Long ago and far away when the Russians were fighting in Afghanistan NPR did a radio interview with an Afghan guerilla fighter. The reporter asked, "Why do you fight the Russians so fiercely?" The answer; "...because they are teaching our women to read." The remark stopped me cold. We were hiring proxies (Talibaners and Osama Bin Laden types) under the premise that even though Afghanistan wasn't on our doorstep, it WAS our doorstep strategically. If we weren't exactly toe to toe with the Russians at least we could annoy the hell out of them by training farmers to be killers.

Now, in the midst of this savage and bloody muddle, in the middle of this mock election, little has changed. For the most part they still don''t want their women to read. To those farmers, we promise agricultural aid so they needn't grow the poppy. No aid arrives or it arrives in the local warlords' coffers, and presto, another field of opium dreams goes into production.

We are still arguing strategic importance (yes, oil pipeline, underbelly of Russia, etc) and we are still spending huge amounts of money in a rugged, savage, elemental land where people don't and won't think like we do. I would love to say, let's bail, save American lives, maybe a few Afghans as well, but again, women will be thrown under the bus. Women and children, young men unformed, they get lost in the haze of testosterone.

I like Mr. Hitchen's piece about the election. He's dead right. But now what? Who will hold Karzai's feet to the fire?

Women and girls ARE under the bus, and we and our "ally" Karzai continue to throw them there. Look up 'Shiite Personal Status Law,' signed by Karzai, if you think his warlord-and-mujihideen-backed 'government' cares about women's rights.

reJoinder:

Women and girls ARE under the bus, and we and our "ally" Karzai continue to throw them there. Look up 'Shiite Personal Status Law,' signed by Karzai, if you think his warlord-and-mujihideen-backed 'government' cares about women's rights.

You cannot seriously be contending that women and children are no worse off under Karzai than under the Taliban? Sure, its not Norway, but it is still an improvement. And seriously, what were you expecting? That the Afghan people, who are to put it mildly a conservative lot, would suddenly uproot generations of tradition by putting into law women's rights standards found in the developed world? Overnight? Instant results? Suddenly, women dancing in the streets throwing off their burqas while their husbands shout encouragingly "You Go Girl!"?

A little lesson in humility before you go around complaining that Country X has not reformed its human rights standards quickly enough for your liking. America abolished slavery at the end of the Civil War, yet a century later a black man could still face criminal prosecution for marrying a white woman, to say nothing of Jim Crow laws and the disenfranchisement of the right to vote by individual states. Its now over 140 years since the end of the Civil War, and the fight against racism has made great strides but remains a work in progress. Because you are always going to be butting your head against the wall of vested interests, all meaningful change is slow and incremental. We take little steps in the right direction, and eventually over several generations you get there. Thats how the world works. If that doesn't fit into your world view, if you think that American military might backed by uncompromising moral authority should be able to solve entrenched problems in a 30 minute segment, and that thereafter the bad guys will simply see the error of their ways, I think you are confusing reality with an episode of G.I. Joe.

So Karzai is only the first step in what is at best a long winding path to a better state of affairs, a path which can careen off the cliff at any moment. Conversely, with the Taliban in power, we go back to square one and stay there.

Finally, before you post some link to an anecdotal report of an acid attack, gangrape or other atrocity committed on some woman somewhere in Afghanistan, lets remember that (i) you can't expect the Afghans to become Norwegians overnight, and (ii) there's a big qualitative difference between an act of savagery gone unpunished due to lack of political will (for now) and an act of savagery gone unpunished because it is sanctioned by the state to be an expression of God's will.