We cannot forgive her, God tells us to finish her

[Darwinsbulldog]

Originally Posted by Centauri

I'm trying not to take this post the wrong way, DB. I am also trying not to allow my level of rebuttal to be out of proportion to what I see as you saying something at the wrong time and place.

I don't know whether your reply was a little bit of the old 'sarcasm on the internet' or one of those subtle anti-Iraq war protests, or both.

I care about the lady in the photo. Take another look at her, squatting in the pebbles. She doesn't know shit about American politics or the crisis in the Middle East. She only knows, if anything, that her skull will be punctured, and metal will fly through her head and out the other side.

This woman was murdered by malicious, ignorant, mysogynistic men who are hopped up on fanatical religious delusions. This was done simply for the non-crime of her choosing to have sexual intercourse with a man.

All of decent humanity must rebel against this ultimate stupidity and ultimate wickedness. Take another look at her in the photo above. I want to reach out and save her; I wish I could.

I was not being sarcastic. The "macho" culture that treats women and children in this way cannot be addressed by reason. The only thing that will stop this cycle of abuse is the elimination of those who practice it. Then, perhaps, the new generation can be educated, and made more loving.
The quip about allies, is the there is a bit of the Taliban in nearly all of us. Not so long ago, western men did not behave much better. Prince Edward was disgusted that pedo industrialists and politicians were fucking kids on the backstreets of London-that was about 1907 or something?

And we all know of the abuse by Catholic churches and others. Protecting pedos, making deals with Adolf Hitler. Or the good old USA, decimating their Indians, or OZ itself, decimating our Indiginous populations.

So it is a bit of a case of : "He who is without sin, can cast the first stone"
But I agree, we can't not act. The women in the photo, the children spashed with acid. Millions of them. I care about them.

War itself is never a solution. History has shown it is a high risk-as reform has seldom been born from the misery of war. Yet I don't see how else the terror and misery can be stopped over there.
I say this though-we won't win that war by losing a single platoon in a decade. The Taliban must be crushed, but are we prepared to pay the butcher's bill to do it?

[Aldaron]

War itself is never a solution.

Well, it can be, depending on how it's done (which relates directly to your last sentence, and my reply to it, below).

WWII was a very effective solution to stopping the spread of fascism and nazism in Europe, and crushing a militaristic, expansionist theocracy in Japan.

Yet I don't see how else the terror and misery can be stopped over there.

Short answer is: it can't. Nobody has ever successfully invaded and conquered Afghanistan. Nobody was more ruthless in crushing opposition than the USSR, and they got beat. There is a culture of fighting whoever the hell comes in, which is why the Taliban are successful in recruiting - it's not just religious nutbars, it's anyone who can fire a rifle and doesn't like foreigners.

Afghanistan will evolve, and change - as will the rest of the Middle East - once it gets past its medieval attachment to fundamentalist religion. Europe did. Unfortunately, we're looking at it (the Middle East) now in comparison to liberal democracy, which took a long time to shake itself free of Christianity (and as we all know, is still horribly attached in some ways).

I say this though-we won't win that war by losing a single platoon in a decade. The Taliban must be crushed, but are we prepared to pay the butcher's bill to do it?

There's the rub. You don't win wars by pussy-footing around. Germany and Japan weren't beaten by winning hearts and minds...they were beaten with bullets, bombs and blood. A lot of blood. We of this generation seem unable to conceive of the concept of "total war". We are (genuinely, and rightly) upset when we hear about civilian casualties from an errant bomb in Afghanistan.

During WWII, there was no such quarter. The idea was "destroy them - then make peace." Tens of thousands of German civilians killed in Dresden? Tough. Two Japanese cities vapourised under nuclear fire? They shouldn't have invaded Singapore. The attitudes were so very different.

To me, we have only a few choices with Afghanistan:

1) Pull out completely, bite the bullet on the atrocities committed by the Taliban against their own people, and ignore them. Let them remain in the Dark Ages, and waste no more lives trying to drag them out of it.

