Kristof: Afghan Women, Still in Chains

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/14/opinion/14KRIS.html

One of the bleakest, saddest and best movies I've seen lately is "Osama," the tale of a girl in Taliban-run Afghanistan who risks her life by pretending to be a boy so she can leave her house and earn money for her widowed mother. "I wish God hadn't created women," the girl's mother moans — and then the girl is arrested, and the movie really gets depressing.

Americans should be proud that we took on that world and ousted the Taliban. As President Bush declared in his 2002 State of the Union address, "The mothers and daughters of Afghanistan were captives in their own homes. . . . Today women are free."

But they aren't. More than two years later, many Afghan women are still captives in their homes. Life is better in Kabul than under the Taliban, but in many areas our triumphalism is proving hollow.

<snip>

I strongly backed the war in Afghanistan. President Bush oversaw a smart and decisive war, and when I strolled through Kabul in those heady days of liberation, I was never more proud to be an American.

Yet now I feel betrayed, as do the Afghans themselves. There was such good will toward us, and such respect for American military power, that with just a hint of follow-through we could have made Afghanistan a shining success and a lever for progress in Pakistan and Central Asia. Instead, we lost interest in Afghanistan and moved on to Iraq.

[JailForBush]

1. How can Afghan women be in such desperate straits when Laura

Bush spoke up for them on TV on at least one occasion?