I agree. I hope this article wasn't meant to be some sort of defense-
by-association for Iraq, though, or that there is an implication that
opponents of the Iraq war are necessarily opposed to the efforts in
Afghanistan.
regards,
BM
On May 25, 4:05=A0pm, P=E7teris Cedri=F2=F0 (Peteris Cedrins)
<cedr...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Terry Glavin at the National Post -- an excerpt:
>
> "This is not just 'George Bush's war.' This is a liberation struggle.
> It's a war of resistance against clerical fascism, against the most
> unspeakably brutal kind of misogyny, against tyranny, slavery,
> illiteracy and oppression. Over the past six years, poll after poll
> has provided unequivocal, empirical evidence that the Afghan people
> want us there to help them win this fight. And the people are winning.
>
> "In 2004, only one in 10 Afghans had access to medical services. Now
> it's eight in 10. Three out of every four children under the age of
> five have been immunized against childhood diseases. There are
> millions of girls attending school now. More than 100,000 women have
> begun their own small businesses with micro-loans administered by the
> World Bank -- that sinister institution we progressives are supposed
> to despise.
>
> "Afghanistan is now an embryonic democracy, and one of every four
> Afghan MPs is a woman. Just a few years ago, Afghan women weren't
> allowed out of doors unless they were accompanied by a man. Under the
> Taliban, you weren't allowed to watch television, but now there are
> seven national television stations, and all sorts of little
> newspapers, and 10 universities.
>
> "None of this would have happened if the so-called 'anti-war' argument
> had prevailed. If the ISAF armies just packed up and left, it would be
> back to the Dark Ages again.
>
> "Still, the Afghan people want more, and faster. Last month, to
> protest the snail's pace of their government's efforts to bring armed
> militants to heel, workers in the Herat region launched a five-day
> general strike that came close to shutting down the entire province.
> What did Canada's left contribute to that effort? Nothing.
>
> "Last November, 10-year-old Alaina Podmorow got together with 18 of
> her fellow Grade 5 pupils in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley, and
> they raised enough money to pay the salaries of five Afghan
> schoolteachers for a whole year. How is it that in doing this simple
> thing, Alaina and her young comrades, in the space of a few weeks,
> made a greater contribution to the liberation of the Afghan people
> than the combined efforts of the NDP, the Canadian Labour Congress and
> the Canadian Federation of Students, over the past seven years?
>
> "It's a long story. It's at least partly because cultural relativism
> has eaten away at the principle of universal rights -- which was once
> the bedrock of left-wing politics --and a crude and paranoid anti-
> Americanism has come to serve as a substitute for rational,
> progressive analysis. By Sept. 11, 2001, the politics of solidarity
> had been eclipsed by the politics of the counterculture, and so the
> main ranks of the left settled into a comfortable and familiar
> Sixties' narrative: It's the Third World vs. American empire."
>
> http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=3D533347
>
> I got there through "But, I am a Liberal!" --
>
> http://butiamaliberal.blogspot.com/2008/05/internationalism.html
>
> Regards,
> /P
>
> http://lettonica.blogspot.com/
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