The article is by an Afghani graduate student, recipient of a State Department award for bravery. She tries to make the case that it is the duty of the United States to import equal rights for women into her nation and then assure their continuation, at the cost of American lives and dollars.
I applaud her desire for a better life in Afghanistan. I hope she finds the courage to return home and take her place among her less fortunate countrymen and women who don’t have the luxury of a U.S. higher education. The changes she wants will happen only if she and others who have left Afghanistan for the west return home and take their places on the streets demanding that Afghanistan leave the 8th century and enter the 21st.
Even their return is no guarantee that they will ever obtain a unified nation with western political ideals trumping millennia of tribal culture and history in a region that no army has ever been able to solidify into a cohesive country. The single unifying force, to date, has been Islam. The fundamentalist form of Islam meshes well with the tribal culture which separates one region of Afghanistan from another, all from each other. The concepts of women as subservient chattel, unworthy of and not needing education or civic presence fits with the version of Islam most recently practiced and enforced by the Taliban.
I doubt the author’s longevity if she does return home and demand her place in the civic life of her country. I doubt her chances of effecting change, of diminishing the role of Islam compared to the sectarian western ideals she wants us to bring about and enforce. That she wants us to accomplish this task for her and others of her country indicates she knows how difficult, how nearly impossible it will be. But impossible or possible, realistic or unrealistic, the challenge and the task are not ours to complete. It will be possible only at a terrible price, greater by far than that Afghanistan has paid since the Soviet invasion and subsequent descent into near anarchy and tribalism. It needs to begin in the national capital and be spread from there by people willing to build their own nation and pay the price to pass it on to the next generation.
While it is her dream, it was just George Bush’s excuse to continue a war that he no longer really cared about, one that brought profit to his financial backers, to Cheney’s friends, and which could be tied partially to the flag-waving, bible-pounding jingoism that could be counted upon to coax yet more credulity from the GOP base. She bought the dream; many of us did not buy the excuse. I wish her well in obtaining her dream. I don’t believe we can export it for her or that we should pay the price her and her expatriate co-believers ask of us.
When I read the column I also read the comments other readers made online. Too many of them seemed to believe that the single act of providing more firearms, of arming ever person in Afghanistan, would eliminate the Taliban and would miraculously ensure equality for women (once a few women executed abusive and primitive husbands in the middle of the night). Obviously these Fox News devotees, tea party parrots, have no grasp of history, no grasp of reality. It will never occur to them that some Afghanis, particularly males, support the Taliban and like the primitive, fundamentalist nature of Islam that the Taliban demand be practiced nation-wide. It will never occur to them that the country is already flooded with weapons, or that possessing a weapon does not make one a soldier or instill legendary heroism as preached by militias and various NRA demagogues in this nation. For all their certainty that a few good men and women armed to the teeth can forge a new westward-leaning democracy in Kabul and surrounds; they don’t seem to be lining up to play their role in building the new Afghanistan. I wonder if these men (they are all males) even think about the fact that no one is asking them to help forge a “Christian” nation in place of one built on un-reconstructed Islam. If that ever hits home, it may well change their support. It will certainly lessen the possibility that they will ever join an equivalent of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. But that’s another war.
There have been a few moments of sunlight today. The creek is subsiding a bit although still high and fast. If you’ve read previous posts, you can probably match these photos from 1000 today to those from previous days.
There is a freeze warning posted for tonight.
There was a possibility of snow for the higher elevations, >3000 feet, last night. I haven’t driven or walked down valley to see if there was snow on the high peaks. But when I took Loki out last night at 2200 I saw a few flakes dancing in the light of my headlamp. Not measureable, not official, but snow, nonetheless on 17 October.
http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=37641&MR=1
By all reports, this will be a cooler than usual winter for our region. The probability of unusual rainfall is about 50% in either direction. After the drought we’ve suffered for the past several years, the best outcome would be some extra snow and some days of light rain. The aquifer needs replenishment badly; the drought is not truly broken.
This is officially an El Nino year now http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/
The cooler winter locally will, of course, bring out brigades of anti-science drones who will demand to know, “What happened to global warming?” The mob is unable to distinguish between climate and weather.
In proof of that lack of scientific knowledge, fostered beyond all belief by the previous administration and championed by the religious right who know not what they should, I offer the following graphic.
No comments:
Post a Comment