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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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 Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 12:56 am Post subject: Women in Afghanistan - this makes me sick |
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I remember in the late nineties, RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) working hard to make the plight of Afghani women known. Of course, at that time the Bush and Blair administrations didn't give a toss.
Suddenly, come 911, and the wonderful opportunity of using it as a pretext to take control of Afghanistan, we heard all sorts of wonderful reasons why we should go and invade the place (except of course we didn't hear to much about that lovely Caspian oil we might have better access to).
I remember that one of the of the most sickening reasons given was that we were going to go and liberate the women! Cherie Blair and Barbara Bush bollocking on about how a war would be so marvelous for women's rights. I remember RAWA protesting that this would not help them, and asking them please not to do it as if anything it would make things much worse for women. Afterall, how would war bring benefits to the female population? If anything, war always makes things worse for females. Men become more prized, and women less valued. Women become more vulnerable to death and rape and starvation. The press also conveniently ignored the fact that our new allies, the Northern Alliance, had almost as pitiful a record of abusing women as did the Taliban.
Here is what RAWA have to say about the NA (The Northern Alliance): The �Miracle� or a Mockery of Afghanistan?
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| Nice maxim! But were Americans or Karzai & Co. �spreading democracy� since 2001? After 9/11 when the U.S. resorted to bomb our wounded country and take the lives of several thousands innocent civilians it helped the bloodthirsty NA seize power. The NA is comprised of those millionaire rapists busy in the opium trade under the very nose of the US troops. They are the people behind the insecurity, kidnappings, embezzlement of billions of dollars of foreign aids, injustices, anti-women constraints, covering up of the day light murders, and so on and so forth. |
Here is a report on the current plight of women in Afghanistan. It makes for very uncomfortable reading: Women in Afghanistan
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Ever since the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, George W. Bush has boasted of "liberating" Afghan women from the Taliban and the burqa. His wife Laura, after a publicity junket to Afghanistan in 2005, appeared on Jay Leno's show to say that she hadn't seen a single woman wearing a burqa.
But these are the sorts of wildly optimistic self-delusions that have made Bush notorious. His wife, whose visit to Afghanistan lasted almost six hours, spent much of that time at the American air base and none of it in the Afghan streets where most women, to this day, go about in big blue bags. |
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Afghan women and girls are, by custom and practice, the property of men. They may be traded and sold like any commodity. Although Afghan law sets the minimum marriageable age for girls at sixteen, girls as young as eight or nine are commonly sold into marriage. Women doctors in Kabul maternity hospitals describe terrible life-threatening "wedding night" injuries that husbands inflict on child brides. In the countryside, far from medical help, such girls die.
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In Kabul, where women and girls move about more freely, many are snatched by traffickers and sold into sexual slavery. The traffickers are seldom pursued or punished because once a girl is abducted she is as good as dead anyway, even to loving parents bound by the code of honor. The weeping mother of a kidnapped teenage girl once told me, "I pray she does not come back because my husband will have to kill her."
Many a girl kills herself. To escape beatings or sexual abuse or forced marriage. To escape prison or honor killing, if she's been seduced or raped or falsely accused. To escape life, if she's been forbidden to marry the man she would choose for herself. |
If we had gone in and really done the job properly, and really protected women, and put money into health and education and security, we might have done something worthwhile. But we decided Iraq would be much more lucrative. As it is, we haven't even eradicated the Taliban, and they are back on the rise, and looking like they might even take over the country again. We haven't even made Kabul safe for women. The press crowed about how fantastic it was going to be for the women of Afghanistan. Even afterwards, the media still pretended this was so. Now it has conveniently forgotten how fabulous this was going to be for the female population of Afghanistan. And we probably just made things worse for them. Disgusting. |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 1:17 am Post subject: |
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BB,
I think it noteworthy to highlight this issue of women's rights. Many nations need to address the role of women and their treatment, in their societies (and not just exclusively Islamic societies). I think it terrible we didn't do more.
That said, I find myself in extreme disagreement with this statement;
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| If we had gone in and really done the job properly, and really protected women, and put money into health and education and security, we might have done something worthwhile. |
Mostly because it would on quick review seem so true. Still it isn't, far , far from it. Worthwhile presupposses and insists on the soil of "freedom". And freedom doesn't come at the end of a barell and with missles and with bullets flying and kids, women, men dying. Worthwhile means "doing the right thing, in the right manner". The how is always as important as the end and the what.
"Doing the job right", in the sense that you use it, means cancelling out any good that might come of it. There were betters ways/means to address the issue, help and educate, promote and instill women's rights. Too much of the pain and bloodshed of this world comes from our rush to "inflict" this onto other religions and cultures (a kind of secular yet violent missionairianism).
DD |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 1:35 am Post subject: |
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| Yes, in fact I have to agree with you. At the time I argued with friends that it was crazy to think we could wind women's liberation forward by the use of force. If anything, our forcing it on them would be reason for them to patriotically reject it. We probably just made it even more unlikely that women there will be emancipated anytime soon, by branding women's welfare as a 'western thing.' It is something that had to come slowly from within their own society. There was and is no quick fix for it. Our only avenue of assistance was probably to quietly fund it, and give quiet assistance in the way of expertise. And not holler about it. |
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sundubuman
Joined: 04 Feb 2003
Location: seoul
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| Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 3:07 am Post subject: |
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a kind of secular yet violent missionairianism......
dd you just coined a new word....missionairianism
or technically a new spelling of a new word missionarianism.
