The Afghan government gave the West another example how it is struggling to defeat the Taliban by joining it. The government has arrested the manager of a popular Afghan television network for refusing to censor images of women dancing in short skirts and plunging necklines. Fahim Khodamani of Emrose TV was arrested on the crime of broadcasting un-Islamic images.
The government says that the Taliban uses such images to rally supporters. Yet, that is saying that the best way to protect rights is to suppress them so that their exercise cannot be used by the opposition. If the Afghan government wants to win this war, it has to do so in the preservation of free speech and free press rights. The arrest seems responsive to a call from Afghanistan’s top Muslim clerics for a crackdown on the “airing prohibited and hypocritical anti-Islam programs and immoral scenes and movies.”
As the government slides further into the medieval traditions of Taliban-like Islam, many in this country will begin to question why American men and women are dying or risking their lives in that country. American women are serving in a country where women and girls are increasingly viewed as chattel and subject to tremendous abuse. If the country is going to strip rights from women, reporters, and dissidents, it may become increasing difficult to justify our tremendous loss of lives and treasure.
For the full story, click here.
It is quite obvious that Afghanistan is quickly returning to the 12th century. I know of no reason that we should be supporting that effort. The existing Afghan government is thoroughly corrupt and lacks the will, and probably the ability, to stop the tide. The Obama administration needs to thoroughly revisit our strategic goals in that country before we commit another life or another dollar. It is a failed state and we can’t revive it. We apparently learned nothing from the Russian experience.
MikeA:
or the British either. I found a quote from about 1900 on Afghanistan by some British statesman or general and it was pretty accurate as to the temperment of the people.
“those who ignore history……….”
Mike A., I couldn’t agree more. We don’t have the money for empire and we certainly should not be sending our people into harms way with this bad strategy. Here’s a clip and link to Jim Hightower on what he calls, “the 3rd surge”, military contractors. These mercenaries are bad news in every way except to the wealthy people who own the companies. We should not tolerate the hiring of mercenaries by the US.
“Obama’s Triple Surge Into Afghanistan
by Jim Hightower
Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to war we go!
As President Barack Obama begins winding down the Bush war in Iraq, he is building up his own war farther east. We’re told that it will be a new, expanded, extra-special American adventure in Afghanistan, involving a vigorous surge strategy to “stabilize” this perpetually unstable land.
The initial surge will add 17,000 troops to the 36,000 already there. Then, later this year, there is to be a second troop surge of another 17,000 or so. This mass of soldiers is expected to be deployed to a series of new garrisons to be built in far-flung regions of this impoverished, rural, mostly illiterate warlord state that is ruled by hundreds of fractious, heavily armed tribal leaders. We’re not told how much this escalation will cost, but it will at least double the $2 billion a month that American taxpayers are already shelling out for the Afghan war…
What Obama has not mentioned is that, in addition to soldiers and civilians, there is a third surge in his plan: private military contractors. Yes, another privatized army, such as the one in Iraq. There, the Halliburtons, Blackwaters and other war profiteers ran rampant, shortchanging our troops, ripping off taxpayers, killing civilians and doing deep damage to America’s good name.
Already, there are 71,000 private contractors operating in Afghanistan, and many more are preparing to deploy as Pentagon spending ramps up for Obama’s war. The military is now offering new contracts to security firms to provide armed employees (aka, mercenaries) to guard U.S. bases and convoys. Despite the widespread contractor abuses in Iraq, Pentagon chief Robert Gates defends the ongoing privatization push: “The use of contractor security personnel is vital to supporting the forward-operating bases in certain parts of the country,” he declared in a February letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee…
Meanwhile, here’s an interesting twist to Obama’s contractor surge: the for-hire guards protecting our bases and convoys will not likely be Americans. The Associated Press has reported that of the 3,847 security contractors in Afghanistan, only nine are U.S. firms…
What they got from DynCorp was a bunch of highly paid American “advisors” who were unqualified and knew nothing about the country. Some 70,000 police were to be trained, but less than half that number actually went through the ridiculous eight-week program, which included no field training.
A 2006 U.S. report on the DynCorp trainees deemed them to be “incapable of carrying out routine law enforcement work.” Meanwhile, no one knows how many of the trainees ever reported for duty, or what happened to thousands of missing trucks and other pieces of police equipment that had been issued for the training.
The punch line of this joke is that DynCorp got another contract ($317 million) last August to “continue training civilian police forces in Afghanistan.”
Excuse me for saying it, but Obama is about to sink us – and his presidency – into a mess.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/25
The Taliban Part 2. This is one sequel that I am not looking forward to.