What the fuck are we fighting for over there? These people may not be the Taliban, but if it walks and talks like a duck…
To continue to lose our people fighting to essentially support this government and its institutional slavery is unconscionable. As far as al Qaida is concerned, they are holed up in Pakistan anyway. Time for Canada to pull out. Right Now!
Withdrawing and leaving Afghans to create their own barbaric utopia replete with public stonings, institutionalized rape and the effective sexual slavery of half their population would be fine with me if it weren’t for two things:
Such fundamentalist savages aren’t content to stay within the confines of their medieval backwater and leave the civilized world to its own devices. Rather, history shows that they’d prefer to function as a breeding ground for terrorists whose only aim in life is to bring their own 7th century version of hate and oppression to the nations of the sane.
We can’t sit around and do nothing while a nation of backwards rapists institutionalizes the oppression of all womankind. It’s as if I knew that the guy four houses down the block beat his wife every night and I did nothing to stop it. I feel as though we owe the women and girls of Afghanistan something better than perpetual sexual enslavement.
We should concentrate on setting up a strong secular dictator in Afghanistan with a base of power in a secular military (think Ataturk’s Turkey) instead of spending NATO blood and treasure to prop up a democratic government of, for and by barbarians. A secular dictator would not only serve the interests of the West (a geographic area all too often victimized by Islamist excess) but also serve the interests of Afghan women who would at the very least no longer be subject to popularly enforced sexual enslavement.
Also, while not an issue for Canada, the United States did a lot to create the current state of affairs in Afghanistan. True, the Soviets invaded, but the US armed and trained the radicals who now have taken over large parts of the country. The US engaged in a program to radicalize the youth of Afghanistan and that program seemed to have worked only too well. From here: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/USjihadABCs.html
"In the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.
The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist code."
The US was only too successful in creating a generation of radical fundamentalists who are now in charge. Again, not Canada’s mess, but thank you for help on the cleanup.
I know a guy who was here in Kabul in the 60s and 70s and it is really interesting to hear his stories. Kabul back then was on the hippie trail and the town was full of young westerners including women in miniskirts and no one really bothered them. He says Kabul has really lost a lot of the tolerance that it once had for others. Here’s hoping we can undo what we helped do in the first place.
I once talked to a guy who had done the Paris-Kabul rally in a little Citroen 2CV and he also told about Afghanistan being, as you put it, on the hippie trail.
My colleague told me that the first time he arrived in Kabul, the passport guards were smoking hash in a hookah and offered him a hit while they stamped his visa. There were some hippie girls hanging out with them.
And one of the sources of Mustafa Kemal’s strength was the fact that he wasn’t being propped up by a foreign power. In fact, he rose to power by driving out occupying armies.
You won’t think that when the Taliban bury you up to your waist and throw stones at you.
This is one of the most barbarous regimes on the planet, together with the Saudis and yet we (Europe and America) encourage and tolerate this type of behaviour.
It’s crazy, I’m with panache45 pull out and nuke the whole place from orbit.
I just want us to become energy independent from that whole region and help Israel put up a protective wall & give anyone who won’t live peacefully there a choice- catapulted over the wall into land or catapulted into the Mediterranean. If Jordan & the more moderate Arab states want to join up, fine, but they need to stomp this crap down the moment it emerges also.
Yeah, If we just weren’t so dependent on supplies from Afghanistan. Hmmm, what exactly do we get from Afghanistan? (Besides prime opium, I mean.)
I agree, we are a civilised people who cannot condone barbaric practices against women… unless we need something you have in which case you can continue doing it with our blessing.