Time Magazine cover ignites debate over Afghan War...

[cynatnite]

Reaction to the Time cover has become something of an Internet litmus test about attitudes toward the war, and what America’s responsibility is in Afghanistan. Critics of the American presence in Afghanistan call it “emotional blackmail” and even “war porn,” while those who fear the consequences of abandoning Afghanistan see it as a powerful appeal to conscience.

The debate was fueled in part by the language that Time chose to accompany the photograph: “What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan,” pointedly without a question mark.

“That is exactly what will happen,” said Manizha Naderi, referring to Aisha and cases like hers. An Afghan-American whose group, Women for Afghan Women, runs the shelter where Aisha stayed, Ms. Naderi said, “People need to see this and know what the cost will be to abandon this country.”

As Ms. Naderi would be the first to concede, however, things are already bad enough for women in Afghanistan without a return to a government run by the Taliban. Noorin TV in Kabul has been running what it has called an investigative series suggesting that the shelters, all operated by independent charities, are just fronts for prostitution. The series has offered no evidence, and the station never sent anyone to visit the principal shelters.

snip:
“Feminists have long argued that invoking the condition of women to justify occupation is a cynical ploy,” wrote Priyamvada Gopal in The Guardian, a liberal British newspaper, on Wednesday, “and the Time cover already stands accused of it.”

BagNews, a left-leaning Web site about the politics of imagery in the media, saw the matter in conspiratorial terms. “Isn’t this title applying emotional blackmail and exploiting gender politics to pitch for the status quo — a continued U.S. military involvement?” wrote Michael Shaw.

Richard Stengel, Time’s managing editor, said he thought not. “The image is a window into the reality of what is happening — and what can happen — in a war that affects and involves all of us,” he wrote in a statement on Time’s Web site.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/world/asia/05afghan.html?_r=1&hp

I've never viewed the photograph of this girl as propaganda. To me, it's a reality of what is currently happening now and how much worse it can still continue to get. I will never forget the videos of women being executed in a soccer stadium when the Taliban was in charge. That was not propaganda. That was reality.

We're damned either way when it comes to Afghanistan. Bush never did right by that country in the first place. That's why the Taliban has been able to come back as strongly as it has. Unfortunately, things are so bad now that winning seems very unlikely.

Let's face facts here. America made promises to Afghanistan and has failed to keep them. Not only that, this country is supporting a corrupt Afghan government.

It disgusts and outrages me that we might leave girls like this one to fend for themselves. The theocratic butchers of the Taliban are heartless bastards who mutilate and murder women without the least bit of guilt. To think of these types running a country is completely unnacceptable to me.

At the same time, I know the problems that we face in this war and as it drags on more lives are lost. No real progress is made.

There is only one outcome that I can see happening here for everyone involved and it's not a good one. :(

[BeGoodDoGood]

1. The Right

People don't have the right to say when someone else's father, son, brother or husband (or wife, daughter, sister, Mother) should be sacrificed for what -they- think is right.

Say we stay in Afghanistan to keep afghan women safe from afghan men. How many Marines and soldiers do we lose per non-mutilated afghan woman? 1/10 of a lance corporal? 1/5? Three lance corporals? Five? It's nuts. It is their problem. Let them deal with it.

Walt

[elocs]

2. "It is their problem. Let them deal with it."

What an interesting philosophy, although in this country we already have the YOYO (You're On Your Own)Party who hold that philosophy for individuals. I suppose we could apply it to countries as well.

Yes, let's apply it to all the world and to all countries. Their problems are theirs, so let them deal with it.

[cynatnite]

4. They were left to their own devices before and with horrific consequences...

9/11 happened as a result.

The opportunity to win was there, but bush pissed it away for his criminal war in Iraq. Now, there is no winning and as much as I want the Taliban taken out of existence, the reality is that we are in an unwinnable war. It tears me up inside that women will continue to suffer under these theocratic butchers, but the choice of staying is gone, IMO. That's what I was trying to say.

