Antiseptic - Add this to you question, how many women and girls were raped and some killed by American soldiers. LOTS

Antiseptic,

But ... isn't that part of the American culture ? Don't we have to let them 'evolve', to give them time to gradually change their practices and bring them more into line with religions of peace like Islam ?

After all, it's not appropriate for people in one culture to try to understand and criticise other cultures, including the Americans'. That's just the way they are - and probably plenty of women in the US are perfectly happy with their lot. So who are we to make any comments ?

Yeah, right.

Joe

Joe, sarcasm isn't an argument. In my view, your suggested course of action is going to lead to worse outcomes and your wish to make yourself feel good for being a "good" person with "good" intent is leading you in a bad direction.

Now. I've already told you why I think that and it has nothing to do with anything your attempt at sarcasm might be aimed at.

Perhaps a bit more thinking and a bit less of the chest-beating?

If you really want the women of Afghanistan to be better off, you need to come up with a way to make Afghan societies better off.

Any ideas?

Anti,

I see you've noted Joe's penchant for sarcasm.

I used to wonder if he was capable of anything but sarcasm, as it seemed to account for about ninety percent of his response.

Let's throw out a challenge and see if he's capable of refuting another position without recourse to sarcasm.

I wonder if he can do it?

Antiseptic,

At the risk of breaking Poirot's sarcasmeter, no matter what I say, in response to your rather bald demand that

'If you really want the women of Afghanistan to be better off, you need to come up with a way to make Afghan societies better off',

no, I don't. If the liberation of Afghan women makes Afghan men somewhat unhappier, I don't give a toss. If it doesn't make Afghan society better off for the women there to have more rights - the sort of rights we take for granted, Poirot - then to hell with Afghan society. It's not worth p!ssing on.

In other words, if somehow improving the rights of Afghan women is in some way NOT likely to make Afghan society better off; if in some way keeping Afghan women in submission, in purdah, somehow is beneficial for Afghan society, then what the hell is it ? What is it worth ?

Mao said once that women hold up half the sky. (Sometimes I think he got that half-right.) So are you suggesting that Afghan women should keep doing that, while their men can sit around in coffee-shops smoking their hookahs or whatever, discussing the fine points of their backward bullsh!t, comparing donkeys, feeling their balls, and being so superior ?

No. To hell with that.

And I suppose you even have the cheek to think you are in some way Left ? How low the Left has fallen then.

Not one word of the above was meant in sarcasm, by the way. More like white-hot anger.

Joe

I'm not suggesting anything, Joe, you're the one with all the solutions.

From where I sit, the Afghan culture is the Afghan's. Their history is theirs, their country is theirs and what they do with all of that is their decision to make.

You're terribly concerned about one aspect of that, but you refuse to even acknowldge it is a part of an interconnected set of relationships that at its heart is about allowing people to live in an environment where they are constantly under threat. Both men and women, but you want to ignore the men and a large portion of the women. How do you reckon that will work out Joe?

The feminist revolution had been a dismal failure in the West, Joe, so what makes you think it will work in a society that is much more rigid about gender roles? What makes you think a narrow bigotry such as you espouse is going to make fiercely independent tribal groups do anythng but demonstrate they can't be pushed around? what makes you think that the women in those groups think any differently about that than the men do?

Of course, nothing does, you just get a kick out of telling yourself you "care" and working yourself into a frenzy over things that are none of your business. Mrs Grundy wasn't always a woman.

My politics aren't the issue, that's just another of the simplistic polarisations you prefer over thinking about a subject.

Seriously, Joe, there has to be more to you than what's on display here, surely?