This Just In: We Screwed Up Afghanistan, Too

From the Trib:

Violence against women increased in every province of Afghanistan last year, according to Women's Affairs Ministry statistics. Those numbers include self-immolations, a relatively new and disturbing trend in Afghanistan in which women set themselves on fire.

The desperation that leads to such acts has been attributed to domestic violence and forced marriages. At least 60 percent of Afghan women are in forced marriages, and 57 percent marry before they reach age 16, according to a report by the international rights group Womankind Worldwide.

Not for nothing, but this might be something to ask Laura Bush about during her next "My husband is attractive and powerful and an adequate lover" press conference.

A.

Comments

[BuggyQ]

Color me so surprised. Of all the things this administration did, the invasion of Afghanistan was the only one that I actually approved of. But then came Iraq, and the preznit flushed Afghanistan down the historical toilet.

It seems to me that we should keep Dubya and his cronies around as a Shadow President in the future. We let them look at the situation, give us their opinion, and then we do exactly the opposite. It can't go wrong.

[MsPiffers]

Suicides by teenage girls are also becoming quite common. Nothing much to look forward to, so this is becoming their escape.

[darrelplant]

I suspect that once Michelle Malkin gets wind of this that she'll start wondering if someone named "Jamail Hussein" is the source for the "self-immolation" stories.

[Nora]

Just finished reading the most depressing book about our involvement in Afghanistan, Sarah Chayes' The Punishment of Virtue.

I was never sure that the invasion of Afghanistan was such a hot idea in the first place, but perhaps that was because I was a history major (hmm, is there someone else involved in this war who also got a degree in history, from a somewhat more famous school than my University of Wisconsin?) and I knew about the first and second British-Afghan Wars (both disasters) as well as about the Soviet invasion in the 1980's. But I remember people saying that this time we would do it right, this time we wouldn't leave the Afghan people in the lurch as we did after the end of the Soviet occupation. And then came Iraq.

The book suggests that we pretty much fucked up from the start, that we were played by Pakistan and its warlord allies in Afghanistan, and then of course we lost interest in Afghanistan because Iraq was so much more important, and here we are.

[Athenae]

Nora, you're a Badger? Did I know that already and just forget?

I need to read Sarah Chayes' book. I loved her reports on NPR.

A.