Reply With QuoteSo using the same logic, the violence in Iraq isn't Bush's fault either for not putting enough boots on the ground?
No, under the Taliban, women couldn't go out at all - during the day or night - without a male chaparone.Originally Posted by Jason McCullough
Most Afghan women were prohibited by the Taliban from working, from going to school, from moving anywhere outside their homes without an immediate male family member as chaperone, restricted from visiting doctors, hospitals or clinics (there were "male-only" hospitals - male doctors are prohibited from seeing any unaccompanied women. Women doctors have been largely prohibited from working at all).
Women who were administrators, nurses, and teachers (fired from their jobs because of their gender) sold everything they own to feed their children and were forced to beg on the streets because they were prohibited from earning a living. Those caught on the street without a close male relative as a chaperone or caught revealing an ankle, face, or wrist, risked being beaten on the spot by fervent religious police who wandered the city brandishing metal cables in search of dress code violators.
Girls over eight couldn't go to school. Younger children attended classes limited to teachings of the Koran. Naturally there was no voting, and women were prohibited from participating in society in any way.
The fact that there's violence against women now just shows the depth of resentment towards granting women rights and no longer treating them like slaves. Blaming the Bush adminstration for that is as crazy as blaming the Lincoln adminstration for post-Civil War lynchings in the South. And unlike the post-Civil War administration of Andrew Johnson, the new Afghani government is actually actively working to reform the society and grant rights to the historically disadvantaged -- 25% of government reps are female, for instance.
So using the same logic, the violence in Iraq isn't Bush's fault either for not putting enough boots on the ground?
The problem with making all of your arguments solely via Google is that you run into a problem when you're forced to think. The idea that you could draw a conclusion of "a resurgent Taliban" based on the news links you posted is ludicrous to the point that I'm starting to wonder if you're really arguing or just trying to waste my time, since you appear to have an awful lot of it. I'm not sure what conclusions I could draw from doing a Google search and posting a list of all the murders that happened this month in Baltimore, Maryland, but I'll bet you could come up with a really good theory. So don't disappoint me.
Yes, you donno. You're not really interested in understanding the story -- you've already formed an opinion for what I can only assume (forgive me if I'm wrong) are political reasons, and can't imagine that perhaps events that are being reported by people with the overt agendas quoted in by the Daily Telegraph correspondent might not be as they first appear from all "these reports." Imagine if there were a reporter, say for the Washington Times, who was quoted as saying she wasn't going to report any bad news from Iraq because "we've got to help the Bush Administration" -- you'd put that quote in a .sig file and dismiss any and all news stories that hadn't already been vetted by the Democratic Underground conspiracy watch. Remember that despicable (probably not to you) NYT arts piece where the reporter just casually insinuated that a pro-US Iraqi blogger was a CIA agent? If you can read that stuff and not flinch, you're not interested in the story -- you're just enjoying the echo chamber.
Anyway, I'm done with this argument, fun as it was, because as Desslock pointed out, you don't even know the facts from which you purport to be arguing. That list of AP headlines was a classic, though, so thanks for adding that to "the literature" as they say. The posturing would be amusing up to a point if it weren't about something so serious. I heard Daniel Schorr on NPR today say something like "you can't discount the possibility" that the American intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan may have led directly to the recent developments in Lebanon and Egypt and Syria. To his credit, he listed no real caveats, although the very fact that he sounded almost grudging in his acknowledgment shows you just deep the animosity goes. Like Tim Partlett said, it's too early to declare victory, but what I can't understand is why so many people seem completely emotionally invested in defeat.
The violence in Iraq is the fault of people blowing up civilians with car bombs. By your logic, your illogical posts are the fault of all those people who fail to properly correct you when you start spouting nonsense.
I know I was not going to post again, but I just couldn't help it.
Just like how 9/11 was a result of a bunch of people deciding to hijack planes and kill people? It must be nice to not have to worry about the root causes of things.The violence in Iraq is the fault of people blowing up civilians with car bombs.
If the Taliban isn't resurgent, where do all the resurgent Taliban stories come from? If things are going so well, how come crime has skyrocketed?
No, I'm not picking this up from the Telegraph or Guardian, I don't read them.
