startribune.comPosted Feb 19, 2016, 10:32 PM UTC
You can't change culture at gunpoint. The war would be utterly unwinnable if we attempted to change every barbaric practice that these people have.
Well, actually you can. Think of the quote of Charles Napier:
"Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs."
The issue is that you have to be prepared to literally commit some kind of cultural genocide, implemented by extremely harsh measures. These will often result in the decimation of populations as you try to weed out any 'unwanted' cultural artifacts.
If you are willing to do this, then it's quite easy to change a culture at gunpoint. Use violence, if it's not working, simply use more. In the end a population is either subjugated or eliminated. In either case the culture is changed. It's happened countless times before in history, and will probably be done again in the future.
But as you can imagine, the price being paid is horrendeous.
This culture extends beyond Afghanistan. Such an approach would only further fuel terrorism and unless you're willing to colonialize the entire middle east, you're not going to suceed in changing that culture.
Based solely on the funeral pile line Im going to assume that this quote is in reference to the British colonization of India. And in a vacuum this quote sounds all fine and dandy, but you failed to acknowledge that the British were in india for about 200 years. Its easy to change a culture over the course of 2 centuries, less so over the course of a decade.
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By the term-itself, culture is necessarily organic. Variable states of change, adaptation to its respective environment is its essential characteristic.
Once you change the environment's material factors (e.g., put resources into educating & empowering women at the local level) the culture-itself is going to respond to that. And necessarily in an approximately equal & proportional way, relative to whatever other forces are operating on it.
So, current conditions are as much a reflection of, say, the last 15-20 years, as it is of the 20-40 years before that. Or even 150 years before that.
If we build schools the taliban will bomb them. If girls go to existing schools the taliban will murder them and their families. If you "empower" women, you're painting a target on their heads. Unless we plan on committing hundreds of thousands of troops to the country to violently impose these changes on their culture and continually enforce them over the course of several generations there is little we can do. Im sure we all WISH it was something that can be done easily, but the US and other western powers would be insane if they thought we could just wander in to the third-world and impose western value whenever they wanted.
And yes, culture is fluid and can change. But people will resist forced cultural change as they always have. The change needs to occur naturally over time. We cant force them to change.
Do any other ladies take issue with this?
hhmm...this is kind of an odd question. As if, practically speaking, there's no shortage of people out there waving signs in enthusiastic support of it. I mean, who doesn't take issue with it? Of Americans and Afghans, alike.
That was never really the point at issue. Rather, the question always always was: How do we go about fixing this?
Poor wording on my part. What I'm trying to convey is at some level this behavior is accepted because we (meaning the U.S. military) choose to look the other way. Do others take issue with the neglect of ethics here? I mean rape and specifically the systematic child rape they are talking about is so henius shouldn't we do more to stop it?
What would you suggest we do? While I would love to be in every room right before an assault happens and cudgel the rapist's skull in as soon as the attack begins, that's not feasible. I'm not omnipresent and doing that much cudgeling would be very tiring.
The nature of most sexual crimes is that it happens in a home or an area that is somewhat secluded, but on top of that, their culture does give a lot more slack to men who fuck up. Thanks, desert trilogy.
Basically, their culture would have to be either neutered, or destroyed outright. A start might be to have strict penalties for boyfuckers, or to say it is incredibly gay for two men to have sex, even if a person is the 'top'. Right now, it's only gay if a person is a 'bottom', or something.
It won't happen overnight, this culture has been festering for a long time. Shit.
But don't forget, all cultures are equal, and you're a racist if you so much as think otherwise.
The nature of most sexual crimes is that it happens in a home or an area that is somewhat secluded
Of course, but this case is a little bit different precisely for that.
their culture does give a lot more slack to men who fuck up.
mmm...not sure precisely which culture you're indicating here. But either way, a bit of a simplification of convenience. Suffice it to say that it's a place in the world where authority depends more heavily on direct threat of force as opposed to rule-of-law. As compared to what we're used to in the developed world.
