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Hillary Clinton's Dangerous Defense of Afghan Women
Last week,
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged that the United States will not abandon Afghan women and girls today as Afghan President Hamid Karzai is visiting the United States.
According to the Associated Press, Clinton told three senior women Afghan officials who were traveling with Karzai that "We will not abandon you, we will stand with you always." Clinton also said it is "essential that women's rights and women's opportunities are not sacrificed or trampled on in the reconciliation process." Her statements indicate that the US will not support reconciliation with Taliban militants unless they "respect women's rights," renounce the Taliban, and abide by the country's laws, reported the Canadian Press.
Forgive my cynicism but we abandoned Afghan women many years ago, and greatly exacerbated their plight when we cynically used them as a justification to destroy their country and our continued military presence is only making things worse. This latest statement from Clinton reads like yet another ploy to use the lives of Afghan women as an excuse-this time for not talking to the Taliban. While I am in no way saying that we should condone the Taliban's misogyny, our military presence is not the key to addressing that issue. In fact it is likely making matters worse.
Women's lives have always been part of the battleground over which opposing forces fight. However, as Laura Carlsen points out, it has gotten much worse in recent years:
* At the turn of the 20th century, 5% of war casualties were civilians * In World War I, 15% were civilians * In World War II, the figure leapt to a 65% civilian death toll, as whole cities were bombed * By the mid-nineties, 75% of war deaths were civilians * Today, 90% of the human war toll are civilians-the majority women and children
Forget the complaints of "collateral damage". As military leaders brag that modern technology has produced the most accurate weapons in history, during war strikes in places like Iraq or Afghanistan, women and children die.
They are not the collateral damage-they are the targets.
As this blog pointed out recently, despite assurances that this is not the case, there is anecdotal evidence that the U.S. military is still using training chants that encourage the killing of innocent women and children.
I went down to the market where all the women shop
I pulled out my machete and I begin to chop
I went down to the park where all the children play
I pulled out my machine gun and I begin to spray.
What was that about not sacrificing or trampling on women's human rights?
- Posted in
23 Comments so far
Show AllHillary Clinton is as funny as Obama!! "will not abandon Afghan women"?
Have any of you seen ANY pictures of women in Afghanistan where women are not still wearing tents over their heads? When US drone bombs fall on Afghan women, do they not bleed???
jlocke: Thanks for quoting from Shakespeare's most famous anti-war speech uttered by Sir Tobias, the fat man.
Sioux Rose
This is recycled Laura Bush P.R. Just as the premise for attacking Iraq was based on drummed up false evidence. The exact same PR operations and modus operandi are being used in the martial march from one nation (with oil/gas) to another. It's a crying shame that these ploys work on enough of a mis-informed public to do the "trick" of creating an expensively manufactured form of consent.
WAR is the enemy to women and children. That's the bottom line and the statistics that show that 90% of everyday civilians are now seen as collateral damage says it all. If any of us were in a class and only got 10% of the answers right on a test, we'd not only fail, we'd be humiliated by our classmates. The law of averages even holds better odds than our military. For all its "smart" bombs and high-priced navigational tools, it just murders everything in its path. And since "the path" of most lands is peopled by everyday people, these innocents are viewed as being in "the way."
This massive homocidal machine MUST be stopped. For all the horrors of the gaping Gulf (waters) wound, it is my fervent prayer that it put a lid on conquests for or about oil. THIS is the karma washing back up on our shores. it's going to be expensive on all levels.
And Hillary Clinton BADLY needs a soul transplant! All that money must have poisoned whatever humanity she began this lifetime in possession of.
I believe Afghan women would say to Hillary the corporate war-mongering whore, "we don't need your protection, we need you/the U.S. to mind your business, becuase we are quite capable of working for change on our own in OUR country". As a matter of fact, only 9% of Afghans support the U.S. military invasion -- 9%!!! More than 80% want foreign troops out of their country -- when foreign troops leave they feel they will be more safe, and who can blame them?
Once again I recommend this "Onion" report:
U.S. Condemned For Pre-Emptive Use of Hillary Clinton Against Pakistan
"We reserve the right to use Hillary Clinton in situations where all other options have failed."
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/u_s_condemned_for_pre_emptive_use
The majority in Gaza are women and children.
Remember this. There is no Taliban. At least there was no Taliban following the great invasion. They didn't exist. Now there is Taliban. Bad, bad Taliban. The Taliban are simply resistance fighters for Pashtuns that want to be left alone. They have good reason to want that. They are the original Afghanis, the one block that held their own. Pashtuns like everybody else want to be left in peace. They are happy to stay together. They have had many enemies. They are like the Apache or the Comanche?
Except there are 60m of Pashtuns. Ok they stay at home, but they are in reality as big a population as Britain is. They will resist any power that disturbs their lands.
