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Canada Expresses Outrage over Afghan Women's law

Well, let's see

The US speculates about replacing Karzai, muses about limiting his power.

Karzai is up for reelection, therefore he must pander to the voting public

The voting public in Afghanistan, like in Canada, vote based on some of the most outrageous ideals/promises that you have to shake you head at, but they do.

And we wonder why this is coming into the fore now? All the noise aside, we should have known something of this calibre was coming down the pipe....Karzai could/has given lessons on how win friends and lose a country....
 
tomahawk6 said:
Lets not confuse the mission being synonymous with us imposing our beliefs on the local culture. People preach the gospel according to COIN and yet get angry when the locals dont share our cultural beliefs. Our mission in Afghanistan is to kill taliban/al qaeda thus buying time for the Afghan security forces to standup, exactly as we have done in Iraq. The men and women that have given their lives in this endeavor did so in a much higher cause than women's rights or other similar western beliefs that are not shared in the third world.

Agreed 100%.

The voting public in Afghanistan, like in Canada, vote based on some of the most outrageous ideals/promises that you have to shake you head at, but they do.

And we wonder why this is coming into the fore now? All the noise aside, we should have know something of this calibre was coming down the pipe....Karzai has given lessons on how win friends and lose a country....

Ah the woes of democracy. I mean poor guy Karzai though, his position mustn't feel like a comfortable one.
 
Too true T6.
It might take several generation of Afghans before we start seeing positive results for all our hard work.

If we look at what happened to Iran - the Shah, with US backing, went forward with many democratic principles and western way of seeing/doing things... and we all know how that turned out.
 
Call my a cynicist but I don't see Afghanistan changing any time soon. That being said I am 100% behind the mission, having served their myself. Education is key, and as said before, Rome wasn't built overnight. Baby steps. A large portion of OUR society is still sexist and racist. Time and education will overcome this. Time and education will overcome their injustices as well.Patience is a virtue. It hurts knowing we as a country, as soldiers who have served and most importantly the friends and family of the fallen, have sacraficed so much, and that we are bearing very little fruit for our efforts. However history is painted with the blood of good men who stood up and sacraficed when the time came for the greater good. We will bear fruit, It might take a little longer than expected but it will come.
 
patriot1112 said:
Call my a cynicist but I don't see Afghanistan changing any time soon. That being said I am 100% behind the mission, having served their myself. Education is key, and as said before, Rome wasn't built overnight.

That's not cynicism, it's being realistic :p.

Also, to clarify my previous posts, the Western world shouldn't shove their democracy and beliefs down other people's throats. The only things that need to be done are to remove regimes oppressing populations, and to make sure that those populations can, if willing to, learn and develop in schools. We can't force our values unto them, they should get their own conclusions after having seen the world's past. Who knows, they might even evolve at set of morals that we will find better than ours. If we make sure they can have access to history and sciences and literature and philosophy and etc., perhaps we can spare them centuries of slow, painful development (or no progress at all) and reduce this to decades. Our Renaissance was in big part started when people rediscovered the ancient Greek and Roman cultures.
 
Fiver - This comes from the father of a fallen soldier,and a soldier himself:

You are correct in saying we can't force "Western" values down other peoples throats. I'm speechless,again....and I'm tired of the apologist line "we can't shove things down their throats"
I'm sorry, I can't agree. If my neighbour is beating his wife....I'm forcing my beleifs on him via the police or if necessary....I WILL FORCE my physical presence on his cowardly a**.
Same applies here. Behave like humans and we'll help. Behave like thugs,murderers and wife beaters you will be treated as such.
What's more, I'm tired of having other cultures come here and tell us that we need to tolerate their "culture"of wife beating and marital rape. Yeah....I sure will do that.
 