..their culture would have to be either neutered, or destroyed outright.
No. Because something exists or is otherwise visible in a particular society, doesn't necessarily mean it's reflective of that culture on the whole.
You didn't even take my "all cultures are equal" bait. Good on you.
not sure precisely which culture you're indicating here
Bro, what is the topic of the thread? What could I possibly be talking about here?
Because something exists or is otherwise visible in a particular society, doesn't necessarily mean it's reflective of that culture on the whole
Okay, so what evidence would you need to see to say a behaviour was reflective of a culture?
Not everyone in the South with a lifted truck would like to chain a black person to the tailgate and drive, but if I were black, in the South, and saw a lifted truck with banjo music coming my way, I would be a bit nervous. The South has a rich history of racism, including lynching and tons of other stuff. Not everyone in the South hates black people, maybe some of them even have black friends.
This behavior is not accepted at all. Otherwise, no such effort would be made to conceal it.
The US military is the largest, most heavily funded and (arguably) professionally run institution of its kind. It has secrets, tells lies, and commits crimes, for sure. But the overarching principle at work is rules, hierarchy, & structure. For anything and everything and everyone from who to shoot to how to fold your underwear.
Especially going into a place as noticeably deficient of these things, it becomes that much more important to maintain a rigid discipline about maintaining the integrity of the mission and adhering to whatever conventions or mandate govern that particular engagement.
In Afghanistan specifically, the US had a particular mission, which is now more or less completed. However, in keeping with the ethos of that necessarily limited role, it regularly requires discretion in matters like these. After all, being a soldier in uniform practically limits anyone's ability to engage politically, socially, etc...without it compromising either one's own personal feelings and ideas or the military's mission. I mean, outside of a very specific set of parameters, it's not really the job or prerogative of a soldier to be advocating for or otherwise politicizing a particular foreign policy or strategy. But to merely execute the orders that come from their command; which, of course, ultimately falls under the authority of the popularly elected President of the United States.
In other words, it's not like a free-for-all or vacation, where everybody kind of makes their own plans and goes their own way. It's more like, as citizens, we all have a vote. Which ultimately helps to determine who's in charge for a while. While some of us have a privilege of serving at the pleasure of whoever that might be. However, with that power, of deciding what countries will be protected or invaded or when or how, comes the responsibility and moral burden of being brave with other men's and women's lives. So, I think, it's really up to the President to actually decide what's so directly within the scope of US-national interests that it's practically worth spilling blood over. Not the head of the Army or DoD, let alone an individual soldier.
From the article you cited:
Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland, who is being disciplined by the Army for attempting to stop the sexual abuse of children by an Afghan military officer, compared the U.S. military’s reaction to the rape of Afghan boys to the Penn State child sex abuse scandal. While the comparison is apt, it only begins to suggest the global nature of rape tolerance.
mmm...not exactly. Not precisely. I mean, he's not under court martial or anything like that. Just about to be phased out, denied further re-enlistment. Like lots of enlisted service-people once a large-scale engagement draws to a close. Likewise, it's not like he intervened as this particular conduct was being directly observed in his presence. Someone complained or reported it to him, and so he confronted that accused person also choosing to escalate in a direction that (effectively) didn't really do much of anything to prevent its further occurrence.
So, he became frustrated, as anyone might in that kind of situation, and responded in a way that best related how he felt.
So, probably best for everyone that he's extricated from the whole situation, right?
You are welcome to go volunteer and police the Afghanis.
Watched a documentary about the police stations that were built by the U.S. to provide some order in their villages.
They appointed locals to be officers. Within weeks they were holding small boys as sex slaves in the stations.
The U.S. official that was in charge of setting up police forces was hopelessly distraught because the local government officials refused to do anything about it, defending the locals that were raping the boys, saying "what do you want them to do? Rape their grandmothers?". As if raping the boys was fine because it was the lesser of two evils.
Fuck those people. Fuck their "culture".
Can you give me a link or title?
https://youtu.be/Ja5Q75hf6QI
Thanks!