Archive for the ‘Afghanistan’ Category
UPDATE: Notebook, 17 May 2012: Covered in Glory
Sorry, Diane Dimond, but regarding Sgt. Robert Bales and the armed forces of the United States, your opinion means nothing. For that matter, neither does mine.
In her HuffPo piece, and certainly on her talk radio show (that should send a red flag up right there. This was in error on my part. When called on it by Diane Dimond (here, I rechecked my source for that and found that I should have read her HuffPo bio more carefully. She is correct. She is not a talk show radio host, but a moveable feast, who writes for The Daily Beast and appears frequently on television news outlets) she stands In Defense of the United States Military and in the process, manages to trash Sgt. Robert Bales. She must feel very comfortable. She must have that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you take a position you feel is unassailable. A position you know many “right thinking people” will rise to defend on your behalf.
Which probably explains a lot.
Notebook, 13 May 2011: Washington Whitewash. . . Updated
Somethings are hard to do, but I cannot let this one go unremarked.
Let me first of all commend (yes, commend, you read that right) the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, a body I’ve frequently held in the deepest disrepute, for holding a hearing this week on the Peace Corps at 50, and mostly concerned with the conduct of the Peace Corps regarding the safety of volunteers overseas. My praise, however isn’t unqualified, for the hearing was prompted by a story which appeared from 20/20 about the criminally shabby treatment of rape victims by the Peace Corps:
A Peace Corps volunteer who says she became pregnant after a Peace Corps employee raped her alleges that Peace Corps officials forced her to make a choice: get an abortion or quit the organization.
“I was not pro-choice until that moment,” said Carol Clark, now a schoolteacher in North Carolina, who says she was devastated that the organization she trusted treated her so callously.
Clark says she has come forward to tell her story after more than 25 years because of an ABC News “20/20″ report about former Peace Corps volunteers who allege that they were mistreated by the Peace Corps after they were victims of sexual assault while serving overseas.
Witness testimony details rape victims being abandoned, mistreated by supposed care providers and told to keep quiet about their experiences while serving as Peace Corps volunteers.
Evidently, this has been standard Peace Corps practice for decades and like I said, criminal. Peace Corps Director Aaron S. Williams ought to lose his post in disgrace for not addressing this ongoing situation, but committee chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (told you this was hard) did the right thing by holding a full committee hearing on the subject.
Another prized American institution shows rot at the core, so let’s hope the needed reform results.
Read the rest of this entry »
Our Laws Regarding Free Speech Don’t Apply to Afghani Culture
Julie Water’s point about the terms we use to describe what Terry Jones did provides me with a wonderful opportunity to illustrate why we need to be crystal clear about which context we’re talking about when dealing differing societies having different norms.
Julie Waters: Do we not understand the difference between incitement and offense?
It also provides me with an opportunity to point out that after an intervention (in this case, and invasion), trying to impose a democratic regime on a society may be a fools errand.
What was originally going to be a lengthy reply seems better as a short, concise diary.
Read the rest of this entry »
