Afghanistan- Trying to restore the fundemental right to an education

[NJmaverick]

Besides keeping the Taliban from taking over the US forces are trying to give girls a basic education. Something the Taliban does not want to happen.

During the Soviet occupation from 1979-1989, schools were targeted by mujahedeen forces, wary that they might spread communist ideology. More recently, schools have been attacked by Taliban insurgents who want to keep girls at home and educate boys in religious madrassas that teach a militant interpretation of Islam.

In the past seven years, the U.S. government has helped to build or renovate 680 Afghan schools, and the U.S. Agency for International Development is spending $94 million to train and support teachers.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has cited expanding the education system as an important part of the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan.

But just like the military fight, there have been plenty of setbacks.

Some 45 percent of Afghanistan's school-age children — 5 million boys and girls — still don't have access to primary education. In some remote areas, there never have been schools. In other areas, the Taliban have burned, bombed or otherwise shut down hundreds of schools, including some built with U.S. or other Western aid.

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=66999

[NJmaverick]

1. Who are the people that unrecced giving women an eduation?

Please make yourselves known.

[Stinky The Clown]

3. They're not unrecing your thread. They're unreccing you.

I am not one of them. If I were, I'd admit it.

[NJmaverick]

4. ahh so it's personal and petty, got it

[Stinky The Clown]

8. That's exactly right

You think petty and personal is not hard at work here?

[NJmaverick]

13. No, they are pretty much the hardest workers around

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

9. Not necessarily. I bet many of them are unreccing the whining about unreccing.

Regardless of thread content OR poster identity.

[NJmaverick]

11. The unrecs came when all that was discussed was the idea of giving women an education

[howard112211]

2. Anyone who is against the war in Afghanistan doesn't want women to be educated

and hates the troops and is an anti-semite.

/sarcasm

[NJmaverick]

5. You can be against the war, but that doesn't mean you can't ignoreq

the positives like giving woman a chance to LEARN. To me that is a fundemental human right.

[laststeamtrain]

6. Hey. Maybe we can do drone missile attacks on graduation ceremonies.

Change of pace from weddings.

[NJmaverick]

7. Yeah, why should women be educated right?

[laststeamtrain]

10. Yeah. Teach 'em to whip off their burkas & send sext messages to Karzai...

...from the Mall of Kabul.

We have a great future for the youth of Afghanistan planned.

They could go from memorizing the Koran to a 200-word vocabulary in a single generation. The ones that survive the occupation that is.

[NJmaverick]

12. You should have read the article

then you would have seen this:

<<Families often marry off girls before the age of 20, and there still are few opportunities for village women to attend college or vocational schools.

But surveys conducted by Bolz and the Hubbards show that Afghan students' aspirations are changing. In an initial survey several years ago, few said they thought much about their future. Now, many say they want to be teachers, run for parliament or even for president.

"These kids are frustrated with the status quo. We have given them hope," Bolz said. "Now, what do we do?">>

[ClassWarrior]

14. IBTL

NGU.

[frylock]

15. knu

more BS used to justify an illegal occupation.

[NJmaverick]

16. The FACT remains that prior to the US invasion women were not allowed to be educated

that is a pretty big issue, in my opinion.

[tekisui]

17. Worth fighting a war for?

I'm not sure. This is more excuses after the fact. We are not there to give girls education. Those efforts could be much more successful if they were not in a war-zone.

[NJmaverick]

18. It certainly would go in the reasons not to surrender the Country to the Taliban

along with keeping our citizens safe by denying Afganistan as a safe haven and base of operation.

[tekisui]

19. Surrender? No one is talking about surrendering.

That is a long practices right-wing frame. No one wants to 'wave the white flag of surrender'. We need to get out of Afghanistan. We are still making it worse for the Afghan people and our future security. Wait, no....if we leave, they will follow us here, won't they? We got to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here, right?

What other bush lingo do you have? Are we turning a corner yet? Do we need to stay the course? I can't wait for the insurgency to be in its last throws.

[Name removed]

20. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[frylock]

21. and that is not a unique to afghanistan..

shall we invade all countries that don't allow women to be educated, or just the globally strategic regions?

[LooseWilly]

22. Ahh... the noble urge to educate women. How about some free tuition for women here in the States?

I'm not saying educating women isn't the most worthwhile part of the whole idiotic occupation of Afghanistan. Hell, the more I think about it... the more I think it's the only worthwhile aspect of the whole stupid fucking occupation.

In the spirit of that US-ian nobility and dedication to the cause of women's rights and education... how about firing 1 general in every 10, and taking their entire pay package and using it to fund tuition for women here in the States? Take their pay, the value of their benefits, the value of their retirement, take their 401Ks... (they're supremely talented, I'm sure they can start over and earn it all back) ... Or maybe send only 20k instead of 30k soldiers... and use ALL OF THE MONEY THAT COULD BE SAVED to pay for tuition for women here in the States.

Or, how about passing the ERA amendment to the Constitution to include women (gender) as a category upon which basis one can't discriminate in this country?

Or how about this... until the country does something along the lines of what I've outlined above... how about you just stop with the disingenuous argument that the occupation is somehow about women's rights/education?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

23. Right. The whole aim of the occupation is to educate women. Pick up the White Man's Burdon much?

[ieoeja]

24. The problem with this....

Why was the Taliban executing thousands of women a year versus a mere handful in Saudi Arabia? Because in Saudi Arabia the women were raised in that tradition. A Saudi woman is taken care of by her family until she is handed into the care of a husband. She knows how to live under that law and has the infrastructure to make it possible.

Conversely, in Kabul women had been living free and independant lives for decades. These women were in violation of capital offenses the second the Taliban took over. Even if they managed to get a husband or family to care for them, they didn't know the rules. And if they learned the rules, after a liberal lifetime many of them simply found it impossible to adjust to those new rules.

Can you imagine living like that yourself? How long before you do something stupid like run outside to take down the wash without a proper burqa since it will only take a few seconds?


So if we start educating these women again, if we give them back their freedom, and if we then abandon Afghanistan ... then we'd better be willing to evacuate a million female refugees, or we are condemning them to a horrible fate.