Why are troops in Afghanistan?

Well.. the discussion continues with Devin Maxwell over at Maxwell's House, over whether or not we should be overly concerned with Omar Khadr. In fairness to Devin, the fact that we can have this discussion and debate is a testament to what makes our country great - so while I disagree with him, I find the exchange of opinions in a relatively respectful manner to be a wonderful use of the internet and the blogging process.


Anyhow - last response from Devin posed the question, "May I ask you and Roger why you believe our government has sent young men and women to Afghanistan to die?"

Good question - one that deserves a response and a reminder.. and I have responded thusly:

Why our government sent soldiers to Afghanistan? Oh - I don't know - let's start with the Khadr's good friend Osama Bin Laden - and his quest to murder innocent people all over the world who stood in the way of fundamentalist Islam. Let's start with the vision we all shared of planes crashing into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and into a field in Pennsylvania..

Let us pause for a moment from considering Omar Khadr's plight to think about the last thoughts of those in the planes and the buildings that lost their lives that day.

But don't stop there.. look to the plight of the Afghani people themselves - go look at http://www.rawa.org/wom-view.htm, where they describe the situation for women under Taliban thusly:

"With the coming to power of Islamic fundamentalists in 1992, women’s right to full participation in social, economic, cultural and political life of the country was drastically curtailed and later on summarily denied them by the Taliban. Under the latter, women were totally deprived of the right to education (all girls’ school were closed down), of the right to work (all women were ordered to remain in their houses and employers were threatened with dire consequences for taking up female employees), of the right to travel (no woman could venture out of the house alone and unaccompanied by a prescribed male member of the woman’s immediate family), of the right to health (no woman could see a male doctor, family planning was outlawed, women could not be operated upon by a surgical team containing a male member), of the right to legal recourse (a woman’s testimony was worth half a man’s testimony; a woman could not petition the court directly – this had to be done through a prescribed male member of her immediate family), of the right to recreation (all women’s recreational and sporting facilities had been banned, women singers could not sing least their female voices ‘corrupt’ males, etc.), and of the right to being human (they could not show their faces in public to male strangers, they could not wear bright colored clothing, they could not wear make up, they could only appear outside their houses clad head to foot in shapeless bags called burqas, they could not wear shoes with heels that click [least the clicking sound of their feet corrupt males], they could not travel in private vehicles with male passengers, they did not have the right to raise their voices when talking in public, they could not laugh loud as it lures males into corruption, etc. etc.)

This incredible list could be carried on and on but does not in itself constitute the whole of the tragedy which has engulfed the better half of Afghan society. Women are looked upon as war booty, their bodies are another battleground for belligerent parties. Atrocities in Bosnia pale when compared to atrocities in Afghanistan, but unfortunately for reason which it may not be appropriate to go into in this context, the world community neither heard nor cared about what was going on in Afghanistan. "


I guess it's your call Devin - would the world have been a better place if we had just left well enough alone?

Personally - I think that allowing Taliban and Al Qaeda a power-base in Afghanistan would have been a mistake and that armed intervention was necessary - but again, I'm a "bad guy" for having those thoughts.. but even Ignatieff understands, in his writings, that in dealing with terrorism, violence often needs to be met with violence.

I guess that's a call for all of our consciences, but.. again, I'm ok with what our government and others have done to battle the sickness of extreme Muslim fundamentalism.