Reply #86: It's important to read the whole articles on the RAWA site.

[iconicgnom]

Not just the parts that one is already in agreement with and "already knows".

Of course the RAWA articles express their contempt for fundamentalist Islamic gov'ts. And they speak and fight against outside interference from fundamentalist countries like Iran. These women have experienced so-called "liberators" like the Soviets, so know fist hand how "liberations" at the hand of self-described super powers work, on the ground after their own country was targeted and destroyed. These are modern, educated women, in many cases self-educated in spite of incredible odds, and they speak and fight against the enslavement of women with every breath they take. So in all these ways, they're "on the same side" as westerners of a progressive bent, esp. those who work tirelessly toward feminist goals of social equality. The DU type - more or less.

On the other hand "westerners", particulary those who live in the US and have been saturated life-long with US MSM propoganda, are generally fairly clueless regarding the role that US foreign policy has had in the subjection of whole 3rd world populations for the past century, and how accelerated and disastrous that oppression has been after WW2. Westerners are almost clueless about the global economic reasons for US 3rd world interventions, and about how those interventions are for the purpose of reshaping the internal long term economic policies of those countries - in every case for the purpose of handing ownership rights over the natural resources to globalized corporations based in "the west". In fact it's very peculiar that tho' the US has steamrolled over a swath of formerly prosperous democratic countries, installing dictatorships enforcing extreme market economies which devastate the indiginous populations and destroy their middle and working class peoples, the actual US voter generally still believes, somewhere deep down, that the US is a force for democracy and freedom in the world. How peculiar. How peculiar that the US voter thinks there's been some major qualitative difference between the Republicans and Democrats in this regard, when the difference is a fairly minor quantitative one - and the Dems have never come even close to actually "naming the beast".

In any event, although people can't be faulted for good motivations, they really owe it to themselves to be informed. In this case, read the RAWA article
The US and Her Fundamentalist Stooges are
the Main Human Rights Violators in Afghanistan
http://www.rawa.org/events/dec10-07_e.htm

The US hasn't *set up* any infrastructure whatever to push through progressive change through military force. The women of RAWA have said time and again that it's their view that the very notion is self-contradictory. It's a fact that the entire infrastructure of the US military occupations of mid-east countries is designed for purposes of oppressing the populations and putting a lid on free democratic expression of opposition, while funneling vast profits to private corporations and opening the natural resources sector as a playground for US backed corporate plunder. Unfortunately, the torture pits at Bagram, the black hole, are full.

Those who want to help the Afghan people might do better to help through other agencies than the US military machine.