I’m thoroughly disappointed at E. Goodman’s article.  The lack of understanding of a culture that is different from that of the Western world is appalling. Does she realize that cultures need to develop in their own way and that outside pressures end up exerting a negative influence? 

Please, let’s stick to our own culture where, until the 60’s, many of our citizens didn’t have equal rights.  Let’s deal with our death penalty, our invasion and occupation of many countries, and the fact that many of our own men and women don’t have access to affordable, decent health care and child care, just to name a few things.

The difference between a Taliban’s, a fundamentalist Christian’s, and a Republican’s view of the subjugation of women is utterly negligible.

American women are driving this war against Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is a Hillary Clinton special, since the betrayal of the Afghans by the State Department was done under Clinton at the demand of the White House.

The way the Western press pitch the burka is pure theatrics. It totally twists the reality. The burka is not a primitive tradition that is repressive, quite the opposite is true. It is an urban tradition from the Byzantines. It is demanded by sophisticated city women, so that they can move about the city in complete anonymity. It allows women to go incognito without innuendo. Imagine if American city women could put one on and go anywhere in broad daylight without revealing who is going where.

Afghanistan is a very different land on the other side of the planet from America with people living by a totally different social and environmental strategy. They have one of the lowest carbon footprints on the earth, and before the evil twins of materialism, the USA and the Russians, destroyed them the Afghans exported food. Who in hell are the Americans to tell them how to live their lives? In the end it is the liberals who do more to push for war than the right. Does nobody remember Lyndon? If women in America had not joined the work force. If they stayed home as they always had before the age of World Wars, then America would still be fine with its own oil. Feminism drives these wars, because it doubled the work force, driving the economy to new heights, driving exponentially increasing demand for oil that can only be satisfied, for a while longer, by armed aggression.

Remember when our military forced our female troops to wear burkhas in Saudi Arabia to conform to local customs?

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/25/world/servicewomen-win-doffing-veils-in-saudi-arabia.html?n=Top/Reference/Times Topics/Subjects/W/Women

Take a look at how our military treats our female troops:

http://www.alternet.org/story/38942/

Anyone who thinks that our society is in a position to better the lives of women anywhere else in the world, probably also believes that we have such a surplus of democracy in the U.S. that we can afford to export it.

We are the world’s biggest police state. We hold more prisoners than any other country. We have higher rates of rape than many third world countries.

Helping the women was just a public relations selling point for the war of aggression based on lies in Afghanistan. We can’t even help our own women—our shelters for battered women are filled to overflowing and have to turn desperate women and children away.

Does anyone really think that a woman is going to rejoice, even if we could free her from the burkha, if we had to kill her father, husband, and sons in order to accomplish it?

Many Afghans legally immigrated to and are now living here in the U.S. They communicate regularly with their families back in Afghanistan. If we wanted to advance the rights of women there, all we’d have to do is give them something to write home about, like showing them that we don’t have homeless women here, that our female troops aren’t being raped and killed by our male troops, and that women could safely walk the streets of American cities at night without fearing rape. The best way to help others is to set an example. If we can’t set an example, we should mind our own business.

I lived in Jalalabad, Afghanistan for almost five years and the women there often felt sorry for American women who walk around dressed so as to attract unwanted sexual attention from men which they then have to fend off. Many Afghan women prefer not to expose themselves to strange men and feel protected by their burkhas from unwanted attentions.

If we “won” in Afghanistan and outlawed the burkha, we’d be forcing Afghan women to act in ways which would make them feel uncomfortable and which would greatly increase the rates of assaults and rapes of females in Afghanistan until they matched our own.

But maybe that was part of our actual intent? Wasn’t there just a trial and conviction of U.S. military troops who raped an Iraqi teenager and killed her family to cover it up? If Afghan women walk around in burkhas, how can our troops know which ones are young and beautiful enough for them to want to rape?

Sepharad is correct, education and modernization is key to this issue.
Look at the time line of cultural change of our own western civilization, and the horrific Christian culture it fostered with thumbscrews, breaking on the rack, and “witch” burnings.
This did not change due to an occupying force and its slaughter, but by the gradual lifting of ignorance.

“Bomb them” with; bread and books.

jackpine, many Iraqi women were doing better under Saddam because the Baath party emphasized secular education and downgraded some of the more conservative Islamic strictures on women. Things were not quite so good with the Shi’ia women as with the Sunni/secular because more of the Shi’ia clung to the basic traditional ways. We may have gotten Saddam’s secret police off their backs, but it’s going to take awhile before the social situation shakes down in Iraq and I wouldn’t bet money that the Iraqi women in general will have gained significantly, especially if the Shi’ia dominate. On the other hand, the sects will probably remain more segregated than they were so the comparatively freer Kurdish and Sunni women will probably have things a little better than the Shi’ia—but not because of anything we’ve done.

I don’t know many Afghani people, just a couple families, but the women are definitely glad to be in the U.S. and out of the burkha culture, and one of them remains very upset that they were unable to get her sister out of Kabul because of the life she will live there, especially if the Taliban takes control of that society. These things run deep, and even well-intentioned invaders just passing through are not going to have that much of an impact. What will have an impact is education and modernization, if those things ever become available on a large enough scale. 

tshirt doctor is right; it would take endless war to modernize the ME from the outside and we can’t do it. But I really do wish there were a way to help the women who want to get out from under the stricter versions of Islam escape. I’ve read that some Muslim women say they like the privacy and protection of chador, but they seem to be in the minority. Perhaps if I weren’t a woman it wouldn’t bother me so much, but that level of suppression must be absolutely smothering, even if you grow up with it.

i hate the conditions alghani women have to deal with. and all the rest the women under islam. what do i think our nation ought to do about it?  turn their money supply, take our troops home, and goodbye, good luck, and i don’t want to see you later.

unless you want an endless war…

mmadden, agree with you. Seems like, though, our basic separation of church and state doctrine should include not allowing recognition of other forms of other cultures’ civil and/or criminal law codes as check-off options. Why import behaviors and customs that created the societies people left behind when they migrated to the U.S.

With all due respect, it’s their country and their law, and I think the USA ought to come home and stop trying to boss Afghanistan—and the world—around.

The American way is not best for everyone. There is NOT an American inside every Afghan/Pakistani/Iraqi/whatever trying to get out.

Excellent historical gloss, why by reading it one might have no idea what’s actually happened in 20th Century Afghan history.

Goodman points out that life was improving for Afghan women, but pointedly fails to note that their lot started downhill about the same time that the US fomented a revolution in the country and then funded an insurgency.

Maybe there wouldn’t have been a Taliban if the US and Pakistan had not given the majority of the funds to the most fundamentalist groups of Afghanistan.

And then she lays it on thick with the “we won in Afghanistan” line.  Seems to me that most of the fighting was done by Afghans with US intelligence and air support.

The fate of Afghan women is a shame, but i’m not so sure that they should put their hopes for a better life in the hands of the United States.

After all, Iraq had the most free and accomplished women in the ME until we showed up.  Now we talk about the regaining of their freedom as a triumph of our occupation.

This is not an Afghan problem. The cruelty to women is a byproduct of being a Muslim. Now there is a movement in the USA to force Sharia law on us. We need to put a stop to this.