2) All out invasion. Total war scenario. The Taliban can't hide in "Village X" because "Village X" will be flattened into a smoking ruin the moment an attack is launched out of it. Civilian casualties will be an unfortunate side effect. This will not cost 30-ish Australian lives over ten years, this will cost dozens of Australians and hundreds, if not thousands of allied/enemy lives every day, and hundreds of thousands of lives overall. Then, when a NATO/US/UN/whatever flag is flying over Kabul, and the people are utterly broken, we can start rebuilding the country as we did Germany and Japan.

3) Continue on the current path. Have a few soldiers there, picking off a few Taliban here and there. We will continue to rack up a death toll, though nothing in comparison to what an all-out invasion would cost. The people of Afghanistan will continue to suffer, be bombed and burned and oppressed by various groups, and in the end, we'll make no difference.

I honestly have no idea how to sort it out. Putting a hundred-metre high wall around the Middle East and saying "You've had your chance, see you in a hundred years" might be something!

I think the thing we can do is count the cost:

What is the current occupation costing, per year, in Afghani lives?
How long will this status-quo likely continue, and therefore what will be the total cost in lives?
How does this compare to simply pulling out and letting the Taliban murder people as they want to do?

Remember, this woman's death, while grossly unjust, despicable and horrific on a gut level, makes her no more "dead" than all those who have died as a result of the war.

[Darwinsbulldog]

Aldaron wrote:-

Well, it can be, depending on how it's done (which relates directly to your last sentence, and my reply to it, below).

WWII was a very effective solution to stopping the spread of fascism and nazism in Europe, and crushing a militaristic, expansionist theocracy in Japan.

I was not looking at it quite that simplistically. Of course war can be a solution to short-term problems, but it puts contraints on the behaviour of the bellegerents when they eventually get to the peace table. WW2 was pretty much the second Act of WW1. The Allies virtually created Hitler by imposing harsh terms. The reparations virtually guarranteed that the Weimar republic would not work, hence the future of Germany rested in the hands of either the fascists or communists, and as it turned out, Hilter won.
WW2 created its own vast set of problems for the post WW2 world, and again, there is not all that much evidence of a steep learning curve. The United Nations is not all that more effective than the WW1 era League of Nations.
To get a nation to fight you need to dehumanise the enemy, in doing so, you make the peace after more difficult, because "re-humanising" the former enemy has huge lag-times. There are still diggers alive who worked as slaves for the Japanese on the Burma railway-one can certainly understand why some of them still hate what was done to them and by who.

[Blue Lightning]

UN official says -

Recent killings of women in Pakistan and Afghanistan, “a tragic reminder of a global and increasing concern”

Link: http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/P...12371&LangID=E

GENEVA (18 July 2012) – United Nations Special Rapporteur Rashida Manjoo has stated that the recent killing of Fareeda Afridi, a human rights defender in Pakistan, of Hanifa Safi, a provincial head of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in Afghanistan, as well as the public execution of Najiba, a woman accused of adultery in Afghanistan, “are tragic reminders that gender related killings of women are a global and increasing concern.”

“Whether labelled murder, homicide, femicide, feminicide, or ‘honour’ killings, these manifestations of violence are culturally and socially embedded, and continue to be accepted, tolerated or justified - with impunity as the norm,” stressed the independent expert charged by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate and report on violence against women, its causes and consequences. “The failure of States to guarantee women’s right to a life free from violence, allows for a continuum of violence which can end in their death.”

“The killings of women is indeed a State crime when tolerated by public institutions and officials - when they are unable to prevent, protect and guarantee the lives of women, who have consequently experienced multiple forms of discrimination and violence throughout their lifetime,” Ms. Manjoo said, urging both the Pakistani and the Afghan governments to conduct prompt and impartial investigations on these cases and to ensure perpetrators are brought to justice.
“It is crucial to acknowledge that these are not isolated incidents that arise suddenly and unexpectedly, but are rather the extreme manifestation of pre-existing forms of violence experienced by women everywhere,” she stressed. “However, women suffering multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, face a greater risk of experiencing such violence.”