Spring Break
Western civilizations must accept different values
Government has to realize it cannot change other peoples' cultures.
By: Jason Staggs
Issue date: 4/7/09 Section: Opinion
Well, they've done it again. Democratically elected representatives of a free people have passed legislation that offends Americans.
In February, legislators in Afghanistan passed the Shia Family Law, a controversial section of which requires women to supply their husbands with sex when the husband demands it, forbids wives to leave the house without their husband's permission and demands they wear makeup if their husband so wishes. The law applies to members of Afghanistan's small Shia minority, which constitutes about 10 percent to 15 percent of the population.
As soon as the law was given widespread attention in the media, western politicians, especially those with troops in the country, publicly denounced it and called for a review. Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has assented, even though he is being given much of the credit for having rushed it through parliament in order to garner votes in this year's August elections.
French President Nicholas Sarkozy summed up the West's attitude pretty plainly: "We are there to defend our values….we refuse to compromise on these values." Wait a minute. We are there to defend our values? Shouldn't we be empowering the Afghanis to defend their values? Shouldn't we be letting them run their own country?
After seven and a half years and 600 deaths fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, I think it's time people realized we are not going to plant a new Iowa between Iran and Pakistan. The value systems developed over thousands of years in the NATO countries, whose men and women have been dying in Central Asia for most of a decade, do not and will not approximate those of Afghanistan, which for thousands of years has been on its own course.
Afghanis and Iraqis are not going to do as we want them to simply because we've poured hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of our soldiers', sailors' and Marines' lives into trying to make them like us.
It's time our congressmen and senators, and the president to whom they've given so much leeway, start thinking about a pro-choice foreign policy of the kind we had before Sept. 11, 2001. Before that day, we let nations be nations. Of course, we tried to influence their decisions, but not at the point of a bayonet (unless we had been attacked).
The people we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq today did not invade us and threaten to impose their economic, political or moral systems on us. Quite the opposite, actually. It is we who have been over there wreaking havoc, picking sides in local struggles about which we have no understanding, trying to mold them into slightly different versions of ourselves. Anyone who cares for their country would do well to consider why Afghanistan is known as the graveyard of empires, and let their representative and the President know that it is not time for America to go down that path.
In February, legislators in Afghanistan passed the Shia Family Law, a controversial section of which requires women to supply their husbands with sex when the husband demands it, forbids wives to leave the house without their husband's permission and demands they wear makeup if their husband so wishes. The law applies to members of Afghanistan's small Shia minority, which constitutes about 10 percent to 15 percent of the population.
As soon as the law was given widespread attention in the media, western politicians, especially those with troops in the country, publicly denounced it and called for a review. Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has assented, even though he is being given much of the credit for having rushed it through parliament in order to garner votes in this year's August elections.
French President Nicholas Sarkozy summed up the West's attitude pretty plainly: "We are there to defend our values….we refuse to compromise on these values." Wait a minute. We are there to defend our values? Shouldn't we be empowering the Afghanis to defend their values? Shouldn't we be letting them run their own country?
After seven and a half years and 600 deaths fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, I think it's time people realized we are not going to plant a new Iowa between Iran and Pakistan. The value systems developed over thousands of years in the NATO countries, whose men and women have been dying in Central Asia for most of a decade, do not and will not approximate those of Afghanistan, which for thousands of years has been on its own course.
Afghanis and Iraqis are not going to do as we want them to simply because we've poured hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of our soldiers', sailors' and Marines' lives into trying to make them like us.
It's time our congressmen and senators, and the president to whom they've given so much leeway, start thinking about a pro-choice foreign policy of the kind we had before Sept. 11, 2001. Before that day, we let nations be nations. Of course, we tried to influence their decisions, but not at the point of a bayonet (unless we had been attacked).
The people we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq today did not invade us and threaten to impose their economic, political or moral systems on us. Quite the opposite, actually. It is we who have been over there wreaking havoc, picking sides in local struggles about which we have no understanding, trying to mold them into slightly different versions of ourselves. Anyone who cares for their country would do well to consider why Afghanistan is known as the graveyard of empires, and let their representative and the President know that it is not time for America to go down that path.
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