Comments on: Women just pawns in wars over opium, energy & power

By: Syd Walker

Syd Walker — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 02:18:42 +0000

Thanks for your comment.

To clarify my own position: I think war is unpopular and invading other countries is unpopular.

To blaunt anti-war sentiment, various tricks are used from time to time.

The women’s rights ‘card’ is played from time to time, especially when justifying attacks on Muslim countries.

Some people who get swept up in this may well be sincere and well-meaning, but I agree that at the top, this agenda is utterly insincere.

In the case of Afghanistan, it’s now been such a long time since US (and allied) troops invaded that we can judge the case for invading on its historical merits. The evidence seems clear on that front and I tried to present some of it in the article.

This war has been disastrous for Afghan women as a whole. Continuing the war is a recipe for continuing misery and disaster.

By: Jay

Jay — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:42:53 +0000

You’re right that Western concerns over women’s rights are not sincere although I would disagree with the common assumption that they are merely a pretext to take resources out of the middle-east.

The real fact that no one on either the left or the right wants to touch is that Bush was eager to impose feminism on the middle-east because deep down he knows feminism weakens society and will keep the middle-eastern birth rate lower. Feminism is simply a powerful weapon used to wreak have on traditional ethnic cultures and reduce them to shallow materialistic consumer cultures like our own. Women were used as pawns in the exact same way in Western nations.

If we really believed that feminism worked, let’s let feminism flourish in our own society and allow the middle-east to determine its own social course based on its traditions. Natural selection will favor the society that has chosen wisely. But no liberal really wants to try to let evolution take its course and that’s the real reason why Pelosi and others won’t ever really stand up to Bush.

I am not making any of this up. Check out Thomas Barnett’s books. The Pentagon insider directly states that redefining gender roles in the middle-east is integral to making consumerism and capitalism work in the middle-east.

By: Syd Walker

Syd Walker — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 02:17:59 +0000

Thanks Catherine. Wwoolf is the better looking of the two of us, no doubt about it. He is also featured in this blog in a speculative article about prehistory - see The Shaggy Dog of Giza

By: Catherine

Catherine — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 01:28:46 +0000

OOh, doggy. I just saw him/her, over to the left. What’s his/her name?

Ok, you look fine, too.

By: Syd Walker

Syd Walker — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:37:26 +0000

Well said Catherine and thanks for your comment. I agree about prepositions. This is really one big war ON humanity.

Here’s a short extract from another article on the RAWA website: Why Is a Leading Feminist Organization Lending Its Name to Support Escalation in Afghanistan?

Years ago, following the initial military success of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the temporary fall of the Taliban, the people of Afghanistan were promised that the occupying armies would rebuild the country and improve life for the Afghan people.

Today, eight years after the U.S. entered Kabul, there are still piles of garbage in the streets. There is no running water. There is only intermittent electricity in the cities, and none in the countryside. Afghans live under the constant threat of military violence.

The U.S. invasion has been a failure, and increasing the U.S. troop presence will not undo the destruction the war has brought to the daily lives of Afghans.

As humanitarians and as feminists, it is the welfare of the civilian population in Afghanistan that concerns us most deeply. That is why it was so discouraging to learn that the Feminist Majority Foundation has lent its good name — and the good name of feminism in general — to advocate for further troop escalation and war.

On its foundation Web site, the first stated objective of the Feminist Majority Foundation’s “Campaign for Afghan Women and Girls” is to “expand peacekeeping forces.”

First of all, coalition troops are combat forces and are there to fight a war, not to preserve peace. Not even the Pentagon uses that language to describe U.S. forces there. More importantly, the tired claim that one of the chief objectives of the military occupation of Afghanistan is to liberate Afghan women is not only absurd, it is offensive.

Waging war does not lead to the liberation of women anywhere. Women always disproportionately suffer the effects of war, and to think that women’s rights can be won with bullets and bloodshed is a position dangerous in its naïveté. The Feminist Majority should know this instinctively.

By: Catherine

Catherine — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 18:48:24 +0000

The degree to which policies/political structures oppressive to women can be kept in place while the U.S. can masquerade as liberators is the degree to which the U.S. can “recruit” women’s participation/support in their ongoing wars, as witness recent statement of support for the war in Afghanistan by the Global Fund for Women. You’d think they’d try different tactics, but if the old ones work . . .

By the way, why do we continue to use the preposition “in” related to the various wars? It’s the war ON Afghanistan, the war ON Iraq, the Israeli war ON Palestine.

Thanks for your site.

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 12:36:49 +0000

Afghanistan was just one of many places where the USA and the USSR were fighting their proxy war at the time. There was genuine resistance in the countryside against the reforms imposed from Kabul. The Americans exploited this, because the Russians were supporting the other side. Similar scenarios were being played out in Africa, in South East Asia, in South America and elsewhere.

There is a long history of rivalry between the USA and the USSR in Afghanistan and the Afghanis were experts at playing out the various “benefactors” against each other.

The original “Lonely Planet-Overland to Asia” guide of 1978 describes how the road from Herat (near the Iran border) to Kabul was financed by the Americans and the road from Kabul to Mazar-i-Sharif (near the Russian border) was financed by the Russians.

It is more than ironic that the USA, after creating a Vietnam for the Russians, are now entangled in a second Vietnam of their own.

This 2001 article from The Central Asia-Caucasus Institute (which describes itself as independent and privately funded) sheds some interesting light on Israel’s involvement and some of the unexpected partnerships and alliances it has formed to pursue mutual interests.

http://www.cacianalyst.org/?q=node/214/print

It would seem that there are many bit payers involved in this horrible tragedy. Pity the poor Afghani…

By: mark

mark — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 05:03:47 +0000

I reckon the article is on the money, Syd. I’ve no doubt the US and Israel will at some point use the flimsy nuclear pretext to try to steal Iran’s resources.