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September 09, 2004
The Taliban are women! They're bitches!
The loudspeakers atop the Humvee crackle to life: "The Taliban are women! They're bitches! If they were real men, they'd stop hiding under their burqas and they'd come out and fight!"
This, apparently, is how the U.S. army is trying to lure the Taliban out into the open in Afghanistan. I know, it looks like a parody.
Posted by zeynep at September 9, 2004 10:27 AM
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Comments
I hardly know where to start. This article by Mark McDonald in the Detroit Free Press which you have cited illustrates to me the utter futility of a military occupation as a solution to a political problem. Both Afghanistan and Iraq pose complex political situations which have no military solutions. Only diplomacy and a profound change in American foreign policy will lead to the kinds of egalitarian social changes that are needed in both Afghanistan and Iraq, a fact about which America's occupying military forces seem to be clueless. This article illustrates the puerile, immature, and ignorant belief systems of those high level American military officials who set policy and make military decisions that adversely effect nations being occupied by military forces of the United States. In addition American military personnel on the ground in Afghanistan seem as clueless in regard to Afghanistan's culture as they say the Afghan people are of so-called American "democracy."
Militarism, capitalism and patriarchy drive American foreign policy and pervert any hope of long term stability anywhere American hegemony rears its very ugly multi-headed monster. And I haven't even yet addressed the issue of the immorality of driving around as an occupying force in another sovereign nation and trying to provoke its inhabitants into a violent reaction so you can then kill them, wound them, or capture them and imprison them.
Is this anyway to win a war? No. Is this anyway to win the hearts and minds of anyone? No. Is militarism a practice that should have died in the womb? Absolutely...the past eight thousand years or so notwithstanding. It is way past time to dismantle all military machines and all so-called intelligence apparatus. This article by Mark McDonald and more importantly your post, Zeynep, clearly illustrates this point to me in yet another very graphic way.
Is there no end to this travesty of American imperialism? Bush or Kerry? Yikes. Kerry's only advantage is that he will end the mindless theocracy but he will not end the imperialism unless we force him to and so that apparently we must do.
Sincerely,
Old & In The Way
Posted by: Phil Cicchi at September 9, 2004 04:29 PM
I'm embarrassed about what this, and prior events, may indicate as being lacking in a portion of the US military in Arabia - namely, some portion of sense.
Is the military to be our team of "diplomats", now?
Posted by: Sean Champ at September 10, 2004 07:31 AM
I hope this is not common. This is horrible. Not to mention it is sexist. But aside from that fact, who the hell comes up with these ideas? Is it military "intelligence"? What an oxymoron that phrase has truly become...
Posted by: Anthony Smith at September 10, 2004 11:43 AM