The truth about Afghan women
Unherd,
by
Cheryl Benard
Original Article
Posted By: Judy W.,
9/17/2021 8:33:16 AM
When I think about the West’s project to liberate Afghan women, my mind conjures a line from T.S. Eliot: “The last temptation is the greatest treason/to do the right deed for the wrong reason.” In Afghanistan, we engaged in a twenty-year, deliciously self-righteous, tragically ill-designed mission best expressed by flipping that sentence.
We did the wrong thing, perhaps for the right reason. We wanted to develop that country and rescue Afghan women. Their lives were hellish, girls banned from school, women forbidden to leave their homes except in the company of a male guardian, vigilantes beating them with sticks if their burqa was too short.
When the U.S. first invaded Afghanistan, my take was that the approach should be, "You can have any government you would like, except for that one (the Taliban), or one like it. Know that if you cause problems for us again, we will be back. Have a nice life."
22 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
sanspeur 9/17/2021 8:55:17 AM (No. 917343)
Centuries of inbreeding among many in this population is anever mentioned, an unwritten reason for the sad , sorry state of many Afghan people ..Intelligence and health are compromised , compounded by consanguanation and lack of medical , educational resources to stop that primitive, deadly practice.
31 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
GO3 9/17/2021 9:12:00 AM (No. 917364)
Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan: "We're not here to do the right thing, we're here to follow effing orders."
14 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
Maggie2u 9/17/2021 9:15:24 AM (No. 917368)
Is it much better in other muslim countries? Like Saudi Arabia? Not long ago, 15 young teen-age girls were murdered by the 'vice' police. The girls were fleeing their burning school and the police threw them back into the inferno because they weren't dressed 'appropriately'. A guard refused to unlock a gate to let some escape, even though there were men outside pleading with him to do so.
Last month I saw on Fox News a western woman was teaching a class of women. She was showing them a picture of a urinal and asked them if they knew what it was. She explained it was a painting in some museum in France painted by a famous artist. Yeah, like this is what these women needed. No, this is what some Ivy League female pukes thought they needed. For these past 20 years we should have armed and trained the women how to fight.
28 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
Roscoelewis 9/17/2021 9:41:21 AM (No. 917395)
Treatment of women in all Muslim cultures is the same - primitive. It's just a matter of degree. There's no changing it from the outside. It will be that way for many, many generations.
21 people like this.
When I was in high school in the 60s I was reading books in our library about the horrors of female life in Afghanistan and other MUslim countries. In the early 2000s I was watching on tv the horror of being a female in Afghanistan.
We had a chance to help alleviate the monstrousness of those women’s lives ALittle Bit during the 20 years we were there but what did we do? We tried to shove queer rights and lesbianism and radical feminism down their throats. Even I find this thinking and behavior repulsive. Imagine those peoples reactions.
Our betters, those intelligentsia and academics and leaders and progressive thinkers aren’t worth a bucket of cold urine.Anywhere in the world.
28 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
red1066 9/17/2021 10:19:38 AM (No. 917428)
We went into Afghanistan in the first place to eliminate terrorists. But that wasn't enough for the politicians and military brass. That could have been done is short order if we had used the weaponry available to us and gone attacked them where they were hiding. But no. The politicians wanted to westernize a 7th century culture and the military brass wanted to pad their defense budget and increase their stock holdings in companies that produce military hardware.
23 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
downnout 9/17/2021 10:25:42 AM (No. 917434)
One need only look at the current crop of activists and advocates to see that their primary goal is self-enrichment. I should include politicians in the group as well.
17 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
Italiano 9/17/2021 10:29:16 AM (No. 917437)
Hopefully, we've learned a lesson. Doubtful, though. We never do.
15 people like this.
The rainbow flag the liberals had flying over the U.S. embassy turned out to be just another bad idea.
How in the hell are idiots who would think that was smart policy still be “serving” in our government?
There needs to be a wholesale cleaning out of leftists in all of government when President Trump or Desantis take office.
18 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
felixcat 9/17/2021 10:56:32 AM (No. 917476)
I would just like for the federal government in this country to stay out of our lives. No vaccine mandates, nothing.
12 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
AntiStatist 9/17/2021 10:57:18 AM (No. 917477)
Great read.
9 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
bighambone 9/17/2021 11:05:34 AM (No. 917484)
Bottom line all the USA accomplished regarding Afghan women and girls over twenty years in that fundamentalist Islamic tribal place was to strip Afghanistan of a lot of the Afghan educated classes and resettle them in the USA and other Western countries.
