Posted on 09/02/2006 4:09:58 AM PDT by Clive
That Jack Layton, the NDP leader, would want Canada to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan is unsurprising. That he wants to sit down with the Taliban as part of a "comprehensive peace process" involving "all combatants" is unconscionable. Setting aside for a moment their complicity in al-Qaeda's campaign of terror, the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan was responsible for serious abuses of international human rights and humanitarian law.
According to the New York-based NGO Human Rights Watch, these abuses were directed at political opponents, religious and ethnic minorities, and especially at Afghan women who "suffered a catastrophic assault on their human rights" under Taliban rule.
In its report Humanity Denied: Systematic Violations of Women's Rights in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch itemized how the Taliban banned women from most jobs; prevented girls from receiving any education past primary school; forbade women from going out in public without a close male relative and banned women from appearing in public without being covered in a burqa from head to toe. An exposed wrist or ankle was enough for a woman to receive a public beating by religious police. Said Human Rights Watch: "The Taliban have sought to erase women from public life."
In other words, the Taliban are guilty of institutionalized misogyny and gender apartheid. And yet Mr. Layton, leader of a party that has branded itself "The Better Choice for Women," employs affirmative action in its candidate selection and brags on its Web site of being "committed to the goals of gender parity," wants to sit down with them and talk. It is hard to imagine what result Mr. Layton thinks such a negotiation would produce, but it would most assuredly not involve any cessation by the Taliban of its human rights atrocities, particularly with respect to women. To believe otherwise represents the height of naivete.
There was always a danger that the international community, having tired of punishing the Taliban for their role as hosts for al-Qaeda, would find some pretext to withdraw from Afghanistan. There was always a danger, too, that support for the fledgling democracy -- one which has adopted a declaration of equality for women -- would fade as memories of the horrors of 9/11 began to recede. With Canada and its allies suffering growing casualties in their efforts to bring security and peace to Afghanistan, there was always a danger that they would be compelled by public opinion in their own countries to cut and run -- leaving Afghanistan to a brutal future.
But who would have thought that Jack Layton and Canada's New Democrats would be among the first to condemn Afghan women -- among the world's most vulnerable -- to their certain, evil fate?
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That it gets as many votes as it does is really a measure of disaffection rather than ideology. Canadians use it to lodge a protest vote.
In 1990, the protest vote ran amok and accidentally elected an NDP government. Nobody had expected it to happen, even those who voted NDP, including very surprised new NDP Premier.
Oh, I thought this was about Jack Murtha and the Taliban - never mind.
Oh, from the title I thought this would be about Murtha.
;-)
In fact one of the results of that election was a drop in NDP votes in the next federal general election (in 1993)
The democrat party has NEVER been elected. You are thinking of provicialy in Ontario when Bob Ray spent a year or two ruining the province.
Incidently, Bob Ray is now running for leadership of the Liberal party,(hope he wins) which should tell you how far left it has shifted. keep that in mind next time a liberal tries to tell you they aren't "left". The DP (fitting initials) party seldom gets over 10 seats, in fact they almost dissapeared a few years ago, barely maintaining official party status.
Jack Layton is a idiot, and plays the part well. I hope he stays as DP party leader forever. that will ensure they never will win more than 13 seats.
Just like the Democrats in the US.
ROTFLMAO!!! This is like negotiating with a cobra. What an effing maroon.
The NDP make the DemocRats look like Rush Limbaugh clones. They're so far left Mao-Tse Tung (mousie-dung?) is right of their position on most things.
Yes. I got my correction posted just 45 seconds ahead of your comment ;)
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