Having a bit of a problem selling the Afghanistan war, Blair and Bush wheeled out the wives to make the case for Afghan women.
Cherie Blair said: "The women in Afghanistan are as entitled as the women in any country are to have the same hopes and aspirations for ourselves and for our daughters - a right for their voices to be heard."
Laura Bush piped up with "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".
Okay, we get it, the invasion would mean a positive step in rights for the downtrodden and brutalised women of Afghanistan.
Skip on 8 years and Afghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands sexual demands, grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, requires women to get permission from their husbands to work and allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying 'blood money' to the girl if she was injured when he raped her.
Considering that we made the country what it is today, the question begs to be asked.
Afghanistan. Still worth fighting over?
11 comments:
lucy,
i don't know what kind of answer you are looking for here... instead of having a gun to defend myself and family, you would have me wait for the police to provide defense (or, more likely, paint around our bodies for the crime investigators when i have a bat and the badguys have real weapons) if someone invaded my home. so, if you think my family isn't worthy of fighting for then what is?
while we contributed to the mess in afganistan, we didnt make it what it is alone. the russians contributed. the taliban contributed. neither of them even acted like they gave a damn about the women or the children...
q
Not sure where i mentioned the American gun law bit.
My view, as i have said before, is it's not my country and all those guns are thousands of miles away from me so you can do what you please.
Agreed that Afghanistan is the result of many different countries and leaders, we are just the latest.
Nobody seemed to give a damn about the women and children apart from the brief period when they needed to drum up support.
The invasion of Afghanistan was the one that was actually about stopping terrorism though, and not so much about increasing human rights and that sort of nation-building stuff. If we hadn't emboldened the jihad people with Iraq and other continuing meddlesome behavior in the Middle East, I suspect Afghanistan would be more stable and civilized, if you will.
I don't know how it was billed over there effay but here it was all about the Taliban handing over Bin Laden or we will remove you from Government.
The offer to leave them in power if they did comply shows that the terrorism was not the main priority and we would have been happy to leave them doing what they had been doing if Bin Laden was in our hands.
That's the way I understand it went down too. But I don't understand why you say that shows it wasn't about terrorism. Al Qaeda was the terrorist, the Taliban didn't deliver them up, so we attacked. The Taliban-as bad as they are-weren't the terrorists to my knowledge- they were just harboring them. To me, offering to let the Taliban stay shows it was just about terrorism and not human rights, etc.... Where am I wrong?
lucy,
i brought gun ownership into the comment because it is logical
1. the strongest argument for using deadly force is to protect my family
2. i cant defend my family without a gun (may not be able to do it with a gun)
3. you dont support gun ownership for any reason
4. therefore, you dont support the use of deadly force to protect family
5. so, how could you support the use of force for any other reason...
Q
Remember Lucy, you're either with us or you're with the terrorists! ;-)
I kind of agree with Effay that the Afghan adventure was more about trying to find some bad guys than was... say... oooh, I dunno... to take a random example... the invasion of Iraq. Which, as we know, was all about money, cronyism, a personal vendetta, the 2004 presidential election, and control of oil.
Afghanistan is still a knotty one though, because if history has taught us nothing else about this country, it's that controlling the place in a 'top down' kinda way is more or less impossible. The west will try to have its way with them for a while, but will eventually leave, for the Afghans to go their own way.
For me effay, if we were willing to let the Taliban carry on doing what it was doing if they handed over Bin Laden, it was then all about getting hold of Bin Laden rather than anything else.
I suppose you could make the argument that the thinking was remove the top man and Al Queada would fold or even that 'hand over Bin Laden' really meant 'hand over Al Queada' but i never heard that.
Possibly the War on Terror covered those bases.
Still worth fighting over? No.
Was it ever worth fighting over? No.
Has it stoppd terrorism? No.
Did they catch Bin Laden? No.
Are terrorist attacks more likely? Yes.
Is anybody better off anywhere because of it? No.
Are the Brit soldiers dying for nothing? Yes.
Another war bought to you by Blair & Bush incorporated.
According to Wikipedia at least, Bush demanded that the Taliban hand over all terrorist leaders and shut down all terrorist training camps, etc.... I guess we're squabbling over a minor issue. I would agree with you if they had just asked for bin Laden, but I don't think that was the case.
New people always welcome Wallis and don't worry about not knowing what to say, i don't know what i'm saying most of the time.
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