But, the Taliban is very concerned about working women, and in particular women in the US military. This article out of The New York Times talks to a concerned Taliban spokesman (you didn't expect any spokeswomen, did you?) who is bothered by US women soldiers. The Tabliban spokesman,
Haji Muslim Khan, said that Taliban anger was partly caused by the presence of female American soldiers in the region. Mr. Khan said that Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, "should think about Western white women who take up arms and come from 20,000 miles away to fight against us here."The snarky comment from The Times was that since the globe has a circumference of about 25,000 miles, they must have come the long way.
The larger issue is that the Taliban thinks that women need to be cloistered at home. Opinion writer Ellen Goodman of The Boston Globe brought this up a couple of weeks ago.
What do we think? Does our respect for other cultures include saying that US women should not be allowed to join the US military and fight in Afghanistan?
My answer? A definite No. Women should be allowed full opportunities and if those in other cultures don't like it they should either stay out of trouble or gird their loins and prepare to be shot at by women in US uniforms and detained by those women and interrogated by those women and maybe have their wounds tended by those women.
Regards — Cliff
Amen. Besides, we can use it against them in a PsyOps sort of way...this AC-130 is hovering over you, portending your death...and it's flown by a WOMAN!!
ReplyDeleteCultural and moral relativism only goes so far. If the Taliban would prefer, maybe we should stop using computers, calculators, GPS guidance for navigation, and anything else not developed before the 7th century AD. Somehow I don't think that us kowtowing to their cultural "suggestions" is going to solve the deep-rooted problems we're facing right now in Afghanistan.
Besides, Pakistan had a female premier long before we ever did (okay, we never did). And Afghanistan has 68 women in its parliament, so clearly not all Afghanis share these backwards sentiments, either..
best,
gp