. Many people in the Pakistan Valley of Swat are fleeing the Taliban, included policemen, leaving the area even more lawless.

How do humans get so twisted and backwards all in the name of their religion? Why is there no high ranking Islam Ayatollah type person who orders these idiots to knock it off?

To me if you are in a gang that goes around murdering women because they have polish on their nails and beheading people for equally stupid reasons, well, it's just insane mental illness.

I've dealt with mental illness up close and personal. Mentally ill people are usually absolutely sure of whatever ideas and beliefs their degraded thinking produces. There is no reasoning with them. They have no sense of responsibility for their actions and behaviors. They believe anything they do is okay.

If you find yourself having to defend yourself against a mentally ill person, they never understand that their behavior brought on the defense. The Taliban are equally self-righteous. America has been blasting them for years, with America justifiably mad over 9/11, and the Taliban just continue on, doing their evil deeds.

The only way to stop them is to kill them. America kills them for killing others. Not for using fingernail polish.

Now, what to do with the non-killer type mentally ill person? We used to lock them up. Now only the most serious cases are institutionalized. Now, way too often drugs are used to control the bad behavior. That has not seemed a very good solution either, from what I've seen.

I think maybe the best solution might be move them all to the Taliban controlled zones of Afghanistan and Pakistan.