Dying to Learn

Dear Taliban,

You try to kill a young girl and for what?  Wanting to learn.  And you fire into a schoolbus full of children. 

My, what manly men you are.

A Taliban spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, confirmed by phone Tuesday that Ms. Yousafzai had been the target, calling her crusade for education rights an “obscenity."

She has become a symbol of Western culture in the area; she was openly propagating it,” Mr. Ehsan said, adding that if she survived, the militants would certainly try to kill her again. “Let this be a lesson.” 

All the world now knows of your cowardice and ignorance and stupidity.  And what have you gained?  Nothing.

Her father ran one of the last schools to defy Taliban orders to end female education. As an 11-year-old, Malala — named after a mythic female figure in Pashtun culture — wrote an anonymous blog documenting her experiences for the BBC. Later, she was the focus of documentaries by The New York Times and other media outlets. 

If I could, I'd offer passage out and refuge to any woman and girl in Afghanistan.  Clearly, our own military, through a decade of war and the deaths of 2000 of our own soldiers, cannot control or change the thinking of the pathetic Taliban. 

But you know what, boys of the Taliban (because you are surely not men), the one thing you CANNOT do?

You cannot destroy the human desire to learn.

You can kill and scar and burn but you won't be able to stop any child, boy or girl, in any country from having this desire.

She was named after a mythic female figure in Pashtun culture but she is indeed real.

Her name is Malala Yousafzai and she is in my thoughts and prayers today as she struggles for life.