With idiotarians like you apparently so plentiful, it's amazing the west is as free and strong as it is........
must be due to that secular yet violent missionarianiam you speak of..... |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 4:14 am Post subject: |
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With idiotarians like you apparently so plentiful, it's amazing the west is as free and strong as it is........
must be due to that secular yet violent missionarianiam you speak of..... |
and your point is exactly what in regards to the OP and women's rights in Afghanistan? Or can you only stoop as low as it takes to empty of substance and not create substance?
DD |
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jinju
Joined: 22 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 3:36 pm Post subject: |
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| Who is your beef with? The US for not being able to root out sick, backwards traditions or the Muslims for having those sick, backwards traditions? Let me guess.... |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 6:48 pm Post subject: |
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| jinju wrote: |
| Who is your beef with? The US for not being able to root out sick, backwards traditions or the Muslims for having those sick, backwards traditions? Let me guess.... |
No. The Bush and Blair administrations pretending they were going in to Afghanistan to make things better for women. For using it as a selling point to the US and UK public (I know people who really bought it). When they knew damn well they wouldn't change a thing. When any serious observer knew damn well it would likely make things much worse for women living there.
For pretending they really cared. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 7:04 pm Post subject: Re: Women in Afghanistan - this makes me sick |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
I remember in the late nineties, RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) working hard to make the plight of Afghani women known. Of course, at that time the Bush and Blair administrations didn't give a toss.
Suddenly, come 911, and the wonderful opportunity of using it as a pretext to take control of Afghanistan, we heard all sorts of wonderful reasons why we should go and invade the place (except of course we didn't hear to much about that lovely Caspian oil we might have better access to).
I remember that one of the of the most sickening reasons given was that we were going to go and liberate the women! Cherie Blair and Barbara Bush bollocking on about how a war would be so marvelous for women's rights. I remember RAWA protesting that this would not help them, and asking them please not to do it as if anything it would make things much worse for women. Afterall, how would war bring benefits to the female population? If anything, war always makes things worse for females. Men become more prized, and women less valued. Women become more vulnerable to death and rape and starvation. The press also conveniently ignored the fact that our new allies, the Northern Alliance, had almost as pitiful a record of abusing women as did the Taliban.
Here is what RAWA have to say about the NA (The Northern Alliance): The �Miracle� or a Mockery of Afghanistan?
| Quote: |
| Nice maxim! But were Americans or Karzai & Co. �spreading democracy� since 2001? After 9/11 when the U.S. resorted to bomb our wounded country and take the lives of several thousands innocent civilians it helped the bloodthirsty NA seize power. The NA is comprised of those millionaire rapists busy in the opium trade under the very nose of the US troops. They are the people behind the insecurity, kidnappings, embezzlement of billions of dollars of foreign aids, injustices, anti-women constraints, covering up of the day light murders, and so on and so forth. |
Here is a report on the current plight of women in Afghanistan. It makes for very uncomfortable reading: Women in Afghanistan
| Quote: |
Ever since the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, George W. Bush has boasted of "liberating" Afghan women from the Taliban and the burqa. His wife Laura, after a publicity junket to Afghanistan in 2005, appeared on Jay Leno's show to say that she hadn't seen a single woman wearing a burqa.
But these are the sorts of wildly optimistic self-delusions that have made Bush notorious. His wife, whose visit to Afghanistan lasted almost six hours, spent much of that time at the American air base and none of it in the Afghan streets where most women, to this day, go about in big blue bags. |
| Quote: |
Afghan women and girls are, by custom and practice, the property of men. They may be traded and sold like any commodity. Although Afghan law sets the minimum marriageable age for girls at sixteen, girls as young as eight or nine are commonly sold into marriage. Women doctors in Kabul maternity hospitals describe terrible life-threatening "wedding night" injuries that husbands inflict on child brides. In the countryside, far from medical help, such girls die.
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In Kabul, where women and girls move about more freely, many are snatched by traffickers and sold into sexual slavery. The traffickers are seldom pursued or punished because once a girl is abducted she is as good as dead anyway, even to loving parents bound by the code of honor. The weeping mother of a kidnapped teenage girl once told me, "I pray she does not come back because my husband will have to kill her."
Many a girl kills herself. To escape beatings or sexual abuse or forced marriage. To escape prison or honor killing, if she's been seduced or raped or falsely accused. To escape life, if she's been forbidden to marry the man she would choose for herself. |
If we had gone in and really done the job properly, and really protected women, and put money into health and education and security, we might have done something worthwhile. But we decided Iraq would be much more lucrative. As it is, we haven't even eradicated the Taliban, and they are back on the rise, and looking like they might even take over the country again. We haven't even made Kabul safe for women. The press crowed about how fantastic it was going to be for the women of Afghanistan. Even afterwards, the media still pretended this was so. Now it has conveniently forgotten how fabulous this was going to be for the female population of Afghanistan. And we probably just made things worse for them. Disgusting. |
Assuming that she's not just pushing some agenda...would she rather be back under the Taliban rule?