OldSolduer said:
I'm sorry, I can't agree. If my neighbour is beating his wife....I'm forcing my beleifs on him via the police or if necessary....I WILL FORCE my physical presence on his cowardly a**.
Same applies here. Behave like humans and we'll help. Behave like thugs,murderers and wife beaters you will be treated as such.
What's more, I'm tired of having other cultures come here and tell us that we need to tolerate their "culture"of wife beating and marital rape. Yeah....I sure will do that.

And then you'll end up in jail! Just like the hypothetical neighbour. This is why we have law, so as to come out of the state of nature, where each and everyone enforce their system of values on others.

Others think that some of western values or habits are unacceptable, i.e. drinking, abandonning faith, consuming pornography. What if they were to decide and enforce their will upon us? Oh wait, that is in part the reasonning behind Sept 11th. In short, it is unacceptable.

We cannot just go and beat the hell out of someone who disagrees with us... otherwise we lose the moral high ground, and our arguably "better" values will mean nothing.
 
OldSolduer said:
Fiver - This comes from the father of a fallen soldier,and a soldier himself:

You are correct in saying we can't force "Western" values down other peoples throats. I'm speechless,again....and I'm tired of the apologist line "we can't shove things down their throats"
I'm sorry, I can't agree. If my neighbour is beating his wife....I'm forcing my beleifs on him via the police or if necessary....I WILL FORCE my physical presence on his cowardly a**.
Same applies here. Behave like humans and we'll help. Behave like thugs,murderers and wife beaters you will be treated as such.
What's more, I'm tired of having other cultures come here and tell us that we need to tolerate their "culture"of wife beating and marital rape. Yeah....I sure will do that.

My points earlier were in relation to the issue regarding the politics of the situation from Karzai's POV.....

Your points about the reality of the situation, I agree with wholeheartedly....
 
OldSolduer said:
Fiver - This comes from the father of a fallen soldier,and a soldier himself:

You are correct in saying we can't force "Western" values down other peoples throats. I'm speechless,again....and I'm tired of the apologist line "we can't shove things down their throats"
I'm sorry, I can't agree. If my neighbour is beating his wife....I'm forcing my beleifs on him via the police or if necessary....I WILL FORCE my physical presence on his cowardly a**.
Same applies here. Behave like humans and we'll help. Behave like thugs,murderers and wife beaters you will be treated as such.
What's more, I'm tired of having other cultures come here and tell us that we need to tolerate their "culture"of wife beating and marital rape. Yeah....I sure will do that.

I agree with you 100%.

Let's be frank, forget this politically correct stuff. If we dont present/force our values on them then someone else will. That someone that we are competing with at this time is the Taliban/warlords/tribal leaders. The ability to decide on your own after being presented with the opportunity to see the alternatives is what we are offering because the taliban is restricting the freedom to choose and the opportunity to be exposed to any beliefs other than their own.

I hate it when people refer to certain values as "western" values. The values we speak of are ability to choose, the right to an education, women be treated equally, liberty, justice etc. Western society does not own these values. We have them but we do not own them. We don't make them choose we just fight for their ability to look at different educated choices and alternatives so that they can make a decision they feel will further their individual interests and not a certain group's.

If women had a say and weren't afraid they will not allow such injustices...so saying that afghanis want to live this way and it's their beliefs is BS. It's flawed because a lot of people dont have a voice or a say in the matter. The opinion being expressed belongs to a certain group that refuses to unclench their fists and release the power they have. I guess you can say that our job is to make sure that fist is unclenched.
 
There are a lot of people from the Europe & the Middle-East who live in Canada, are good Canadian Citzens - and still have basic intrinsic values that reflect their ethnic group's values and morals.

There are hard working Italian families who speak very little English/French, live in Italian ghettos neighborhoods and do not support how we do things.  They religiously vote in the Italian elections - (and hopefuly ours too).  They will use every trick in the book to get their daughter to marry an Italian fella.

Same thing for jewish ghettos communities.

Are we applying standards that aren't even met in Canada by people who are card carrying Canadians?
 
I can only speak as the son of immigrants who may be seen to have been living in one of those "ghettos neighborhoods" you mention.  That said....

