We have previously discussed Afghan President Hamid Karzai stated inclinations toward the Taliban and harsh treatment of women. Karzai now appears to be moving more aggressively to this Sharia-based vision for women — a vision that expressly devalues their worth and endorses beatings by their husbands. This week, Karzai endorsed an edict from the Afghan Ulema Council — Afghanistan’s highest Islamic authority — that women are worth less than men and supporting “Sharia-compliant” beatings of women. That is the model government that we have created with the loss of both our men and women as well as hundreds of billions of dollars. We are still spending billions on the country as it embraces the Taliban and harsh Sharia principles.
The edit states that “Men are fundamental and women are secondary.” It further demands segregation of men and women and prohibits women “mingling with strange men in various social activities such as education, in bazaars, in offices and other aspects of life.” It also suggests that women should not work or go to university and should wear a “full Islamic hijab.”
On Tuesday, Karzai endorsed the edit and said that it “reiterated Islamic principles and values.” Female leaders have cried foul but the shift back against full rights for women appears to be accelerating in the country — led by our hand-picked leader, Karzai. Of course, those low-value, secondary women in our military forces have been fighting to keep Karzai alive so he can sit in his palace and proclaim them to be inferior human beings.
I am not as angry that we have again created a country that stands opposed to our most fundamental values. We have a long history of such disasters around the world. Rather, I am angry that we have lost so many lives and treasure to achieve that result in Afghanistan.
Source: Telegraph
There is still time to put him on the Republican ticket.
AN,
It is truly astounding…..
We need to get the hell out of Afghanistan:
U.S. Soldiers Open Fire On Civilians In Afghanistan
Posted: 03/11/2012 8:06 am Updated: 03/11/2012 12:34 pm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/11/soldier-shooting-afghanistan_n_1337406.html?icid=maing-grid7|main5|dl1|sec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D142528
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, March 11 (Reuters) – Western forces shot dead 16 civilians including nine children in southern Kandahar province on Sunday, Afghan officials said, in a rampage that witnesses said was carried out by American soldiers who were laughing and appeared drunk.
One Afghan father who said his children were killed in the shooting spree accused soldiers of later burning the bodies.
Witnesses told Reuters they saw a group of U.S. soldiers arrive at their village in Kandahar’s Panjwayi district at around 2 am, enter homes and open fire.
The incident, one of the worst of its kind since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, is likely to deepen the divide between Washington and Kabul.
The U.S. embassy in Kabul said an American soldier had been detained over the shooting. It added that anti-U.S. reprisals were possible following the killings, which come just weeks after U.S. soldiers burned copies of the Koran at a NATO base, triggering widespread anti-Western protests.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the rampage as “intentional murders” and demanded an explanation from the United States. His office said the dead included nine children and three women.
An Afghan minister earlier told Reuters that a lone U.S. soldier had killed up to 16 people when he burst into homes in villages near his base in the middle of the night.
Panjwayi district is about 35 km (22 miles) west of the provincial capital Kandahar city. The district is considered the spiritual home of the Taliban and is believed to be a hive of insurgent activity.
Haji Samad said 11 of his relatives were killed in one house, including his children. Pictures showed blood-splattered walls where the children were killed.
“They (Americans) poured chemicals over their dead bodies and burned them,” a weeping Samad told Reuters at the scene.
“I saw that all 11 of my relatives were killed, including my children and grandchildren,” said Samad, who had left the home a day earlier.
Neighbours said they awoke to crackling gunfire from American soldiers, whom they described as laughing and drunk.
“They were all drunk and shooting all over the place,” said neighbour Agha Lala, who visited one of the homes where the incident took place. “Their bodies were riddled with bullets.”
A senior U.S. defence official said Defence Secretary Leon Panetta “was deeply saddened to hear last night of this incident and is closely monitoring reports out of Afghanistan.” The White House also expressed concern.
The Afghan Taliban would take revenge for the deaths, the group said in an e-mailed statement to media.
U.S.-AFGHAN TIES LIKELY TO PLUNGE FURTHER
The U.S. embassy in Kabul said an investigation was under way into Sunday’s shooting and that “the individual or individuals responsible for this act will be identified and brought to justice”.
The commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) General John Allen said he was “shocked and saddened” by the shooting, and promised a rapid investigation.
The Minister of Border and Tribal Affairs Asadullah Khalid, who is investigating the incident, said the soldier entered three homes, killing 11 people in the first one.
“The defence minister … is deeply shocked and saddened by the killings of 15 innocent civilians and the wounding of nine more at the hands of the coalition forces,” the Defence Ministry in Kabul said in a statement.
Civilian casualties have been a major source of friction between Karzai’s Western-backed government and U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan.
The shootings could intensify friction between Washington and Kabul as NATO prepares to hand over all security responsibilities to Afghans by the end of 2014, a process which has already started.
The Koran burning and the violence that followed, including a spate of deadly attacks against U.S. soldiers, tested brittle ties between the governments of Karzai and President Barack Obama and underscored the challenges that the West faces even as it moves to withdraw.
All foreign combat troops will withdraw by end-2014 from a costly war that has become increasingly unpopular. (Reporting by Ahmad Nadem in KANDAHAR and Hamid Shalizi in KABUL; Writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman, Editing by Dean Yates)
This all reminds me so much of my own time in the Nixon-Kissinger Fig Leaf Contingent (Vietnam 1970-72). Trying to “Iraqify” the Iraqis and “Afghanize” the Afghans, makes no more sense than trying to “Vietnamize” the Vietnamese. Americans can’t even “Americanize” America. What monumental arrogance and folly to think that a country as sub-educated and provincially self-absorbed as America could possibly understand and work to improve the lives of impoverished, war-weary foreigners half a world away.