And I think it's dishonest to pretend that the U.S and the U.K can change traditions and attitudes that have been around for hundreds of years in 2-4 years.
Last edited by TheUrbanMyth on Tue Feb 06, 2007 7:21 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 7:07 pm Post subject: |
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jinju wrote:
Who is your beef with? The US for not being able to root out sick, backwards traditions or the Muslims for having those sick, backwards traditions? Let me guess....
No. The Bush and Blair administrations pretending they were going in to Afghanistan to make things better for women. For using it as a selling point to the US and UK public (I know people who really bought it). When they knew damn well they wouldn't change a thing. When any serious observer knew damn well it would likely make things much worse for women living there.
For pretending they really cared. |
Yes, they should be condemned. I'm once more reminded of Camus, writing against the forces that be, the POWERS that would pretend to care but stank of their power, as they pursued power for powers sake - in whatever way their suits and ties would befit them....
I once more pull Camus' words out of my notebook.
�We have preferred the power that apes greatness � Alexander first of all, and then the Roman conquerors, whom our school history books, in an incomparable vulgarity of soul, teach us to admire. We have conquered in our turn... our reason has swept everything away. Alone at last, we build our empire upon a desert. How then could we conceive that higher balance in which nature balanced history, beauty, and goodness, and which brought the music of numbers even into the tragedy of blood? We turn our back on nature, we are ashamed of beauty. Our miserable tragedies have the smell of an office, and their blood is the color of dirty ink.�
� Albert Camus |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 7:07 pm Post subject: Re: Women in Afghanistan - this makes me sick |
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| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
Assuming that she's not just pushing some agenda...would she rather be back under the Taliban rule? |
a) She probably will be sometime soon.
b) You seem to be under the illusion that all this is just a matter of the Taliban. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 7:25 pm Post subject: Re: Women in Afghanistan - this makes me sick |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
Assuming that she's not just pushing some agenda...would she rather be back under the Taliban rule? |
a) She probably will be sometime soon.
b) You seem to be under the illusion that all this is just a matter of the Taliban. |
As regards (b) if we weren't fighting the Taliban we could probably devote more resources to education and protecting citizens (especially women). They certainly don't help and are currently taking up most of the attention and resources.
Like I said above, you can't expect that long-standing traditions and attitudes will change in a couple of years...that's just utterly foolish. Take Korea for instance...how long has it been in contact with the West? And how many attitudes and traditions (modified to an extent by technological advances) exist from the past to today? |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 7:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
| Our only avenue of assistance was probably to quietly fund it, and give quiet assistance in the way of expertise. And not holler about it. |
To continue the bizarro event of bb and I agreeing... I agree.
As the saying goes; "bombing for peace (or women's lib) is like fuc$ing for virginity". |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 8:06 pm Post subject: Re: Women in Afghanistan - this makes me sick |
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| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
As regards (b) if we weren't fighting the Taliban we could probably devote more resources to education and protecting citizens (especially women). They certainly don't help and are currently taking up most of the attention and resources.
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That goes back to my complaint that if we were really going to do it, we should have done it properly. We never committed the finance, manpower or resources to getting the job of eradicating the Taliban properly done. Securing Kabul (and the route of an oil pipeline) seemed to be the real concern. However, we talk as if the Taliban were the only problem; their substitutes are little better.
I also doubt that if the Taliban all disappeared tomorrow, those 'freed up resources' would be used to make things better for women. I doubt it very much. We are not really there to better Afghani women, that was just a shallow pretext. |
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postfundie
Joined: 28 May 2004
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| Posted: Sat Feb 10, 2007 2:12 am Post subject: |
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| We are not really there to better Afghani women, that was just a shallow pretext. |
Yes right we were there for the oil...oops sorry that natural gas pipe line....opps sorry just there to for Bush and Blair to pretend they care about women and gain feminist votes to become university presidents after they retire... |
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kimchi story
Joined: 23 Nov 2006
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| Posted: Sat Feb 10, 2007 3:15 am Post subject: |
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US backs muja hadine (however you wanna romanize that word) to keep the godless Soviets at bay.
The muja sucks so bad that the Taliban is welcomed by the locals as a liberating force.
US attacks Taliban because of their connection to AL Quaeda and that organization's ties to attacks on the US.
I am inclined to believe that Afghan women today have it better than they did under the US backed muja hadine - a double whammy in light of the points raised by the OP.
Given the nightmare that this whole thing has been, the rhetoric kinda makes sense. It's not about oil, nor is it about women. It's about a protestant superpower jockeying for control of a very non protestant region that happens to have a wealth of cultural and economic resources.
It's about God, and as long as it's about God women are faced with the template - the prototype - of Eve. And, of course, this can't addressed in public discourse.
Bleak, but tell me I'm wrong. I would like to be wrong on this one. |
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