Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers are cracking down on the sound of women’s voices in public, under a strict new set of vice and virtue laws under the Islamist regime.
What often grates on me is the “We never should have left Afghanistan! Look at what they’re doing to women!!” folks abutting the “We need to respect their customs. These theocratic dictatorships are just like that and there’s nothing we can do” folks who turn a blind eye to all our allies on the Saudi Peninsula, the African coast, and the Indian subcontinent get up to.
You need both in order to execute a new campaign of regime change, because arms and troops have to flow through friendly bases in India or Pakistan to get to Afghanistan. But the end policy only ever seems to be “we permit you to be horrible, so long as you’re committing these horrors on our team”.
Would love for a genuine trans-national feminist movement. But when feminism is a dead letter in our friends in Japan, Poland, and Israel, how the hell is it supposed to penetrate to our enemies in Bad Korea, Afghanistan, and Cuba?
We don’t need to respect their customs. We need to respect their people, including their people’s need for emotional healthy relationships which are often in conflict with elements in their cultures that only feel entitled to dominate.
What often grates on me is the “We never should have left Afghanistan! Look at what they’re doing to women!!” folks abutting the “We need to respect their customs. These theocratic dictatorships are just like that and there’s nothing we can do” folks who turn a blind eye to all our allies on the Saudi Peninsula, the African coast, and the Indian subcontinent get up to.
You need both in order to execute a new campaign of regime change, because arms and troops have to flow through friendly bases in India or Pakistan to get to Afghanistan. But the end policy only ever seems to be “we permit you to be horrible, so long as you’re committing these horrors on our team”.
Would love for a genuine trans-national feminist movement. But when feminism is a dead letter in our friends in Japan, Poland, and Israel, how the hell is it supposed to penetrate to our enemies in Bad Korea, Afghanistan, and Cuba?
We don’t need to respect their customs. We need to respect their people, including their people’s need for emotional healthy relationships which are often in conflict with elements in their cultures that only feel entitled to dominate.