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Watch This Issue

By Joe Klein | @JoeKleinTIME | January 14, 2009 | +

At Hillary Clinton’s confirmation hearings yesterday, no fewer than three Democrats–led by Barbara Boxer–raised the issue of women’s rights in developing countries, including those countries that we seem to be developing. Boxer cited the amazing work Nicholas Kristoff has done on this issue and today Kristoff’s colleague Dexter Filkins weighs in with a moving report about the fortitude of the Afghan women who were recently pelted with acid by the Taliban and their insistence on returning to school.

Two thoughts:

1. Hillary Clinton expressed full agreement with Boxer’s concerns. It remains to be seen what, exactly, can be done about the culture that produces such atrocities–other than publicizing and condemning them, as Laura Bush has done.  (Although this should be an issue for the President and the other male leaders of our government to address, not just the first lady and top women officers like Clinton.)

2. The soldiers I met in Afghanistan were unanimous in their opinion that most Afghans are utterly opposed to the Taliban for a very simple reason: they do things like this. If we can get our act together and, more important, if the Afghan government gets its act together, that sentiment may enable us to make some progress against the terrorists and religious extremists.

At the very least, whenever we start thinking that the Afghan effort is doomed or just not worth it, we should take a moment to think of those women, and all the others who’ve suffered–and try to figure out the best possible ways to help the Afghans build their communities and their country.

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  • kathy

    Joe – I took Hillary’s prepared remarks about Ann Dunham’s work as a signal that this will be/is Barack’s concern too.

  • http://phd9.blogspot.com Paul Dirks

    Afghans are utterly opposed to the Taliban for a very simple reason: they do things like this

    That remains one of the things that worked in our favor in Iraq as well. It’s why the people who insist that the best way to defeat an enemy is to emulate him lost the election here and are rapidly being discredited elsewhere.

  • http://pourmecoffee.blogspot.com pourmecoffee

    Is it possible to think about something akin to a financial occupying force to fairly administer, for a non-infinite time period, money given to corrupt recipients? I’m not clear how the IMF, World Bank, U.N. funds, and the rest all fit together. I’d love to better understand the macro picture of international aid.

  • gpanfile

    And this shows one of the outgoing administration’s major failures, the intelligent use of ‘soft power’ and cultural connections. There is absolutely no Koranic justification for this atrocity, and the men who perpetrated it are absolute cowards. There are plenty of quotes from Mohammed that could be used to convey this… he had a special liking for women. Pictures of these horrors, along with appropriate orthodox Islamic quotes in Persian, distributed into areas near where these morons operate, could go a long way… much farther than the pronunciations of Mrs. Bush or the feckless activities of the unlamented Karen Hughes.

  • shepherdwong

    “It remains to be seen what, exactly, can be done about the culture that produces such atrocities…”
    .
    At almost any cost, the Madrassas must be aggressively reformed or closed down completely. That would be the most intelligent attack on Islamic extremism of almost every kind.

  • jcapan

    “At the very least, whenever we start thinking that the Afghan effort is doomed or just not worth it, we should take a moment to think of those women, and all the others who’ve suffered–and try to figure out the best possible ways to help the Afghans build their communities and their country”
    -
    And the US-led war in Af has contributed to that suffering? Nation building? What utter horsesh-t Joe. Spare us the propaganda. We’re in Af to help women!? We went to Iraq to topple a tyrant and spread democracy. The Japanese and Israelis are our best buds. These are military outposts of geopolitical importance–period. Of Burma, Rwanda, the Congo–why pray tell is their suffering not our concern. I do not deny that you might truly grive at such suffering but saying that that’s what guides our Broderian great leaders in their hegemonic quests–spare us please.

  • bitterpill8

    Joe: it is impossible to argue against improving the status of women in Afghanistan. We simply are not in the business of suppressing women. But, yes there is always a but, what have we done to get Karzai and Afghan men to buy into this proposition? I wish Hillary well; clearly women have had a bad time in their societies. Some of our important “allies” don’t have the stomach to fight for their own women citizens. Therein lies the tragedy.

  • textee

    Other than her bogus, often repeated lie about taking direct and indirect fire at some air field, did Clinton ever see combat during her long, distinguished military career? BTW, what war did Joe Klein win?

  • wvng

    “At the very least, whenever we start thinking that the Afghan effort is doomed or just not worth it, we should take a moment to think of those women, and all the others who’ve suffered–and try to figure out the best possible ways to help the Afghans build their communities and their country” To those who argue against this, I would remind them that W made a promise, that he promptly ignored, to not abandon Afghanistan as we had in the past. It was a good and proper promise, and we were truly in a position to heal the country because we were, in fact, welcomed as liberators.
    .
    The question now is, given our mismanagement and neglect, has the window to be a force for good in the country closed.

  • http://www.hulagate.org hulagate

    “At the very least, whenever we start thinking that the Afghan effort is doomed or just not worth it, we should take a moment to think of those women, and all the others…”

    Were rape rooms and wood chippers in Iraq not enough to earn your selective leftist ire?

    How about the ethnic attacks against the Kurds and marsh Shiites by Saddam’s thugs?

    That your myopia continues is not shocking news, given your record of GOP bashing that plays very well with the intellectually stunted lemmings of The View if not the Frank-foreclosed working FICA masses unable to get much more involved in the freeing of the poor New York banks.

    But thanks for discussing something beyond your fuzzy M Street navel, for a change.

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