After all, we're at least as evil. I say we bail on Afghanistan and leave it whatever they have planned for themselves. That would be the moral and progressively sensitive thing to do. Plus I have no intention of taking a National Geographic type vacation there.

We could have secured Afganistan by now if we hadn't wasted so much time, money, and lives in Iraq.

These "people" are just savages. We cannot co-exist with them.

Why?

If so, what is the problem?

We didn't go there to protect the rights of women.

Girls who were working to learn, to grow intellectually, to become more than slaves to men, have been put back in their place. I got into an argument once with a man who thought that middle eastern women were happy with their lot because they didn't complain. I pointed out that they couldn't complain, and that they didn't have any opportunity to know that there were options in life other than the ones they had been given. I told him that any time a human being was kept from reaching their potential, it was a tragedy.

Now what? The Taliban were virtually wiped out, but now they have a stronghold and the Afghan government that we helped build is worthless. If only we had spent half of what we spent in Iraq rebuilding Afghanistan... if only. Now, it seems unlikely that those girls, or their mothers will ever have anything but Sharia as an option.

Well, Obama... if you want to win my heart, fix this. Make it right. We gave those women hope that their daughters could have more of a life than they had. They sent them to school to learn. Give them back that hope. Please.

They kill schoolgirls. It's the same mentality as the people who were responsible for Beslan in Russia. And every one of them should be hunted down and wiped out.

Re: "I got into an argument once with a man who thought that middle eastern women were happy with their lot because they didn't complain. I pointed out that they couldn't complain, and that they didn't have any opportunity to know that there were options in life other than the ones they had been given"

His take on it though, was, "they had their ways of getting even."

He couldn't seem to comprehend that "getting even" is not the same thing as - being free from the need to "get even" in the first place. I don't want to "get even." I want what the person who doesn't need to get even has.

When I read this article, I was incensed all over again at the utter irresponsibility of George Bush who all but gutted our primary mission in Afghanistan to wage a senseless, utterly stupid war in Iraq. Even now, Cheney carries on about how vital our task was in Iraq while the right wing dumbbells cheer him on! Everything that made any sense was shunted aside while we wasted zillions in Iraq. Now it may be all but impossible to win over the people in Afghanistan...and Pakistan is in danger, too, from the Taliban. Oh well, it is done and we'll just have to make the best of it and move on....but in what direction?

In the kingdom of the ignorant - the fool is king. And may I say that in George Bush, the Taliban had a fellow traveler...

Maybe you missed this, but it wasn't straw-man PC liberals who got Afghanistan into its current mess. It was the right-wingers. In the 1980's they created the Taliban by letting the fundamentalist-ridden Pakistani intelligence services tell us which mujahedin groups to support, and in this decade they allowed them to come back to power after they were almost wiped out, by diverting our forces from Afghanistan to Iraq. Good people, Americans and Afghan, of all political stripes, are paying the price for you and your fellow neocon chickenhawks' dreams of empire.

"They kill schoolgirls. It's the same mentality as the people who were responsible for Beslan in Russia. And every one of them should be hunted down and wiped out."

Just as well since WE are dropping BOMBS on those schools because they teach Islamic Fundamentalism and Jihad. When we kill schoolchildren it is OK, right? Who has killed more, them or us? Do you think that Bush and Obama need waterboarding too, or is only our enemies that have to play by the rules of morality?

And who drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan anyway? Carter and Reagan set the Taliban up to rule and put Afghanistan back in the dark ages because we didn't like the Soviets giving women all those rights that they don't have now.

Didn't you watch that Rambo movie?

More informative than the evening news.

"These "people" are just savages. We cannot co-exist with them."

Savages? Absolutely right. Civilized people use hellfire missies launched from robot aircraft safely out of range and sight to blow up schools filled with children.

No doubt about it, those kids we kill are SAVAGES!!!

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NAzis were amateurs.

So you saying the soviets were right in invading Afghanistan?

So you saying jihadi schools continue to operate so that they create more terrorists who can kill more kids?

So you saying that it is NOT right to kill those to do not hesitate to kill children and women?

Wow! Maybe you really ought to watch Rambo, this time with audio on instead of just the guns chattering.

Who knows, your teeny tiny brain might evolve to comprehend the idea that countries retaliate when their citizens are killed by terrorists!

have nothing, absolutely nothing, in their arsenal except hatred of women. There is NOTHING else in their religion, philsophy, and "culture" (which did not exist until wealthy Saudis started Western-style evangelical activities in the Muslim world based on their own version of Islam, whose only distinguishing characteristic is its gender apartheid).

Their system of "law" is nothing except a laundry list of pornographically violent punishments for--you guessed it--women. It is unrecognizable as law by the standards of modern, or even medieval Islamic, jurisprudence.

"Government" consists of creating a pervasive secret police to bring charges against women and carry out the execution of women and any man who might dare help a woman. That´s it: there is nothing else on offer, not tax collection, public services, legislation, or anything else that has anything to do with governing. Not surprisingly, the Islamists are responsible for Somalia as well as Afghanistan.

We have seen this before in terms of genocides of other races and ethnic groups. This is femicide, a word you better get used to hearing. This is even more beastly than other genocides because the victims are members of the perpetrators own families and are uniquely defenseless.

And the rest of the world cares not a whit.

Taliban and Saudi Wahabists: Worst. Humans. Ever.

Oppression of women is not a side effect of what´s going in the whacked out fundie Muslim world. It´s a feature, the main feature and the raison d étre. Sure there´s some other stuff mumbled, about how unfair the post-colonial world still is, blah blah blah (although one can´t really argue that the post colonial world has been particularly unfair to Saudis). Make no mistake--these people are trying to hold on to their slave class, and are willing to die to keep their slaves, just like white Southerners were in the Civil War.

So, let´s grant their wish. I´m all in favour. I wasn´t at first, but I´ve slowly come round. As a woman who has frequently traveled and lived in the region, I´m tired of this.