[txlibdem]

15. BINGO

Wanna know why the Afghanistan war is unwinnable? Because the enemy is gone. They are no longer in the country. Al Queda has moved to Yemen, Indonesia and other parts of the world. So we can bomb Afghan to kingdom come and not hurt them one bit. The Taliban are in Pakistan and now we find that the Pakistani secret service is bankrolling them. So if the Taliban is our enemy we should be attacking Pakistan? It's an idiotic idea.

Since the only thing we're doing is aiding Chinese mining companies to gain access to Afghan's mineral resources.

* I'm calling it Afghan because I'm too lazy to type out Afghanistan every darn time.

[elocs]

3. Choices have consequences and how & the manner in which we leave is important.

There is no perfect or simplistic solution to the Afghanistan problem because all choices have negative consequences. We do need to leave, but the manner of our leaving needs to be well thought out.

A hasty withdrawal will certainly have negative consequences for the people of Afghanistan as does our presence there as well. Certainly women will likely be even more severely oppressed than they are now and there would likely be wholesale and bloody revenge against any Afghan who helped the coalition forces. Then here at DU we would read of all the hand wringing over that in much the same way we see the cries for withdrawal today.

Can't have it both ways. There will be blood.

[cynatnite]

5. Well said. n/t

[REP]

6. That cover reminded me of "Hun atrocities" propaganda used to get the US in WWI

The Taliban were vicious thugs before the US invaded; they were vicious thugs during the invasion and occupation and they'll be vicious thugs if we ever leave. How many more of our young people need to be killed and maimed? This cover was nothing but propaganda of the basest kind.

[deutsey]

14. Also reminds me of the National Lampoon cover

[Junkdrawer]

19. That would be a GREAT Photoshop...

Time mag cover, dog+gun, tagline: "If You Don't Support the War in Afghanistan, We'll Kill This Dog"

[BrklynLiberal]

7. How about a cover picture showing the reality of wounded and dead American soldiers?

[marylanddem]

9. Excellent point

We cannot force change on that country, just as we could not forestall change in Vietnam...I think Time really fucked up on this one.

[Obamanaut]

8. Considering the number of shelters for battered women (and their

children) in the US, I think it is presumptuous of the the US to attempt to dictate to another country how the female citizenry should or should not be treated.

There is enough stuff broken here that could be fixed, and then maybe we could resume being policemen to the world. But let our stuff be in order first. It looks better if your own kitchen is not in disarray when you tell another to straighten theirs.

[Triana]

17. +1 (n/t)

[sendero]

10. If military action....

... (i.e. violence) could stop this sort of thing, I'd be all for it.

You cannot change a culture through military action. Simple as that.

[Vinnie From Indy]

11. The Time cover is about as naked a bit of propaganda as there is

[marylanddem]

12. yep. N/T

[SammyWinstonJack]

23. +1

[Junkdrawer]

13. CIA and ISI Nurtured Mujahedeen and Taliban...

....

GOULD: Well, that's when everything really does fall apart. And the-again, in terms of the mujahedeen, what ended up happening was the multiple groups of Islamists known as the Mujahideen began to war with one another in their attempt to take over Afghanistan. In fact, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Ahmad Shah Massoud were two of the main people who caused the major destruction in Kabul-75 percent of Kabul was destroyed during the exchanges. And that actually was the precipitator of the creation of the Taliban. In an effort to try and guarantee that-the Pakistanis wanted to guarantee that they would have a Pakistani-friendly government installed in Afghanistan. The Taliban became the method and went around to the refugee camps, where they basically brought Afghan boys into the madrasahs and indoctrinated them. But this was all part of the buildup that eventually was presented, by 1994-96, as an Afghan movement, but really was very much part of the ideological political process that the Pakistani ISI military facilitated.

JAY: Together with the Saudis, I think, should be added.

GOULD: Oh, absolutely.

FITZGERALD: Together with the Saudis. But also the United States was very much behind it. And, you know, Madeleine Albright, as an example, was very, very positive on backing the Taliban, and she considered them to be a cleansing force.

