What's So Scary About Smart Girls?

[stevenleser]

21. Yep, I did write that article. Here it is...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_steven_l_071206_afghanistan_s_women_.htm

OpEdNews Op Eds 12/6/2007 at 01:11:47
Afghanistan's Women Should be Granted Asylum in the West - All of Them that Want it

I’m really getting tired of seeing pictures and news reports of abused women in Afghanistan. It is even more disappointing given that the West has over 40,000 troops on the ground in the country. I thought all of this was supposed to stop when we engineered the overthrow of the Taliban? The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), the leading Afghan women’s rights group, issued this http://www.rawa.org/events/march8-07_e.htm press release on March 8, 2007 in recognition of International Women’s Day from which I have excerpted the following:
.
.
.

We have to look at all of this a little differently. Women are being denied their basic human rights in the Afghanistan. They are being singled out for their gender. They are being tortured, denied opportunities to earn a living, and executed for what most of the civilized world would recognize as minor offenses or non criminal moral lapses. Imagine how we would view this if a country were doing this to a group of a particular religion or race or ethnic origin? We have to look at Afghanistan’s treatment of women the same way. The only difference is we have a higher responsibility to act in Afghanistan given the troops we have in country and the fact that the government in power is one that we installed.

The Solution
The situation requires a special and radical solution. We have to get the people that are the object and victims of the discriminatory and genocidal policies out of the country and area, assuming they want to leave. NATO countries should agree to grant all of Afghanistan’s women asylum. NATO troops should go from city to city, announce the asylum program and take any women away who want to leave right then and there. They should be immediately taken to and housed on NATO bases under the protection of NATO forces until they can be airlifted out. NATO military transport planes and civilian aircraft should be contracted to fly them out of Afghanistan as quickly as possible.

No one has to tell me that this policy would create a political firestorm and harm our relations with many of the nations in the region. I don’t care. The men of Afghanistan and any other country that treat women this way don’t deserve to have any women around. Any country that discriminates against any class, race, gender, religion, etc. of people has lost the privilege of having those people as citizens and deserves to have that group flown out and given asylum in a country that does not discriminate against them. The difference here is that we have the troops on the ground to do it. We should start this process immediately and to hell with the consequences. Maybe this will send a message that the world is serious about stopping mistreatment of women and other vulnerable groups and this will influence other countries to stop the discrimination and abuse.