Now a lot of the DC “UniParty” are claiming that virtually all Afghan women and girls should now be considered to be “vulnerable” Afghans and be allowed to resettle in the USA. Which if such a mass migration came to fruition would amount to about 18 million Afghan women and girls coming to the USA, and who once in the USA as refugees, would almost immediately gain the “right” under the international and USA refugee laws to bring their entire foreign families to the USA to rejoin them. Common sense will tell you that the Taliban and the other Islamist terrorist organizations in Afghanistan are not about to allow huge numbers of Afghan women and girls to leave Afghanistan to be resettled in the USA and other Western countries.
9 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
Clinger 9/17/2021 11:22:44 AM (No. 917505)
We were busy pandering to our own left earning our woke virtue credentials. Our priority was our own egos not the conditions of others.
12 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
Venturer 9/17/2021 11:49:51 AM (No. 917538)
Do Afghan women want to be saved.?
Look around.
Muslim women in America wearing Burka's and Hijabs.
They are not leaving their husbands or their religion. In fact some American black women want to join them in their submissiveness. Farrakhan women appear to love being treated as slaves.
Some women are into S&M obviously. Leave them to their own pleasures.
14 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
Vaquero45 9/17/2021 12:41:33 PM (No. 917604)
This is a very interesting article. I suspect the author is entirely correct. It’s ugly; but then, the truth is sometimes ugly.
The author’s final point is in keeping with my own opinion. Leave them the hell alone. As is the case with every other backward society, they’re going to have to work out their problems, and arrive at solutions, on their own. Throwing money and experts at their problems is a waste of time. Islamic societies are handicapped in this regard by fourteen centuries of inbreeding, so it’s not going to happen in our lifetimes. The only solution is to let them work it out, while letting them know that if they try to export their way of life to our shores, we’ll wipe them off the face of the Earth.
13 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
Kumoan 9/17/2021 2:11:43 PM (No. 917686)
If logic were to prevail in future [LOL] under any future Repub President, any
counter-attack against evil-doers would be designed, from the get-go, to be
completed well within the term of that President: get in, get it done and get out,
signed, sealed, delivered.
The bad guys can learn their lesson, if not, rinse and repeat [within the term of
a Repub President.]
Immediate victory in Afghastlistan and Iraq was turned into a financial, political and
military quagmire and as long as fedgov is populated with degree holders, nothing
will change.
5 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
DVC 9/17/2021 2:18:44 PM (No. 917704)
I read all of this with real sympathy. It is sad that any human has to live in medieval conditions. It is sad that they die young from horrible life conditions.
But it is crucial to keep in mind that Afghan women will have Afghan children. And those Afghan children will be taught from their Koran that it is their most important, lifelong religious duty to enslave, convert or kill any unbeliever that they run across and have power over.
Islam was created by a violent, barbaric desert warlord, and is a cancer on humanity. Until Islam is eliminated from Planet Earth, we will never, ever know peace. Islam is implacable, and has been enslaving and killing "the unbelievers" for 1400 years. And they will never stop until we are all dead or they are all dead, very sad to say.
10 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
Strike3 9/17/2021 2:52:41 PM (No. 917755)
The problem with this theory is that it's not just one country that abuses women, it's the entire religion of Islam because anything started by a child-raping pervert and bloodthirsty warlord is not going to turn into rose petals and bunny rabbits. It's been fourteen centuries, don't people get it yet? Raping, torture and killing makes most people sick, it makes other people drool in anticipation.
5 people like this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
udanja99 9/17/2021 4:26:05 PM (No. 917868)
Yes, #10. But not quite as stupid as 0bama sending a homosexual (Christopher Stevens) to be ambassador in Libya. We all know how that turned out.
3 people like this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
doctorfixit 9/18/2021 2:49:15 AM (No. 918308)
They're Muslims. That's what they signed up for. You want better treatment? Stop being Muslim.
3 people like this.
Reply 22 - Posted by:
mifla 9/18/2021 5:51:46 AM (No. 918371)
I think we should send Hillary, Pelosi, and AOC to Afghanistan to lecture the Taliban on women's rights.
3 people like this.
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Comments:
This is very sad, but I think the author is correct. The women the U.S. helped were a tiny minority that probably didn't need much help; they went on to benefit themselves and get lionized by westerners while very few helped any other Afghan women, whose life expectancy is 45 years. We should butt out of other people's cultures since we are incapable of understanding the least thing about them. (That is, the government and the elites. There may be private groups that are helpful.)