Ask the Brits? Look at Ireland for example.
They'll win too. They couldn't have done or be confident of doing so without the support of their women and children. They are family incorporated. Its a family thing and a land thing! A traditional thing! Its an assured thing too. They have no choice and if they had this would be their choice anyway. They will remain where they are or they will disappear and be dispersed. They won't do the latter for a long, long time. Not without a struggle and a fight. That's why they are where they are. Are what they are. A formidable people in all respects. Generous and hospitable to visitors. I know this from first hand reports and from experience.
Eventually, there will have to be negotiations and foreign forces will have to leave. Such a pity about Obama and 'the most powerful man in the world' media business? Pity too for poor soldiers, countless families and relatives, friends and lovers of those poor souls who are taken by Drones and well stocked killers. If you like for women and children don't kill their fathers and brothers Mrs Clinton. Not in the Third World don't. Not abroad. Lots of human suffering for profit so Clinton can look good on camera?
What a laugh!
The original Taliban who won the civil war were misogynists relatively speaking, but no more so than were their Afghan enemies. They are uneducated, indoctrinated and a proud folk! Traditionally. Civil war does strange things to people? They are and have been as strong as you will find anywhere. While its leadership came under the cosh from the USA under Bush, they met in conference and reasonably asked for evidence about Osama Bin Laden who was being confined confined at the time by them? America laughed at such an outrageous suggestion by barbarians and bombed them.
That didn't go down well, understandably.
I've not been there. But here's what happens. Civilians are scared. Terrified! They don't want to have foreigners especially those who they feel are bullying them to desert their tribal cohesion. Some will change sides and do so again. They are smart and clever. They know the score! The NATO lead US troops better watch out from now on. Long protracted occupation in Pashtun lands? Give me a break! Read what the Soviet troops said?
Clinton and Laura are in the same mould as Thatcher and Merkle. Sexy freedom, full spectrum loving girls? Standing up for feminine influences on mankind.
Just like George Junior did for masculine influence?
Its a wonder they haven't advertised in their Capitalist Capitals for knickers?
'Beauty in in the eye of the beholder', said Shakespeare. I'm a shaking that spear over here boss!
What a psycopath liar, regenerating the woman flogging myth.
I will garantee, all the flogging videos on YouTube are
CIA remakes.
Any excuse , any lie for public opinion
Here is the Bi... fax # Send Hilary some generous faxes.
202-647-2283
a smug fax a day
The USA sold out the Afghan women during the Carter regime, when to attack the Soviet Union they recruited 'freedom fighters' with slogans such as - "the Communists will liberate your women", which of course they would have. Peace is no longer attacking progressive ideas.
Thank you, Tomsk!
At least I'm not the only one saying it any more.
And, Baboon - you're an idiot!
Look it up in Google. Any body you can think of and tie them
to the Pipeline. It's oil again. Hillary is privy to the information and knows full well we are there for the Pipeline.
"I went down to the market where all the women shop
I pulled out my machete and I begin to chop
I went down to the park where all the children play
I pulled out my machine gun and I begin to spray."
What a bunch of sick fucks they're churning out.
These people will come back and be your neighbors, co-workers, cops.
Hilary Clinton would have been the same neo-liberal hawk president Obama is.
Hillary Clinton defends women's' rights—in Afghanistan, in Communist China, and around the world—and somehow she is blamed for all the civilian deaths in both world wars and the sadistic training chants used by the U.S. military?
Show me the evidence! Did she write that training chant? Did she order the bombing of Nagasaki? Did she order the escalation of the war in Afghanistan?
This is propaganda. It's hatemongering. It's trash. Not to mention, just plain stupid.
Naturally May 19th, 2010 4:07 am
Do you really believe that anyone who is a Secretary of State of the United States Government would really have a soul that would truly be concerned about human life of innocent woman and children?
I hope do hope that sometime very soon you will allow yourself to see the true nature of Americas soulless empire of death and destruction in the name of greed and power.
Once your are able to see through the propaganda that drowns the majority of our citizen minds and clouds their judgement you will have less patience for the criminals that control the empire but far more patience with many of our fellow countrymen that have fallen prey to the lies that bind thier minds and pit each other against one another rather than join arms and taking up the fight against the criminal elite that ruthlessly oppress us.
Peace!
Cosmopolis
A Review of Cosmopolitics
Revue de cosmopolitique
To Lucinda Marshall
Dear Colleague,
I read with great interest the paper discussed above and would like to invite you to present your views to the readers of "Cosmopolis", a new journal of Cosmopolitics and International Relations launched some time ago in cooperation with the Canadian Encyclopédie de l'Agora and the Belgian Espace encyclopédique Wallonie-Bruxelles. The journal's aim is to inquire into the contemporary dimensions of a renewed cosmopolitan perspective, whether political, cultural, scientific or related to any relevant theme.