1)  Re:  this...
geo said:
There are hard working Italian families who speak very little English/French, live in Italian ghettos neighborhoods and do not support how we do things.  They religiously vote in the Italian elections - (and hopefuly ours too).  They will use every trick in the book to get their daughter to marry an Italian fella.

Same thing for jewish ghettos communities.

1)  I'm not clear how the practices you mention are outside Canadian law.  However, if the father of one of the groups you mention beats or kills the daughter for not doing what they ask/want, they face justice, not a defence of "but the law says he can" - HUGE difference from a LAW enshrining two-tier status for certain groups of women.

2)  Just how successful do you think any Canadian government would be trying to pass a family law saying who these "ghetto neighbourhood dwellers" could marry?  Dalton McGuinty can help you answer that question.

3)  For those wanting more details, the UK's Times has shared more of the text of the new law here (.pdf attached in case Times link isn't working).

4)  A Sun Media columnist has an interesting suggestion for giving the Taliban the finger on this one here (link to Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan web page here).
 
I guess we shouldn't tell Canadians that it's A-ok in Afghan culture to kill your wife if you think she cheated on you huh
 
Flawed Design said:
I guess we shouldn't tell Canadians that it's A-ok in Afghan culture to kill your wife if you think she cheated on you huh

WHAT!!??  This is brand new information!!  I rescind my objection, and now believe the whole world should be governed this way!
 
According to the Associated Press:
The Afghan president said Saturday he had ordered a review of a new law that critics say makes it legal for men to rape their wives, responding to criticism from around the world that included sharp comments from President Barack Obama ....

I hops this isn't like a line I remember from the Britcom "Yes, Minister" - " 'The matter is under consideration' means we have lost the file. 'The matter is under active consideration' means we are trying to find the file."
 
The way I see it we have two options:

1. Withdraw now. Pull all the troops out, put them in KAF and fly them home with ALL the kit we have there, right down to the last pencil. That is not a very good option is it?
2. Put the pressure on Karzai, and let the ordinary Afghan know this is NOT the way the world operates.  But I forgot, we can't shove our beleifs down their throats right? :rage:

There isn't alot of outrage over this in Canada is there..... it saddens me to think Canadians will go along with this crap. Is this what we have become?
 
OldSolduer said:
The way I see it we have two options:

1. Withdraw now. Pull all the troops out, put them in KAF and fly them home with ALL the kit we have there, right down to the last pencil. That is not a very good option is it?
2. Put the pressure on Karzai, and let the ordinary Afghan know this is NOT the way the world operates.  But I forgot, we can't shove our beleifs down their throats right? :rage:

There isn't alot of outrage over this in Canada is there..... it saddens me to think Canadians will go along with this crap. Is this what we have become?


But, Old Solduer, the fact (and it is a fact) is that we cannot – are not able  to – change people’s culture quickly or easily. We can try but I am as certain as history can teach me that we will fail.

Culture is a deeply ingrained mix of family/clan custom or habit, ‘folk’ influences like music and nursery rhymes, religion (almost as important, culturally, as nursery rhymes) and, in a measure related directly to “communications,” outside influences.

The European Reformation took about 150 years to “complete” (from 1517 when Luther hammered his Ninety-five theses to a church door until 1648's Treaty of Westphalia that ended the Thirty Years War). It went at breakneck speed in small, largely literate, Scotland – from 1546 when Wishart et al murdered or executed, take your pick, Cardinal Beaton at Saint Andrews until 1560 when Scotland was, by and large, a thoroughly protestant society. But the norm for religious reform is a few generations – say a century. Other cultural influences, like nursery rhymes, last much, much longer than most religious practices and have a greater deeper impact – they, like your “milk tongue” (the language you learn at your mother’s breast in the first year of your life), reside deep in our brains and are never erased, even by our professed beliefs.

