All I will say is that women are the most oppressed group in society, that their oppression has long term consequences for all of us and it appears that the oppression will continue........ there is oppression towards women in the West, but nothing like what is in the Middle East or parts of Africa and Asia. Ideally the USA would have brought all the young Afghan women back to the USA and the West and let them become somewhat free. This is going to upset some, but I do not care..... Islam, as is practiced is in many ways horribly oppressive towards women and should not be tolerated by the rest of the World. We could for the most part stop slavery and decrease child trafficking, yet we let women be oppressed.
Truthfully, most of the men in the Taliban **** boys and animals anyway. They only rape the women when there are no boys around and need to get off.
If it makes you feel better, hardly anyone else in the world believed you were there for women. Six weeks before the orchestrated pull out, the military murdered a bunch of women in order to murder some illiterate and aggressive Afghani alleged militant whose never been on trial and is in his home country. Like give me a break with the “we shouldn’t care” thing, your White House and its strategic partners feed that stuff to the press. That’s the only reason we’re giving it hits. The invader’s assessment of how many civilians it murdered is upwards of 40,000. For scale, that’s 4 x 9/11. Imagine what the real number must be. Over 30% of those are women. The Taliban is just not going to kill as many people. Less murder and less rights is not beautiful, but it’s closer to their goal of having everything you have in your country. It’s easier to get rid of the Taliban now, even though they just made up a new terror group in Afghanistan. That’s done because an enemy at home makes a voter prefer to keep current leadership in charge and avoid change. Really it’s a conversation between the parties and American people (about Afghan women), tiny little echo chamber disconnected from the ground. National sovereignty comes before women’s rights, just as it does in America. Without that they are trying to copy paste a mediocre women’s rights agenda, which has rarely ever worked for countries this different from each other.
Man I want to free women in the Middle East too but I swear to you neither the oppressor nor the oppressed is using Islam to do it. Atheist middle easterners are exactly the same, and there are ridiculously fewer Muslims in the Middle East than you’ve ever been told. There’s serious education to be done but let’s not create a hypothetical immovable obstacle for ourselves and our thinking. These people just need to taste true freedom minus- with all due respect- the “Western” objectification issues. The toxic brand of Islam you describe will not survive that. Those guys are practically impossible to defeat if they are backed by some super power. Gosh man I have male and female friends who are Muslim willing to yell out the window what they want in terms of progress but dude the punishment for doing stuff like that is terrifying. You would think I’m reading from some dark novel. The other big issue we have specifically in the gulf region is that the RAPID urban development made us alienated from our parents. I’m making a movie about this, but it’s really hard for me to explain to you in short text the ramifications of my father being born in a village with no cutlery to his son is an astronaut. My dads life is more like your great grandfathers life, so imagine if in America a huge block of voters were your great grandfathers and all their toxic masculinity issues, their fear of poverty, etc. It’s a mess dude, it needs time and it REALLY needs for middle easterners under 45 to take control of all the institutions and not allow dependence on foreign entities or reliance on war to expand pockets. anyway, that’s my piece.
I don't live in the Middle East. I have traveled there a number of times and my wife is Middle Eastern. It is also hard to separate culture and religion and the influence they have on each other. There are certainly fewer truly religious people in the Middle East than the media portrays and I have come across quite a few that are agnostic in practice. Is it more religious than the West in my experience, but it is also different because the culture is so infused with religion. Still, it is my favorite region of the world. The West (which has largely been shaped by the USA the last 80 years) is far from perfect. Objectification is a major problem, and there are also self esteem issues as a result of that and all kinds of pervasive problems that many in the West are not even aware are problems because it is so engrained into the culture. What I am concerned about is there is a desire in the West, a real arrogance that "freedom" has to be a carbon copy of what exists in the USA and the UK. I have seen people in the Middle East believe this as well. The reality is every culture is different and freedom doesn't have to be a Starbucks. It can be, but freedom of opportunity and choice and freedom to be expressive can look very different in different places. We do have something like that on a smaller scale in the USA with the division between the urban and rural in the USA and it is expressed in politics, values, church participation and many things. What is happening in the Middle Eastern Gulf region is in some ways what has happened in China, South Korea and in the former Soviet Block. There are DEFINITELY consequences in a society whenever there is a radical social change. Also I think we need to realize that in the larger sense, change does not happen over night..... and in parts of the Middle East, change has happened rapidly and likely will continue to. I will tell you my concern in the Gulf region is corruption and a lack of institutions. Also the level of influence that the USA and in some parts China and Russia has is not healthy.
Do you care about TEXAN women? Doesnt seem so. Instead of talking about Afghanistan better spend your time talking about yourselves. Your own daughters and mothers and wives.. The most misogynistic state in america. GOOD JOB TEXAS!
