Of Afghan Girl Schools and American Allies

Front Page Magazine ^ | July 14, 2004 | Alex Alexiev

[WaterDragon]

Flying back home on the day the NATO summit opened in Istanbul, I came across an article by a British journalist, Charles Clover, in the venerable Financial Times. In it, the author blasted the American military in astonishingly vitriolic language. He described our troops as “socially maladjusted” and “natural-born killers” that have become "socially maladjusted" and "natural-born killers" that have become "America’s main international liability.” My first reaction was that, had Mr. Clover’s screed been published earlier, he might have secured a feature role as a talking head in Michael Moore’s new anti-Bush demagoguementary.

My second reaction was to contrast Clover’s image of servicemen and women with a very different one confirmed by a just-concluded trip to Afghanistan led by NATO’s supreme allied commander, Gen. Jim Jones. In Herat, a bustling city of two million, we visited a tiny American military outpost and a brand new girls’ school they had just finished building, while one of Mr. Clover’s “natural killers” -- a reservist mother of four, who had not seen her young children for months -- told our traveling party of the difficulties encountered in providing shelter and vocational training to abused Afghan women.

The day before, at a barbeque in honor of Gen. Jones at the headquarters of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), some two hundred soldiers from just about every NATO member country mingled freely as brothers-in-arms in a common cause. Earlier in the day, Gen. Jones -- a soldier’s soldier and the first Marine Corps officer to command NATO -- inspected ISAF units at Kabul airport. We saw Dutch and Turkish Blackhawk helicopter pilots standing shoulder-to-shoulder. And a French unit deployed in Kabul put on an impressive show of skill and equipment, as Jones chatted with the troops in fluent French. It would have been easy to leave with the impression of a formidable military alliance of free nations committed to and succeeding in bringing freedom and security to the long-suffering people of Afghanistan....(snip)

A new and more ominous campaign of murder and mayhem is being waged by Taliban thugs against the people’s right to vote. Like Islamist fascists elsewhere, the Taliban consider democracy the main threat to their troglodyte ideology and have begun murdering and terrorizing people registered to vote. Here again, women are singled out by their campaign of terror. The thugs have reason to worry. Nearly half of the eligible 10 million voters have already registered and a remarkable 36% of those are women. This is an act of unprecedented defiance against illiterate zealots who believe that women are chattel to be disposed of as their men-folk see fit.

Considered against this background of a likely deterioration of the security situation before the elections, our allies’ contribution to security in Afghanistan is grossly inadequate. To begin with, virtually all allied troops are stationed in Kabul and rarely venture outside of its relative safety, while Americans are tasked with most combat and dangerous security tasks....(snip)

[Pyro7480]

This was done by a FReeper, and was posted originally on this thread:

[Titan Magroyne]

Excellent article, and one worth reading in its entirety. Thank you!

[McGavin999]

France needs to be thrown out of NATO. They contribute nothing and basically just throw marbles under the feet of those who ARE willing to do something. They are an embarrassment to civilization. I really fail to see much difference between the french and the other barbarians we are fighting every day.