Modern communication (newspapers and magazines, radio, movies and, above all, TV) can exert a great and powerful influence IF they are carefully used. In the 1930s, 40s and 50s a bunch of American entrepreneurs (mostly Jewish immigrants – refugees – from Europe) created and propagated a wholly fictitious but entirely believable “America” through cinema. Arguably they and their “products” did more to change Europe and Japan than did all of the policies of e.g. Lucius Clay or Douglas MacArthur, more even, perhaps, that did George C Marshall. But this form of insidious “soft power” needs to be administered slowly, and gently – people have to seek it, not have it provided to them.

(The Chinese film industry is, right now, using this technique – producing attractive films with excellent production values - to tell a consistent “story” to China and the world. They are replicating the work of the early Hollywood moguls).

A good friend told me this story: in China, in the 1980s, language students listened assiduously to the BBC World Service – which was not jammed – for its excellent language lessons but also for it’s other broadcasts. They chose it over e.g. Voice of America (also not jammed) because it had “better” programmes – more interesting, more “attractive” to Chinese teen agers and young adults. With those really first rate language lessons – orders of magnitude better than anything the Americans offered – those Chinese also got a big dose of quiet, understated, British propaganda. It worked. To this day my Chinese friend is, largely, unaware that many of her attitudes were “shaped” by the British. (She was a university teacher, not yet even an associate professor, when the Tiananmen Square protest took place in 1989 – she carried food to the students and barely missed the massacre. Later that year she was accepted for a “visiting scholar” programme in Canada – and later, in the 1990s became a Canadian citizen.)

All that to say that we can, and should, use our “soft power” to try to start provoking a “reformation” – a long, long process that will still be going on when you and I are dead and buried. We can provoke, we can explain, we can cajole, we can teach and we can propagandize but we cannot force changes. Nothing we did, since 2002, nothing we do now and nothing the CF will is going to do will do much, if anything, to change Afghans' culture – only they can do that. We can, probably will, force Karzai to amend the law. That will do nothing, not one little thing; Afghanistan will not change. Some Afghans will think us bullies and they will dislike us and even more and reject our “advice” even more strongly, but most will just go on, oblivious to our ambitions.

Cultures take a long time to change – generations, centuries. It is foolish to think that we, the US led West, can “bring democracy” to e.g. Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere else for that matter.

(Democracy is a fine system, eminently useful for modern industrial economies where a strong respect for and implementation of the rule of law is necessary for commerce. It is not quite so useful in feudal societies. Democracy is an especially hard sell in Muslim societies because “good” Muslims believe that absolutely everything one needs to manage a society is in one book: the Koran. Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights, the British Constitution, the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution (which includes the US Bill of Rights in its first 10 articles) are all worthless, inferior to the “rules” set forth in the Koran – all that Muslims must believe are necessary to run a state because, apparently, Mohammed never said “render unto Caesar” etc.)

What we can bring to Afghanistan, before we leave, is enough “know how” and infrastructure to allow the legitimate government of Afghanistan to provide enough security so that the people of Afghanistan may make their own decisions (decisions we may not like at all) in their own ways (ways we may not like, either) for themselves. If try to “bring” more we will fail.

 
Overwatch Downunder said:
I wish I had more encouraging things to say.

It just goes to show you that as long as the sun rises, the sky is blue and the rivers run, nothing will ever change in that neck of the woods.

No matter how are we try by whatever western influence, we cannot expect them to change to our way of mentality, or expect  them 'over there' to tow the line via western standards, or a mininum democratic (joke) society, with basic human rights, and a gentle push into the 21st century.

Finally, it seems that some people is beginning to put aside the rose glasses.

That is exactly the point of view I expressed here many months ago and was heavily beaten for it.  :-\

The basis of any society is economic relations.

As long as they stay primitive and retarded, the society organization is retarded also.

The politics is a product of economy. Not the contrary.
It is not possible to transplant democracy to the society that is economically not ready for it.

As unneeded and unused organs disappear in the human body, unused politic structures disappear in the society.
 
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