JAY: You know, from one angle it gets vilified, the nurturing of the Taliban. But from Pakistan's national interest, don't they have a right? They had utter chaos on their borders. And, in fact, the Taliban, if I understand correctly, certainly, at least in the early days, were quite welcomed by the Afghan people as getting rid of the terrible lawlessness, the culture of rape of young-especially young boys, and, I mean, the hundreds of thousands of people that were killed in this inter-warlord fighting, that from Pakistan's interest and from Afghans' interest there was a stabilizing factor there. Was there not?

....

http://communities.canada.com/shareit/blogs/reality/archive/2010/08/03/cia-and-isi-nurtured-mujahideen-and-taliban.aspx

[another saigon]

16. interesting

Did the article explain how the US supported The Taliban in the nineties while women were being abused? It is extremely cynical to try and use the "we can't leave because..." justifications given the US history in foreign wars and countries. The USA is as bad as any 'outlaw' regime I have ever read about.

[joe black]

18. Let's airlift them out to the US.

It would be cheaper then trying to win this war oh, and we can take our men and women with them.

[Forkboy]

20. The cover is propaganda of the most blatant sort.

It's one degree removed form babies being torn from their incubators type of stuff. And the cover is clearly have the desired effect. We've learned nothing.

[Marr]

21. Ridiculous. We are not there to protect women.

Have you noticed that the same people who talk about our moral responsibility to protect (fill in the population here) are the same ones who urge war and casually shrug off "collateral damage"?

The world is full of terrible things. If we accept the notion that we must occupy countries to protect populations from themselves, we'll be at war forever. Our warmongers will love it, but it doesn't make sense.

[kenny blankenship]

22. As others have said, the Time cover is crude propaganda. The only debate it sparked

was over how bad it was.

That cover is on a par with John Wayne's The Green Berets. If you think that cover means we need to stay in Afghanistan, then you should have the same kind of response to The Green Berets. (I'll wire President Obama to have him send the Marines back to Da Nang and we can do the whole thing over again.) The first third of that movie lays on thick justification for the Vietnam War, and argues for continuing it despite domestic opinion turning against it. Wayne doesn't go in for an eggheaded discussion of competing views of economics and political theory. He makes his argument by painting exactly the same kind of picture of the Viet Cong that Time painted for the Taliban: they're brutal, inhuman monsters. Wayne's green beret Colonel schools a librul media journalist in the depravity of the Viet Cong by telling him everything the VC did to the wife of a village headman who refused to play ball with them. It's the full, gory, mutilated picture Wayne wouldn't draw in The Searchers about the rape and murder of his niece by Commanche Indians -- all the details and colors are filled in to stir your outrage against the enemy. You see, THIS enemy simply has to be defeated. He is no ordinary opponent. His Marxist theory is not the enemy, the evilness of the enemy is what makes him the enemy. THIS enemy is so evil, the Universe must stop until we have expunged his evil out of existence once and for all, even if we all die in the attempt. But our enemy in media space is always this monster -the same monster- when you get down to it, whether it's the Commanche Indian, the Viet Cong, or the Taliban. There isn't room enough in the Universe for his Evil to exist next to our Goodness and Decency. Always the same. And it's not as if Wayne and his propaganda film were making stuff up about the Viet Cong either. They and their Viet Minh predecessors were absolutely ruthless towards unnarmed people - village elders, tribal headmen - whose cooperation they demanded but who refused to give it. But The Green Berets was rallying people to an impossible and misguided cause. We could not tell the Vietnamese how to be and how to live. We were the outsiders and the locals weren't that interested in our promises to bring them into the Light. They'd heard the same from the French. The propagandists at Time magazine today are on the same misguided quest to vanquish Evil and will fare no better at it.

[JoeyT]

24. War porn sounds about right.

As does "Pro-War Propaganda".
We have to stay in Afghanistan or things will happen to women like this thing that happened to a woman while we were in Afghanistan!

That girl WAS left to fend for herself. Or was that picture taken in an alternate reality and sent to us while in this world we kept it from happening to her?

[Hannah Bell]

25. america *spawned* the taliban. we're *not* protecting women from anything, we're killing them and

their families.