So if I understand the point of this Time cover, it goes something like this:
This horrific attack that happened while we had 100,000 troops in Afghanistan could only happen if we withdraw our 100,000 troops from Afghanistan. Therefore, we cannot, in good conscience, withdraw our 100,000 troops from Afghanistan.
I know I’m a bit late to this story, but it’s not as if it’s going to be a one-off affair. Apparently, playing up the plight of Afghan women is an important angle in marketing The Good War in Perpetuity 2010 campaign. See, also The Oracle Has Spoken.
It’s not that I’m hard hearted when it comes to conditions for women in Afghanistan, it’s just that many of the warlords that compirse the “good” Karzai government are just as brutal towards women as the Taliban. These attitudes toward females are part of a long-standing culture that we’re not going to bomb into modernity, nor are we even trying (our bombs are intended for other swell purposes). While there have been some gains for women in and around Kabul since the invasion, in the Pashtun-dominated south, women have the added bonus of the misery of war to tack on to the unchanged situation in terms of their rights and status in society.
Not to mention that war, in general, tends to create an environment that empowers reactionary forces, stunts progress along liberal lines and pushes women even further back.
Either way, the US mission is not directed at improving the lot of women – that is why we have allied with groups that share the Taliban’s ethos in this respect. Continuing the war will not change that, but perpetuate it.
August 16, 2010 at 11:14 am
If there’s any proof of that, it was one of the war lords, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, that likely received the most US and Saudi assistance during the proxy war in Afghanistan, and he’s the guy with the penchant for having his followers throw acid in the faces of girls trying to attend school, or not wearing the burqa.
If the U.S. were really concerned about women’s rights, we wouldn’t still be training the right wing in Latin America in the fine points of torturing them….
August 16, 2010 at 11:52 am
And if we are Really so concerned about women’s rights in the Big A, we’d withdraw our troops and bring the women and children with them. That’ll end this nonsense in about a generation.
August 16, 2010 at 12:06 pm
You can’t drone missile and bomb a country into even a nascent form of feminism.
And just yesterday, there was a report of a couple being stoned to death for adultery. She was 20, he was 28 and married – but not to her.
They stoned her first, then him a 1/2 hour later. Maybe it’s a sign of progress now that our troops have been there for 10 years – women first…
August 16, 2010 at 1:51 pm
Ultimately, the point of that cover is, I think, to sell more copies via sensationalist horror marginally justified by SHC (Serious Humanitarian Concerns).
Will this increase the amount of MFP (Mutilated Face Porn) lurking between the intertubes?
August 17, 2010 at 2:09 pm
She would be like totes ho++ if she wore like a silver nose like Richard Boone the Have Gun Will Travel guy in one of his late movies like The Shootist or Cat Ballou or somthing. I’d hit it for sure.
August 17, 2010 at 7:41 pm
I’d tell you to seek help, but there is none. At least you don’t wank to images of napalmed prepubescent Vier Namese girls running naked down the road away from her village.
August 16, 2010 at 4:10 pm
It’s another instance of what I call “the Toilet Paper Strategy,” whereby the American Right gives a shit about women and minorities Over There so that they don’t have to give a shit about women and minorities Over Here.
August 17, 2010 at 12:59 pm
I found that story galling. It’s truly awful what happened to that young woman and all the other women, girls and victims of the Taliban.
But as was pointed out, our military won’t stop this.
Ironically, what will stop it is the very thing that is dominating our “political discourse” right now – rejecting Islam in its entirety.
Despite her disfigurement, this young woman will never convert to Christianity and encourage others to do so. She is and will remain Muslim. Her quarrel is not with Islam but with the Taliban and other extremists.
America’s enemy is al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other extremists, but not Islam.
We can’t do one single thing about the brutality of the Taliban if we can’t live up to our own ideals of the First Amendment and, even tacitly, supporting moderate Muslims in America.
The only way to really stop the Taliban is to marginalize them around the world and erode their influence everywhere.
Bombing “collateral damage” and protesting Muslims who want to have a community center will NOT undermine the Taliban, but only enforces them.
August 27, 2010 at 1:26 pm
America’s enemy is none of those things, you stupid wanker.
August 17, 2010 at 6:39 pm
I think I finally understand the war party’s point of view: help the Muslims-conquer the Muslims-love the Muslims-kill the Muslims.
Or is that “women”?
August 17, 2010 at 6:47 pm
Too bad we can’t get our own shit together AND then race around the world fixing problems. Anyway – I don’t think that the American Right gives a shit about women or minorities in any country.
August 17, 2010 at 7:50 pm
Back in the day, our pornography was kept behind the counter.
August 17, 2010 at 10:05 pm
Great stuff. You should have a weekly column in a major newspaper.
August 18, 2010 at 10:58 am
We do but they keep it WAY-Y-Y-Y behind the counter.
August 18, 2010 at 2:14 pm
Anything to sell us on a never-ending war.
Besides, it plays into our notion that we’ve been shooting up their country all these years for a NOBLE purpose. (After all, we’re God’s Appointed here on earth, right?)
August 18, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Yup, that’s the motive. Ann Jones has a brief commentary in The Nation yesterday or the day before, in which she says that she knows the woman pictured in the Time article, and that the circumstances simply don’t fit the story line that the Time writer presented. In point of fact, it was her father-in-law who sliced off her nose and ears as retribution for running away from his abusive son. Nothing to do with the Taliban.
August 19, 2010 at 11:15 am
Young women are sold into prostitution in some countries. Should we not invade those countries also?
August 19, 2010 at 12:44 pm
If you don’t want to, you objectively support the pimps and slavemasters.
August 19, 2010 at 1:37 pm
Hey, Curv3ball and Grumlin, don’t be giving the Powers that Be any new ideas….
August 19, 2010 at 12:26 pm
Puppies in the new Time cover.
Guess they got screamed at.
August 20, 2010 at 12:00 pm
“just as” is a strong claim. I don’t believe that Karzai supporting warlords are just as unwilling to school girls as the Taliban. The warlords who were in power before the Taliban were organized were markedly less extreme in their discrimination against girls.
It is true that in the South people have the added burden of war, but in the North people no longer have the subtracted burden of war.
When the US and UK invaded Afghanistan was not at peace.
I might also add that, since the invasion, huge numbers of refugees have returned to Afghanistant voting with their feet for the change.
Note I have not expressed any opinion about what is to be done. I merely note that you have a very selective approach to history.
August 21, 2010 at 6:40 pm
If I remember this particular selection of history correctly, the Taliban arose to power by virtue of popular support from the people who weren’t happy with warlord rule.
August 21, 2010 at 6:56 pm
Also, curv3 said “many” not ‘all’. Ah what a picky nit we weave…