Saturday, August 29, 2009

Antiwar Movement Plans Fall Campaign on Afghanistan

The only good news in this story is that ANSWER isn't mentioned, although unfortunately the execrable Code Pink has jumped in:
Code Pink is trying to build opposition to the war among women’s groups, some of which argue that women will suffer if the Taliban returns. In September, a group of Code Pink organizers will visit Kabul to encourage Afghan women to speak out against the American military presence there.
Only "some" women's groups argue that women will suffer if the Taliban returns? As Barney Frank said recently in another context, what planet are these people on?

Although I eventually came to oppose the war in Iraq, it was not because I was persuaded by the anti-war movement, but because of my own judgment about horrendous things the U.S. has done there (especially the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other prisons, the lack of any evidence for WMDs, the evidence that the Bush administration consistently lied to us, etc.). The rhetoric of the anti-war movement repelled me, and continues to repel me. I have no respect for people like Medea Benjamin and Cindy Sheehan. For them, the U.S. is always the villain, not any other nation or group of people. It will be entertaining, in a grimly repulsive fashion, to see how they excuse the Taliban for their crimes against their own people, especially Afghan women, and for their crimes against the people of the United States, in allying with Al Qaeda and providing a base for Osama bin Laden's jihadists. Maybe Code Pink and Cindy Sheehan have forgotten the September 11 attacks and where they came from, but I certainly haven't.

1 comment:

  1. I am not sure I buy that we should be in Afghanistan at all. While I appreciate your care for Women in Afghanistan, it is not really the reason we continue to have a presence in Afghanistan. Even under Karzai - they are writing horrible things into law about controlling women.

    The USA doesn't have a stated purpose or mission in Afghanistan, and I have to wonder why we continue to fight there as deaths escalate. Even if it were to annihalate the Taliban, I think there would be cause for alarm - war without end and another quagmire of engaging in guerrilla war against locals is not a good war to get involved in.

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