Yeah, it is silly of him to talk about the argument with obvious distaste at having to put up with a content free argument.heard Daniel Schorr on NPR today say something like "you can't discount the possibility" that the American intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan may have led directly to the recent developments in Lebanon and Egypt and Syria. To his credit, he listed no real caveats, although the very fact that he sounded almost grudging in his acknowledgment shows you just deep the animosity goes
Step 1: Invade Iraq.
Step 2: ......
Step 3: Everything we want happens! Freedom everywhere!
Oh, and that reporter talking about how the pro-Bush Iraqi blogger was a CIA agent? No, she isn't a CIA agent; there's no evidence of that.
However, when the Pentagon is quite openly going on about the foreign propaganda organizations isn't running, and there's a cash convoy going from domestic political groups to certain Iraqi factions (Chalabi comes to mind), you've got to wonder, no?
Doesn't this happen after any sudden and drastic change of government? The breakdown of central government would naturally lead to a breakdown of civil order and an upswing in crime until things can be brought back under control. I remember reading that various fomer soviet republics and Russia itself all had problems with this.
In Civ terms, the government change requires a period of anarchy :D It seems inevitable to me, though I'm not enough of a historian to point immediately to any examples of it in history.
I guess the bottom line is that I never bought into the naive idea that the Army could waltz into a country, change the government at gunpoint, and immediately tranquility and wellbeing would result. So saying that things are a little hairy in Afghanistan or Iraq with upswings in crime and so forth isn't really a compelling argument against the effectiveness of regime change. I'd want to see evidence that the new government was nonrepresentative (rigged elections) or doomed by open warfare before I'd really consider a regime change a failure.
Well, maybe. But it's been years, and it just seems to slough along without measurably improving.
Don't get me wrong, if 3 years from now there's been no measurable improvement then I'll agree that it's a failed regime change. I just still am mentally allocating some grace period for the new government.
Oh yes. I'm an absolute fool! Thank you so much for setting me straight. To think that all this time I believed that the Iraqi Shiite population consisted of transplanted Danes with a love of tanning beds!
Brett
The violence against women in Afghan society is the result of complete lawlessness, something which Bush could do something about if he hadn't been expending resources chasing mythical WMDs in Iraq. The violence against women in Afghanistan didn't start the moment they were granted rights by the new American backed government, in fact it was just as bad under the Mujahadeens after the Russians were kicked out. The violence against women in Afghanistan was actually so bad that the Taleban and their strict laws were initially welcomed, because they put an end to it.
The problem with the Afghan government, and what makes me worry about Iraq, is that while it is has all the trappings of a democratic government, it has little control over what goes on in the country. Afghanistan has been ruled mostly by regional warlords since the invasion, some of whom have had their own small tank corps. There have been attempts to reign these feudal lords in, but they aren't even the main problem. The government has little impact outside of a small area inside central Kabul, and outside the Taleban and other terrorist groups have been resurgent.
The reason violence against women, poppy production, terrorist activity and general criminality is at such high levels in Afghanistan is easily pinned down to one cause: George Bush's policies.
Assuming that there is an anti-war agenda in the press based on one Telegraph reporter saying that some unnamed press correspondent said something that would be shocking if actually true is a big mistake. The Telegraph is hyper pro-war in Iraq, probably moreso than Fox News, and has repeatedly been shown to fudge facts even when presenting actual data. When some guy says that some reporter he met said something, but doesn't have the guts to name them, it makes me think that he's just writing what he thinks they think but don't say, or is writing what people like you want to hear because that sells papers.Yes, you donno. You're not really interested in understanding the story -- you've already formed an opinion for what I can only assume (forgive me if I'm wrong) are political reasons, and can't imagine that perhaps events that are being reported by people with the overt agendas quoted in by the Daily Telegraph correspondent might not be as they first appear from all "these reports." Imagine if there were a reporter, say for the Washington Times, who was quoted as saying she wasn't going to report any bad news from Iraq because "we've got to help the Bush Administration" -- you'd put that quote in a .sig file and dismiss any and all news stories that hadn't already been vetted by the Democratic Underground conspiracy watch. Remember that despicable (probably not to you) NYT arts piece where the reporter just casually insinuated that a pro-US Iraqi blogger was a CIA agent? If you can read that stuff and not flinch, you're not interested in the story -- you're just enjoying the echo chamber.
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