Savagery in Afghanistan

Almost ten years after United States boots hit Afghan soil, substituting a kleptocracy for a theocracy, and this type of violence hardly surprises:

Stirred up by a trio of angry mullahs who urged them to avenge the burning of a Koran at Florida church, thousands of protesters overran the compound of the United Nations in this northern Afghan city, killing at least 12 people, Afghan and United Nations officials said.

The dead included at least seven United Nations workers — five Nepalese guards and two Europeans, one of them a woman. None were Americans. Early reports, later denied by Afghan officials, said at least two of the dead had been beheaded.

The lesson here, it seems, is that if the United States allows cult leaders in Florida to burn Islam's holy book, a gaggle of bloodthirsty knuckle draggers, acting on God's behalf, will brutally murder the nearest Nepalese. Unfortunately, this sort of thing isn't new in Afghanistan, as the Times points out: "When a Danish cartoonist lampooned the Prophet Mohammed, four people were killed in riots in Afghanistan within days in 2006. The year before, a one-paragraph item in Newsweek alleging that guards in Guantanamo had flushed a Koran down the toilet sparked three days of riots that cost 14 lives in Afghanistan."