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I now question how much blood and resources America is morally bound to expend in a) funding the puppet-tyrant, President Hamid Karzai in order to achieve what passes for “stability” in the region; b) keeping the Arabs, the Iranians, and the Pakistanis from gaining the upper hand in Afghanistan; c) gaining access to precious metals, gas deposits, and a world-class opium crop; d) hunting down the elusive Mr. Bin Laden.
Does anyone really believe that America went into Afghanistan in order to liberate women?
Why am I not surprised that President Karzai has decided to negotiate with the Taliban? He is a drug lord (well, at least his brother is); but he is also an Afghan who will make deals with everyone and just as quickly betray all parties. Yes—and with a peasant-like cruelty and good humor. Has no one read any Afghan history? Are the American people willing to give up our standard of living, which is already sinking, so that the women of Afghanistan are free or even minimally safe? And how low are we prepared to go? Next up are the women of Pakistan who live near the border with Afghanistan; after them, there’s the entire fundamentalist Muslim world. And, then there’s Africa. Personally, I would start with Congo, where the public gang-rapes of female children and women are beyond belief. And let’s not forget India where, despite vast sophisticated modernity, gross, unyielding poverty turns men into pimps and children into prostitutes every single minute.
I am asking a real question about our “White Man’s” Burden: Are We our Sisters’ Keepers? At long last, are the postcolonial/morally relativist journalists and academics now raising this question?
Poor Afghanistan, where once I lived when I was young, has been reduced to rubble, to utter dust, so many times before, but perhaps never so totally, so heartbreakingly. I hope this is not an augur of worse to come in our world.
