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The Forum > Article Comments > Afghan screams aren’t being heard > Comments

Afghan screams aren’t being heard : Comments

By Kathy Kelly, published 26/4/2012

Societies can't be explored using a helicopter view, you have to put your feet on the ground.

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So Kathy what would you have the US and Australia and others do? Withdraw at once and leave the place to the Taliban, warlords and assorted extremists? Your innocent families will scream even louder then. If you have a solution which does not involve yet more suffering for the Afghan people then lets hear it.

More aid I hear you say? the trouble is that a great deal has gone into the place already (aside from the military presence). If you will recall Australian troops have been building infrastructure in one province, but that is only a small part of the effort. However, to judge from you piece grinding poverty is still the norm. What guarantees can you present that further aid will not simply be taken by the warlords and Taliban once the soldiers pull out? will the main industry become opium crop growing (as I believe it is already)?

As for the US involvement I was under the impression that there was a timetable for withdrawal, as there is for the Aus forces. If so what is it?

Fewer heartfelt pleas and more information would be good.
Posted by Curmudgeon, Thursday, 26 April 2012 11:42:32 AM
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Their screams aren't being heard because of the bombs and the Apache helicopters and drones and tanks.

Afghanistan is another botched effort by Western Imperial Powers led by the U.S. They came, they destroyed, then they hightailed it out of there as they usually do (except for their ubiquitous military bases).

How much longer are we going to follow the U.S. in its murderous attempt to dominate the whole world?
Posted by David G, Thursday, 26 April 2012 1:52:07 PM
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We only made one serious mistake in Afghanistan; that was to leave prematurely, with the"job only half done; and then came back, with insufficient numbers to try and finish the"job".
I'm glad we are going and leaving the Afghan people to reinstate their own primitive customs, if that's what they want? We're told we don't understand Afghanistan, with its deeply entrenched centuries long murderous tribal conflict, heroin addiction and women with no more rights than herded cattle.
I would have advocated the use of tactical nuclear weapons. No not on entirely innocent civilians; just the very porous border; and entirely uninhabited mountainous country; that allows murderous Taliban extremists to come in, wreck havoc and murderous mayhem; then scuttle back over a protective border.
I would not allow them to continue to do that with absolute impunity; and finally have them understand, just what the west will contemplate; to end the terror campaign that started with the entirely unjustifiable toppling of the twin towers or the murderous bloodthirsty killing for its own sake, war on non-combatant civilians. Scream away, but at the real culprits, the extremist Taliban, who made the war the literal reality it is today! Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Thursday, 26 April 2012 4:12:16 PM
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How much longer are we going to follow the U.S. in its murderous attempt to dominate the whole world?
David G,
For as long as it takes for the likes of you to wake up I guess.
Posted by individual, Thursday, 26 April 2012 10:35:27 PM
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Another anti-American article that makes no attempt to provide any solution to the problem of human rights in Afghanistan.
So I'll ask you, Ms Kelly, the question I asked Tranter and her supporters several times (which remained unanswered), what is your solution to the human rights abuses in Afghanistan?
Posted by Aristocrat, Friday, 27 April 2012 9:41:35 PM
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(which remained unanswered)
Aristocrat,
That is the nature of Academia. Keep telling us how not good things are yet never once offering solutions. I suppose that's what attracts them to the left where they can go on producing zilch yet still get well paid positions & feel warm'n fuzzy amid the mutual self admiration circle. I think useless parasites would be a more apt name instead of academic.
Posted by individual, Saturday, 28 April 2012 6:23:45 AM
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Individual, your pseudonym suggests that you are a thinking person yet its contents shows clearly that you are one of the sheeple.

Please make up your mind!
Posted by David G, Saturday, 28 April 2012 1:32:58 PM
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Hi individual.

Yes I am familiar with the culture of academia, particularly because I am part of it. The culture is one of negation. Witness the complete lack of solutions to any of the problems they believe exist. It's crippled with a disease that thinks if you simply deconstruct and morally criticize others this then makes you "intelligent" and/or "morally superior."
Posted by Aristocrat, Saturday, 28 April 2012 2:55:45 PM
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Since 1990, during the brutal reign of the various Islamist and fundamentalist groups and warlords, from the mujahidin to Hekmatyar to Abu Sayyaf and Haqqani to the Taliban, women in Afghanistan were driven back into the home, reduced to menial domestic work and with little future but to be traded from one man to another.

Before those times, under the pro-Russian governments - and even before that, under the old royalist regime - women could come out into the street, girls could go to school, women could work for themselves, they even had the right to divorce.

Since the overthrow of the reactionary, fundamentalist regime in 2001, and perhaps inadvertently, the Coalition has encouraged women to lift up their heads again and hope for better future. Some three million girls have gone to school, and many are now either at universities - as they used to do before the reactionaries took over - or in the workforce.

What will happen to them if the Coalition leaves prematurely ? All those women who have actively encouraged their sisters to seize opportunities - will they survive ?

Let's get something straight: Afghan traditional culture, like culture in most tribal and backward societies, is a vile thing as far as half the population is concerned. Not all cultures are 'equal', what a moronic idea. Any set of cultural practices which oppresses half the population does not deserve to continue: human rights HAVE TO trump culture.

On the other hand, I haven't kept up with what is the unspoken truth on the Left these days: perhaps the abandonment of Afghanistan's women is seen as a small price to pay for being able to stick it up the US, for the luxury of being able to say 'Nyah-nyah-nyah.'

Just let me know, and I'll vote Liberal for the first time in my life, and evermore: it will have become the 'progressive party'. Christ, who would have ever thought ?

Cheers,

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Saturday, 28 April 2012 6:54:34 PM
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David G,
Just because you feel cornered doesn't mean I'm wrong. One thing you need to understand that there's a huge difference between some Academic & a learned person/scholar.
Engineers (real ones) quite often get called academics by those engineers with no discernible substance & who like to call themselves academic. An educated person with an ounce of pragmatism outweighs dozens of intellectuals any day.
Doctors too have academic education but I refuse to call them Academics because Doctors are of benefit to society unlike leftist garbling intellectuals.
Academia was designed to be a stepping stone for bright minds not for certificate collectors.
Posted by individual, Saturday, 28 April 2012 7:16:24 PM
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