"Afghan women’s rights are not our fight
REPRESENTATIVE STEPHEN Lynch (my congressman) writes in a Feb. 17 op-ed that the United States must preserve the rights of Afghan women by avoiding any reconciliation with the Taliban (“The price of appeasing the Taliban’’).
But the warlord-dominated regime that the United States currently supports in Kabul has brought nothing but disaster for Afghan women. Eight years after the US military intervention in Afghanistan, Afghan women still die in childbirth more than women in any other country, women’s life expectancy is one of the lowest in the world (about 42 years), and UNICEF has just announced that Afghanistan has replaced Sierra Leone as the worst place in the world for a child to be born today.
But we have "liberated" them.
Lynch must not use Afghan women as a cover for continued US occupation of their country.
That's what the agenda-pushing op was meant for.
He should vote to deny funds for the Afghanistan war, to bring all the troops home and end the bloodshed.
We won't be seeing that anytime soon in AmeriKa.
Afghan women’s struggle for rights will be a long one, but it cannot be waged by our military. Let’s get out of their way.
Cole Harrison
Roslindale
The writer is the organizer of a task force on Afghanistan in association with United for Justice with Peace, a coalition of more than 100 Boston-area groups.
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"Congress must focus on our own country’s needs
IT WOULD take too much ink to properly debunk Representative Stephen Lynch’s premise that our war in Afghanistan is about protecting human rights (“The price of appeasing the Taliban,’’ Op-ed, Feb. 17). We support many similarly corrupt, repressive regimes because they allow us access to natural resources and sites for military bases.
Lynch, against whom I am running as an independent, wants to focus on our responsibility to Afghan society because he and his colleagues don’t want us to focus on their failure to meet their responsibilities to our society. No jobs, no health care reform, no financial reforms, no infrastructure repairs - the things we pay them each $200,000 a year to look after.
Lynch is a congressman from Massachusetts, not Helmand Province.
Good point!
His priority is the women of Massachusetts who are homeless, jobless, and discriminated against. He should spend less time traveling in Afghanistan, and more traveling in his district.
Voters are furious because Lynch and his colleagues don’t get it: We don’t want to be the world’s police force, when we can’t afford enough police officers for our streets. We don’t want to depend on China for money and Saudi Arabia for oil (countries with huge human rights abuses) when we could be self-sufficient.
Phil DunkelbargerWestwood
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No, they don't get it which is why they are going to lose Congress come November (and because Israel not liking Obama right now).
"Blame Charlie Wilson
I AM writing regarding the Feb. 12 editorial “Charlie Wilson: Twice right on Afghanistan.’’ To suggest that Wilson was motivated by the plight of the Afghan refugees during the period that the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan is ludicrous.
The Texas congressman procured funding to train the mujahideen, made up of opium growers, warlords, and those opposed to the rights of women. These groups are the forerunners to the Taliban, and it is the mujahideen that trained Osama bin Laden. These are the same forces that our troops are fighting today.
To say that this is not Wilson’s fault is ludicrous. It is the fault of Wilson, the CIA, and every administration whose foreign policy was based on giving the Soviet Union a bloody nose with no regard to any moral or even sane policy consideration.
Never mind creating the BASE for "Al-CIA-Duh."
Bellingham
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