Are we fighting for arranged marriages between 50 YO men and 13 YO girls?

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.theguardian.pe.ca/index.cfm?sid=4362&sc=5

Are we fighting for arranged marriages?


As of mid-week, 42 Canadians had died fighting in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan mission has been billed as an exercise in support for a struggle to establish freedom and democracy; concepts that country has never experienced in its wartorn history. snip

Another of these questionable practices came to light this week with the news of a 13-year-old girl being locked up in a filthy Afghani jail cell for refusing to take part in an arranged marriage. She ran away rather than marry the man her father had chosen. The would-be husband she was running from was a 50-year-old man.

Most Canadians are troubled by the concept of arranged marriages for adults above the age of consent, but they do acknowledge it is the custom in many cultures. However, they would never condone throwing a young girl in jail for refusing to marry a man old enough to be her grandfather.

Whether we like it or not, the present leader of Afghanistan is as enlightened a president as we are likely to get. But Hamid Karzai is kept in office with support of many of the country’s warlords and drug barons, and these are not men much interested in social change. snip

Hamid Karzai is a well-educated and westernized Afghani. In order to stay in office does he really need to let children be jailed when they won’t submit to the desires of lecherous old men? And if he does, do we really want to be part of propping up such a regime?

Is this what we are sending Canadian troops to the other side of the world for? If it’s not, what, if anything, are we doing to change these laws and customs?

[CJCRANE]

1. OK

so the Afghanis are a primitive and backwards people

BUT us (NATO) bombing and shooting them proves we're more civilized or will somehow make them more civilized?

I don't think so.

[hippiechick]

2. No, instead we feed our young boys to pervs like Foley ...

:(

[alfredo]

3. Under Mosaic law she would be killed for being disobedient.

[bowens43]

4. It's their laws and their customs

we have no right to impose our western morality on them.

[BreweryYardRat]

6. Ephebophilic culture isn't an issue of "western morality."

We outgrew it. What's the harm in jumpstarting their movement for them?

[The2ndWheel]

10. Who jumpstarted ours?

We get the cheap energy. Without cheap energy, we still have overt slavery in this country.

We outgrew it my ass. We still live in the same societal structure we've lived in for thousands of years. We never have, never do, and never will change anything fundamentally.

[BreweryYardRat]

11. We did.

And can we get to the rest of your points later? I've got something to finish.

[The2ndWheel]

14. But not somebody from somewhere else, right?

Just checking.

Well you can get the rest of my points now. When did women acquire rights? When were Africans considered to be human? When did the middle class form? These are all after cheap energy in the form of oil. Without it, we've all got shit thanks to our systems which promote the exploitation of all life.

Actually that was my only point. So go ahead, go do whatever. Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt.

[BreweryYardRat]

17. Well, the thing is, cultural self-removal of ephebophilia...

...only needs to happen once. After that, it can be spread around to other cultures-although inflicting it at gunpoint is going to make some people reject it for that alone.

To the best of my knowledge (modern history not being my strong point) ephebophilia was first condemned in America, before the Emancipation Proclamation and before the Industrial Revolution. From there, it spread to England and Europe.

And there's been a middle class in varying degrees since the late medieval period.

[Scriptor Ignotus]

18. Your argument is like nails on a chalkboard to my senses

We're not talking about morally neutral cultural differences, like Japanese people bowing instead of shaking hands like Westerners. These arranged marriages are terrible in all cultures. It is basically a form of slavery.

This also isn't about West versus East. It's about right versus wrong and in this particular instance we are right.

Your argument perpetuates great evils, that at different times and places has been used to defend slavery, female circumcisions, honor killings, and a host of other barbarous enterprises.

How we go about changing these cultures can be debated - the fact that we should initiate these change can not.

[Lurking Dem]

20. Yet we fight Japanese whaling.

[n2doc]

21. BullS**t. So if they practiced slavery and cannibalism it would be ok?

It is ok to basically sell a young girl into slavery (which, if you look at what they are doing, this is) because it is the "local custom?" We interfere over there in many ways- Imposing "democracy", restricting the kinds of crops (Opium) that they grow (not successfully), and so on. If we aren't going to uphold basic human rights, including those of children, then we might as well leave and give the place back to the Taliban.

[NNN0LHI]

22. I think you may be on to something here n/t

[Warpy]

5. Well, the old man may not be that lecherous

because arranged marriages are matters of state, alliances between families and clans. There is no romance to marriage in most of the world. In much of it, the girls are property, sold to the highest bidder as breeding stock. Most don't have the right to refuse. If they do, they're beaten and kicked out of the family and village, left to starve or take to the streets as prostitutes.

Yes, it would be lovely if we could elevate the status of women in every country in the world. However, rushing in and dictating an end to arranged marriage and end to child marriage is not the way to do it. We have to start at the bottom, with microloans and basic education, give women something to look forward to besides giving birth every year, hoping for sons and no daughters.

Until that happens, we're stuck with a system that has benefited fathers and families while being a horror for girls and women. And yes, Karzai will have to put up with having little girls thrown into prison for refusing to marry old men. The alternative would have been to kill them.

[Cleita]

15. I understand what you are saying however, there is historical

precedent of the conqueror changing customs of the conquered when those customs are abhorrent to them. The Spaniards ended human sacrifice by the Aztecs and more recently, Indonesian colonizers on Papua-New Guinea ended cannibalism where they found it there.

[Warpy]

7. Hiccup

[shadowknows69]

8. You're not noticing that pattern in the US government?

What's good for us is good for our colonies damnit.

[ClintonTyree]

9. Well, that and keeping the stock market afloat.......

buying the tools of the war trade from Big Business in the U.S is about the only thing keeping the economy buoyant. No war, crashing economy. The Republicans NEED this war to keep the "Bush economic miracle" sputtering along.

Canadians have always been in the vanguard on social issues. Americans wouldn't give this a second thought. Well, it would never get REPORTED here, so maybe Americans WOULD care if they knew about it. Our "liberal media" is too busy covering dead dog stories to delve into the nuts and bolts of other cultures' inequities.

[BoneDaddy]

12. Well at least they

wouldn't be, you know, Homo-seckshual!!! (total sarcasm)

[ComerPerro]

13. well, that's not all your boys are dying for

they are also fighting and dying to establish Islamic states in that area. US-backed Islamic states, no less...

We are helping to build a theocracy

[Avalux]

16. Karzai is essentially the mayor of an isolated city -

outside of Kabul, he has no power and can do nothing about the warlords. Sad reality.

[elehhhhna]

19. Yeah we fight for it over THERE so we can IGNORE it over HERE...

(think polygamist sects in UT, AZ, & TX)