Furthermore, I find it appalling that Attorney General Eric Holder could stand in front of a law-school audience of future lawyers and judges and tell them that “due process” — a cornerstone of Anglo-American jurisprudence dating from Magna Carta in 1215 — has nothing to do with courts, judges, juries, and the inalienable rights of defendants presumed innocent until proven otherwise. That not even one exasperated member of the audience rose to call “Bullshit!” on that travesty of an “argument” pretty much tells the tale of corruption and decline in the United States.
Bombing weddings and funerals — which tend to have women in attendance — as well as brutal home-invasion night raids to drag away or kill the men of the household, do not much advance the cause of women’s rights in either Iraq or Afghanistan. In Iraq alone, I believe, the two decades of U. S. sanctions, bombings, invasion and occupation has created something like four million refugees and 900,000 widows. I can’t see where this situation has done much for women’s rights, other than the right of impoverished single women to become desperate captives of the sex trade in and around their former home country.
I only wish to say that — however miserable the status of women in the Islamic world (not nearly so bad under “the monster” Saddam Hussein), sending the misogynist American military to “fix” things seems only to have made the situation palpably worse. Certainly the number of American female military personnel raped by their male “colleagues” has to count against the cause of world-wide women’s rights, too. America could have sent the Peace Corps, teachers, and engineers had it really wanted to help women in the Muslim world. But we sent pathological career killers, profiteering corporate camp followers, and dogs-of-war mercenaries. In this indictment, I include both Bush presidents, as well as presidents Carter, Clinton, and Obama. It seems only too clear that the United States has no business whatsoever meddling in the Muslim world, for any reason whatsoever. We have only made things worse.
And we want Cat Stevens back too !
snobby elitist sluts
good one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fZK75pXLlbY#!
it mayt be more difficult to Sharia-up over here than they anticipated…:)
sorry for the poo poo talk.
So on a serious note, why isn’t there an article busting Santorum, Gingrich, Romney and any other self-proclaimed holy roller for the same clap-trap neolithic bullshit??? People needs to be reading the Bible and shit, know what I’m sayin’?
O.k., so it’s like, you know, like it’s totally in the Bible and stuff, so like um, you know, like Jesus and God and Moses and stuff say it’s like totally true. So like you’re just a commie-muslim-terrorist if you think men and women are worth the same. Home school rules!!!!!!!!
And thy estimation shall be of the male from twenty years old even unto sixty years old, even thy estimation shall be fifty shekels of silver…. And if it be a female, then thy estimation shall be thirty shekels.
And if it be from five years old even unto twenty years old, then thy estimation shall be of the male twenty shekels, and for the female ten shekels.
And if it be from a month old even unto five years old, then thy estimation shall be of the male five shekels of silver, and for the female thy estimation shall be three shekels of silver.
And if it be from sixty years old and above; if it be a male, then thy estimation shall be fifteen shekels, and for the female ten shekels. — Leviticus 27:3-7
Who was that Alabama governor who noted the difference between
Republicans and Democrats. Something about a dime.
I don’t know much about those commenting on this blog but cautiously assume I may be one of the few or only one who has worked with Afghan women as a teacher trainer for various non-governmental agencies, both Afghan and American. I spent a year in all between 2004 and 2010 traveling and teaching in Kabul, Bomyan, Ghor, Khost and Ghazni.
Afghan women’s progress was most visible in their access to education, albeit limited by the fact that few go on to access high-school, let alone higher education. Access to health care services has improved as well. The Afghan Constitution does call for equality for both men and women. There is high quota set aside for women to participate in government but that is considered a bit of a misnomer because some of the women are there implementing their husband’s opinion. Only a few women are in ministerial positions.
I am incredibly sad to read that, as limited as the progress these past ten years has been, the women of Afghanistan are again side-lined by those in power, aided by the USG desire to get out of the country through a political process in which the USG is negotiating with the Taleban to join the Afghan government.
Afghan women’s rights do NOT deserve to be bartered away like this. They are rightfully scared, angry and worried about the US Exit plans.
I encourage all of you to visit http://www.aiusa.org where you’ll find the new actions targeting the USG to do its’ utmost best to keep the rights of women intact. The action which I helped write can be found by going to ‘our work’, ‘countries’, ‘Asia and the Pacific’ and then ‘Afghanistan’. It can also be found by going the Women Human Rights website. Several women in the cogroup have extensive knowledge of Afghanistan and the laws governing the country.
I am worried about the direction the US seems to be on in terms of women’s rights but would advise that leaving the Afghan women to their plight will hurt the cause of women’s rights as a world-wide issue. Women’s rights make more sense if we stand together and defend them by joining the world-wide struggle, and a struggle it is!
“When the Soviets took over Afghanistan and ..”
Better “Dead or Secondary And Worth Less” than “Red” would be the argument. That’s the only “most fundamental values” going on – other than “Oil, Baby, Oil”.
When the Soviets took over Afghanistan and ruled they elevated women and even allowed them into university. The U.S. used the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Saudi Arabia to create the Taliban and al-qauda. A solution would be to admit the err of our ways of Jimmy Carter and Bush and ask the Russians to come back in and send the American forces from this failed state back to New Jersey and the other states from whence they came.
Yeah, but the alternative is even worse… Sound familiar?
Is there even one Obama supporter left that thinks Obama is too far left? Every time the GOP moves to the right, Obama follows, just to keep the relationship stable.
Like I’ve read before…if you want a stable relationship…get a horse….or move to Kentucky….
Until the first world countries admit publicly that most of Sharia Law is a violation of modern Human Rights standards. The Afgans should be able to elect whoever they want. However the nation of Afghanistan, as well as many other nations, that violate Human Rights need to be held accountable in the UN and the international trade community.