I just watched John Stewart's Daily Show from last Monday. (Both the best and lesst-than-best aspects of DVRs: you can watch the show anytime, so you catch it later than you might wish
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Gary, your very cogent observations serve as a jumping-off point, particularly because the simplistic "bring back our girls!" actually got people's attention worldwide. (Including the plucky Pakistani student Malala Yusufzai who sympathetically pledged support for her heroic Nigerian sisters.)
It's perhaps NOT the moment to discuss all too many Muslims' retrograde attitude toward women.
However, the past decade's Western "engagement" with the Islamic world, in particular, means we observers from whatever country HAVE to think about the evidently unresolved cultural clash between us and them. So, just how "engaged" are we, anyhow? In Egypt? In Turkey? And, goddess knows, even this week in India, where the newly elected government is to be headed by a divisive politico implicated in the killing of thousands of Muslim Indians?
Put over-simply, in Nigeria May 2014, it's hundreds of abused schoolgirls in this instance -- but, as importantly, it's millions of Afghan schoolgirls (and BOYS, too) who are menaced daily by the ignorant Taliban. (As well as by ultra-conservative parents, ignorant mullahs, uncaring political leaders, etc.)
And, currently, NATO's unseemly haste in winding up our fight there carries the huge risk of abandoning these millions of enlightened Afghan girls and their mothers, -- who are the ONLY hope of their battered country!
A decade of NATO soldiers bleeding and dying will have been in vain if we short-sightedly forget about them...
It's perhaps NOT the moment to discuss all too many Muslims' retrograde attitude toward women.
However, the past decade's Western "engagement" with the Islamic world, in particular, means we observers from whatever country HAVE to think about the evidently unresolved cultural clash between us and them. So, just how "engaged" are we, anyhow? In Egypt? In Turkey? And, goddess knows, even this week in India, where the newly elected government is to be headed by a divisive politico implicated in the killing of thousands of Muslim Indians?
Put over-simply, in Nigeria May 2014, it's hundreds of abused schoolgirls in this instance -- but, as importantly, it's millions of Afghan schoolgirls (and BOYS, too) who are menaced daily by the ignorant Taliban. (As well as by ultra-conservative parents, ignorant mullahs, uncaring political leaders, etc.)
And, currently, NATO's unseemly haste in winding up our fight there carries the huge risk of abandoning these millions of enlightened Afghan girls and their mothers, -- who are the ONLY hope of their battered country!
A decade of NATO soldiers bleeding and dying will have been in vain if we short-sightedly forget about them...
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