A thought on Afghanistan

[Jimmy Higgins]

Dude, reread the OP. He specifically said women with bolding. If he wanted to include men, don't you think he would have worded it differently?

Including men, along with the women, is the humane thing to do. The Taliban is already going door to door and executing those who are known to have been allied with the US. Likely most of those are men. I will never understand the scorn leveled against those who care about the lives of men as well as women.

If we let in the men we have a big problem with Islamists coming in. The women are basically just victims, though, letting them in will help them and hurt the Taliban.

I don't think its quite that simple. Do the women bring their children with them or leave them behind? I assume they have to come too, as separating parents from their children is a bad thing (see US border crisis). And some of these families are huge! Not to mention, of course, men love their children and children love their dads, so separating them is kind of big deal, is it not? And where do these women and children go to live, and how will they support themselves and their brood without a breadwinner in the family? Lots of things to figure out.

So you are saying evacuating millions of people immediately isn’t realistic.

Oh why oh why did we elect LP to be President?!

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

What if we offered refugee visas to basically all Afghan women?

And what do you do with husbands and children of these women? And if they're underage, what do you do with their parents? Are you only offering this to single adult women who are unmarried? How can they escape to go get a visa? What kind of unskilled work can they get, washing dishes, sex work in Las Vegas, and ...? I am just wondering how your idea works in practice technically...

 

[Jarhyn]

I would offer visas to anyone who wanted away from the Taliban and religious law.

Mostly that's "basically all women".

As the Taliban has a concept of "women" and a bunch of really shitty rules they apply to "women" of that concept, I think that makes the Taliban's definition of "women" to be automatically qualifying for refugee status.

I imagine we can do the same to all groups for which the Taliban limits or excludes freedom, including trans people, LGBT, etc, and especially to children as there are likely many children in Afghanistan who would probably very much like to not have their clitorises cut off.

I would even offer educational services. That way if they ever return home, if Afghanistan ever gets less shitty for women, they even have the means to improve the country.

Imagine, Afghanistan's educated professional class could be 100% post-return refugees.

I'm all for instantiating an underground railroad to refugee people out of Afghanistan.

Some people seem to be forgetting that to "offer a visa to basically all women", you can do it in a way that doesn't call out "women" but still gets the same result, and then some. "Anyone restricted unduely by provincial or Taliban law" is mostly women, some LGBT, and atheists/apostates.

 

[Toni]

Sounds a bit sexist to me.

I think Mao's offer to export 10 million women to the US in 1973 was sexist, telling Kissinger women have 'a way of doing things' and thast China would be better off without the excess of females. Also thry would 'harm' the US.

Offering an escape to those who are or will be threatened by the Taliban's rule is only sexist if you're an incel and think Islam has it right, women don't deserve education, choices, the vote, etc.

Holy Strawman, Batman! Men are threatened by the Taliban too. That was my point. Nice try labeling me as an incel though. Better luck next time.

Yes, men are threatened by the Taliban. But so far, I haven't read reports of them being forced out of their jobs, forced into their homes without a male relative escort, being forced to wear burqas or being forced into marriage with Taliban fighters. I'm honestly not making light of the threats to at least some men, especially any who acted as interpreters or were thought to have done so or their families. Those people need to get out immediately! But so does any girl or woman who wants to leave.

 

[Derec]

What if we offered refugee visas to basically all Afghan women?

What for? It's not that it's only men who can be Islamists and radicals. Oftentimes, it's the women who are more religious than men anyway.

 

[Derec]

If we let in the men we have a big problem with Islamists coming in. The women are basically just victims, though, letting them in will help them and hurt the Taliban.

That's sexist BS. Women are not some innocent flowers on account of their genitalia. Many Islamists and even some active jihadists are women.

 

[Derec]

I am not as scared of “Islamists” as I am of “Christians”, who are responsible for the most and the worst Terrorist attacks in recent years.

Sure, Jen.

Bring on the Islamists.

Spoken like a true Leftist.

 

[Toni]

If we let in the men we have a big problem with Islamists coming in. The women are basically just victims, though, letting them in will help them and hurt the Taliban.

That's sexist BS. Women are not some innocent flowers on account of their genitalia. Many Islamists and even some active jihadists are women.