As the concerns expressed in your paper are relevant to the editorial perspective of Cosmopolis, I should be grateful if you could provide us with a paper or a synthetic note.
More generally, our journal welcomes submissions related to universal stakes with a global scope, whether political, social, economic, philosophical or other. I attach a presentation for your information.
Thank you for your attention to this invitation,
Sincerely,
Dr. Paul GHILS
Editor
Cosmopolis
cosmopolis@skynet.be
http://www.agora.qc.ca/cosmopolis
Former Editor
Transnational Associations, UIA, Brussels
http://www.uia.org/ta
Haute école de Bruxelles/ISTI
For most, war has become too sanitized.
When you drop bombs from high altitude, or control a drone from tens of thousands of miles away, as though playing a video game, you never see the tragedy of war. We aren't seeing the casualties in these wars that we saw in Vietnam, because the troops on the ground are not as exposed. Much of the destruction is done by the air attacks, and ground troops just go in and mop up.
We MUST stop teaching our children to be violent.
Progressive Patriot- The soldiers might not see the horrors of war, but with the internet and speed of information, more and more ordinary citizens are getting to see how grisly it is. Look at how well the film Fahrenheit 911 did. That film was anything but sanitized.
Afghan Women Protest Marital Rape Law; Men Spit and Stone Them
April 16, 2009
By Rady Ananda
Last month, the new Afghanistan parliament passed the “Shia Family Law” which legitimizes marital rape and child marriage for Shia Muslims who make up ~15% of the population. At least 300 women protested the law, with their faces exposed. Nearly 1,000 Afghan men and their slaves turned maniacal and stoned the protesters. Police struggled to keep the two groups apart, reports the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA).
...‘You are a dog! You are not a Shiite woman!’ one man shouted to a young woman in a headscarf holding aloft a banner that said ‘We don’t want Taliban law.’ The woman did not shout back at the man, but told him: ‘This is my land and my people.’
Read full report:
http://radyananda.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/afghan-women-protest-marital-rape-law-men-spit-and-stone-them/
________________
Wow! How could that horrible Hillary Clinton tell Afghan women who came to Washington last week that it's "essential that women's rights and women's opportunities are not sacrificed or trampled on in the reconciliation process?!!" "We will not abandon you, we will stand with you always," she had the nerve to tell them! How dare she?
Back in the real world, Obama could not care less. He's the decider who chooses to escalate the war in Afghanistan and expand it to Pakistan. It's his policy that is killing thousands of innocent civilians, exponentially multiplying the hatred of America, further weakening the Afghan puppet government, and strengthening the hand of both the Taliban in Afghanistan and al Qaeda in Pakistan.
Yet CD chooses to publish this irrational screed that doesn't even mention Obama's name, but instead blames Hillary Clinton?! And, not just for Obama's insane AfPak policies, but for two world wars and the U.S. army's sadism as well!
All too predictably, mindless-tribe liberals, corporatists and Obamabots respond with their own amplifications of the hate-mongering. Perhaps they would like Hillary to be stoned as well.
Correction: mindless-tribe liberals, corporatists, Obamabots and misogynist trolls.
I would like to have Hilary offer her daughter to fight in her illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan if she believes in wasting hundreds of thousands of innocent lives and billions of dollars to insure womens rights on the opposite side of the world.
If that is truly the reason she backs an illegal invasion and occupation of those countries or just another lie used to fuel the left wing approval of war.
In fact any member of this government that has the right to vote up or down on war should have to enlist their children for the war they vote for or agree with.
You apparently do not have the facts. Did you even bother to read the news reports (linked above) that underlie this Common Dreams-published opinion piece? If you did, you would know that,
"Speaking Thursday at a Washington think-tank with Afghan President Hamid Karzai (HAH'-mihd KAR'-zeye), Clinton said she supports Karzai's efforts to persuade insurgents to lay down their arms.
But she said militants must renounce terrorist ties and agree to abide by Afghanistan's laws. She says "They must respect women's rights."
Secondly, the wars you describe are Obama's wars. He is the one who deserves your scorn. He is the one who is even ESCALATING Afghanistan, and EXPANDING war into Pakistan. Even Bush did not do that.
Hillary, on the other hand, as Secretary of State, is our chief diplomat. It's her job to negotiate a diplomatic solution. In fact, she is about the only person in the Obama administration who is seeking diplomatic alternatives to war. In this instance, she simply said that women's rights have to be part of the solution. That is an admirable stance.
And, lastly, she does not have a "right to vote up or down on war," as you suggest. Only the President and members of Congress have that power. By your standard, the daughters that would have to go to war would be Obama's—at the age of eighteen. I think that would be a great idea, and in fact would have the effect you desire, since Obama is the only one who can unilaterally decide to bring the troops home, and allow the U.N. to come in and reconstruction efforts to begin.