"legislation allows husbands to deny wives food if they fail to obey sexual demands"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/14/afghanistan-womens-rights-rape
I'm sure they feel lucky that we brought them freedom.
Steve,
A fair judgment would ascribe responsibility for evils such as this to those who commit them, not to those among whose aims was their avoidance and without whose presence they would almost certainly continue to be practiced today with equal or greater regularity and severity. To the extent that aim has not been achieved, the blame lies with too few humanitarian constraints being imposed on the Afghan government by those with the power to impose them, not too many.
But either way, "we" had no more to do with it than "we" were responsible for saving the French, a false conceit upon which Doug Stanhope justly heaps derision here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQEcMTSgg5w
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
I made no statements regarding either responsibility or generalizations of policy. My point was to provide some facts to give perspective on what was (or in this case was not) gained at great cost in American blood and treasure.
Steve,
All right. But it seems to me that the perspective you describe has already been well-provided-for on this list, whereas those who actually commit abuses in Afghanistan or Pakistan have come in for much less criticism here (except in the cases where U.S. government or allied NATO forces were in fact the responsible parties). I believe that the libertarian agenda should be one of opposing aggression throughout the world regardless of who the aggressor(s) are, and that there should not be a disproportionate focus on attacking the U.S. government in situations involving multiple governments and other actors. In such situations, an observer's disproportionate focus on the national government that happens to claim jurisdiction over the observer is usually symptomatic of a worldview colored by nationalism.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
We focus on the US gov because as citizens we are supposed to have some influence over it's actions - if we didn't there would be no purpose to the LPSF. Our criticism of economic policy is also focused on the US gov for the same reason.
Those of us that oppose the war also oppose aggression, but the facts show that the majority of US interventions have and continue to do more harm than good and generally serve to increase the net amount of aggression in the world.
Some seem to disagree with this assessment of the data, so I post these links to provide them with more data points. I'm not sure why you consider more data points a bad thing if your goal is to make informed decisions.