The gift of laughter: Taliban vs Petraeus…
By Tim Foxley
Summary: The Taliban put a major propaganda victory on hold while they have a good laugh first…
I’m still waiting for a Taliban media statement on the Petraeus/Allen story. But maybe there won’t be one. The Taliban seem to have made a minor propaganda leap forward into the realms of humour, irony and satire:
The sex scandal that has brought down CIA chief David Petraeus may be causing heartache in the Washington security establishment but the affair has prompted laughter among the Taliban…
…A stony-faced Taliban official burst into laughter at the mention of the Petraeus affair during an interview with AFP in northwest Pakistan this week.
“What a bastard! But all Americans are the same, it’s nothing new,” the official said, who did not want to be named…
…”From a Pashtun point of view, Petraeus should be shot by relatives from his mistress’s family,” the Taliban official explained.
“From a sharia point of view, he should be stoned to death.”
The Taliban official said he was not surprised.
“It’s quite normal for Americans and Western people to behave like this — they live in free sex societies where nobody cares about this sort of thing, so what do you expect?”
