Intervention and Corruption - Bring back the Taliban

Waking early at a time when Radio Four is out on the farm and when Radio Five is not as frenetically keen to be matey as it is at some other times, in other words listening to Radio Five, I think I hear an interview with the Afghanistan correspondent in which he asserts the whole place is a mess because of war and because of corruption. So (he asserts) Afghans want the Taliban back, because, after all, yes, they did execute people in stadiums, they did burn down schools, they did prevent women getting any education, in fact, yes, they prevented them from being seen, from moving around at all, and they murdered and smashed and terrorised, and I won't even mention the gays, yes, all of that, but, you see, they weren't corrupt. People could get on with their lives.

I lie there and wonder which people got on with what lives, then realise of course, that I don't really understand these things, because, of course, it is their country (ie the Taliban's) and their culture (ie the Taliban's) so it's really nothing to do with me, I just don't understand their inherently noble value system, which, you must understand, is not corrupt, whereas the non-Talibans, especially of course we listeners, we are corrupt, and all the more corrupt for wishing our corrupt value-system on the straight-as-a-die-and-off-with-your-head Talibans.

Am I corrupt? Honest, guv, me, I'm straight as a bent pin. Next door, you see, I have this bunch who have murdered a few, burned a few, terrorised a few, have in fact eaten a few of their children, like that bloke in Austria who kept his daughter in that cellar thing and fathered kids with her. That was his value system. It was in his house. It is nothing to do with me or the cops. Value system trumps ideas about common humanity, which is just, like, so just your opinion, man.