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April 02, 2009

My Heart

...is BREAKING.

Afghanistan's women are no longer in vogue.

It was only a few years ago that Laura Bush, who normally shied from causes that could be considered controversial, took up their banner. "The brutal oppression of women is a central goal of the terrorists," the first lady said in a radio address shortly after President Bush launched the U.S-led invasion to overthrow the Taliban following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "The plight of women and children in Afghanistan is a matter of deliberate human cruelty, carried out by those who seek to intimidate and control."

That was then. This is now:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has just signed a law that forces women to obey their husbands' sexual demands, keeps women from leaving the house -- even for work or school -- without a husband's permission, automatically grants child custody rights to fathers and grandfathers before mothers, and favors men in inheritance disputes and other legal matters. In short, the law again consigns Afghan women to lives of brutal repression.

Our kids are DYING over there for THIS? The misogynist BASTARDS!!!! (Yo, Miss Liberated Michelle!) I hate them with every fiber of my being. And WHAT are our principles coming to that we have to read a headline like THIS:
Muslim Women in U.S. Struggle to Balance Western Freedoms and Islamic Culture

...and copy like THIS:
...But while there are plenty of comforts from their home countries, Muslim women say they’re constantly caught balancing their lives between the freedoms they have in Western culture and the restrictions they face from religious and societal pressure. They worry about whether they’re following the habits of "a good Muslim woman."

...for the sake of their fanatic version of twisted, violent, demented religion? Despicable. DeSPICABLE.

In this land ~ that was founded to free people from the yoke of gods and kings ~ to tolerate such servitude and blatant discrimination and inhumanity?

It makes me ILL with rage.


Posted by tree hugging sister at April 2, 2009 03:06 PM

Comments

Apparently the new administration along with their media lackeys don't care enough to shine a spotlight on it either.

islam is a disease that needs to be eradicated.

Posted by: Gunslinger at April 2, 2009 05:00 PM

And, as much as I hate to say this, we need to re-evaluate our objectives in Afghanistan, with this slide back into Talibanization firmly in mind.

Not that The Won™ would do that. I just want to point that if Americans are going to bleed and die in that country, it should be for a good reason. This is not one of them. But Obama is not that principled.

Posted by: JeffS at April 2, 2009 06:36 PM

The Won bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia at the G20, he's not going to get tough about women's rights in Afghanistan, and neither are any of our home grown feminists. Shame on Karzai.

Posted by: Retread at April 2, 2009 07:27 PM

As heinous as all that sounds, we should remember that most of those rules (excepting the can't leave the house part) were the law in this country as recently as when I was a kid.

I'm not defending it at all, just pointing out that historically speaking it's not all that radical. It's still wrong, just not very uncommon at all.

Posted by: Skyler at April 3, 2009 10:35 AM

I'm not defending it at all...

So why bring it up at all, Skyler? If it's wrong, it's wrong. And no one said it was "radical", so who cares? Why change the subject at all?

Moral equivalency sucks regardless of the message, Skyler. Or the messenger.

Posted by: JeffS at April 3, 2009 12:33 PM

I'm not advocating moral equivalency. I'm just saying that it's not that far removed from our own laws just a couple short decades ago. I'm saying that there is hope that they might progress too. Thus, it's not necessarily wrong to continue to try to help them become more enlightened.

It's not moral equivalency to do what is possible, while recognizing that they are still wrong. The alternative is to kill a lot more people. I'm not against that alternative, in fact I much prefer it, but there's more than one way to skin a cat.

In the end, it is the Afghan people that must do the changing. Unless we're willing to kill them in much greater numbers, they will always have more control of themselves than we can.

They are barbaric animals and won't change over night without our paying, and their paying, a much greater cost than we can politically afford to pay.

Posted by: Skyler at April 4, 2009 10:06 PM