There was a time when I thought we had done the right thing by removing the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. I thought even if we didn't catch Osama bin-Laden, at least we had created a government there that that would establish equal rights for Afghani women. Sadly that was not true.
Earlier this year, the Afghan government tried to pass a law that would legalize the rape of married women. It would have decreed that the women must submit to sexual relations with their husband at least every four days, and would have removed the need for a woman's consent within marriage. Human rights groups around the world objected, and President Karzai withdrew the law to "revise it".
They have now finished the revision, and quietly made the bill the official law of the country. But the revised law is no improvement over the original bill. According to the BBC, the new law "allows a man to withhold food from his wife if she refuses his sexual demands; a woman must get her husband's permission to work; and fathers and grandfathers are given exclusive custody of children."
The new law, in effect,
legalizes forcible rape. It does not matter if the force is physical violence or starvation, it is still forcible rape. And how is it that a grandfather could claim custody of a woman's child? It sounds like the Afghani government is going backwards on women's rights.
Do we really want our brave American troops dying to defend these kind of laws? I certainly don't. If our troops must fight and die, it should be for freedom and equality and not the slavery of women. It should be for the same principles that we espouse in our own country.
If the Afghanis really want these laws, then they can do it without us. They can get those kind of laws with the Taliban.
It is time to withdraw all of our troops from Afghanistan. Let the misogynists on both sides fight it out among themselves. It is not worth the life of a single American soldier to defend a government that approves such laws.