View attachment 34940

You're over conflating ISIS and the Taliban and using a supposed post from someone who purports to be an American who has joined...ISIS. I'd be very suspicious about the authenticityof that post.

We know as a fact that girls were long forbidden any education at all in Afghanistan and that only changed under Americans. We also know as a fact that women are being forcibly removed from their workplaces, from their jobs, from school and being confined to their homes and families are being pressured to turn over any unmarried female to be forcibly married off to Taliban.

I realize you have a very skewed view of Islam but this is a bit reactionary/coocoo for you.

 

[Toni]

If we let in the men we have a big problem with Islamists coming in. The women are basically just victims, though, letting them in will help them and hurt the Taliban.

That's sexist BS. Women are not some innocent flowers on account of their genitalia. Many Islamists and even some active jihadists are women.

View attachment 34940

You're over conflating ISIS and the Taliban and using a supposed post from someone who purports to be an American who has joined...ISIS. I'd be very suspicious about the authenticityof that post.

We know as a fact that girls were long forbidden any education at all in Afghanistan and that only changed under Americans. We also know as a fact that women are being forcibly removed from their workplaces, from their jobs, from school and being confined to their homes and families are being pressured to turn over any unmarried female to be forcibly married off to Taliban.

I realize you have a very skewed view of Islam but this is a bit reactionary/coocoo for you.

Edited to add:

The name was familiar so I looked up Hoda Muthana, the US born daughter of a Yemeni diplomat and who later joined ISIS, then repudiated ISIS and has had her American citizenship stripped. Two courts have upheld this removal of citizenship from Muthana. Note: She did not join ISIS out of any religious fevor.

 

[Toni]

I am not as scared of “Islamists” as I am of “Christians”, who are responsible for the most and the worst Terrorist attacks in recent years.

Sure, Jen.
View attachment 34942

Bring on the Islamists.

Spoken like a true Leftist.

https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-united-states

This piece, dated June 17, 2020, seems....prescient:

The United States faces a growing terrorism problem that will likely worsen over the next year. Based on a CSIS data set of terrorist incidents, the most significant threat likely comes from white supremacists, though anarchists and religious extremists inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda could present a potential threat as well. Over the rest of 2020, the terrorist threat in the United States will likely rise based on several factors, including the November 2020 presidential election.

There's this(same source):

This CSIS brief examines the state of terrorism in the United States. It asks two sets of questions. First, what are the most significant types of terrorism in the United States, and how has the terrorism threat in the U.S. homeland evolved over time? Second, what are the implications for terrorism over the next year? To answer these questions, this analysis compiles and analyzes an original data set of 893 terrorist plots and attacks in the United States between January 1994 and May 2020.

This analysis makes several arguments. First, far-right terrorism has significantly outpaced terrorism from other types of perpetrators, including from far-left networks and individuals inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. Right-wing attacks and plots account for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994, and the total number of right-wing attacks and plots has grown significantly during the past six years. Right-wing extremists perpetrated two thirds of the attacks and plots in the United States in 2019 and over 90 percent between January 1 and May 8, 2020. Second, terrorism in the United States will likely increase over the next year in response to several factors. One of the most concerning is the 2020 U.S. presidential election, before and after which extremists may resort to violence, depending on the outcome of the election. Far-right and far-left networks have used violence against each other at protests, raising the possibility of escalating violence during the election period.

It's a thoughtful piece.

 

[Elixir]

I am not as scared of “Islamists” as I am of “Christians”, who are responsible for the most and the worst Terrorist attacks in recent years.

Sure, Jen.

Powerful argument. Typical right wing extremist bullcrap. "Christians" murder, rape and try to create mob rule. There are millions of them that we let into America. They attack the American Capitol at the behest of a half-witted charismatic criminal, perpetuate a pandemic plague, deny science and grovel to greedy oligarchs as they seek to divide the country and destroy democracy. I don't see ANY of the many many groups they vilify doing the same, or even close. But "Sure Jen" is all you can come up with? Lame.

Spoken like a true Leftist.

I am please to own that label in these times - it's like "right-leaning centrist" of the 1970s, which beats the shit out of the Nazi party unto which you cleave, Derec.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I would offer visas to anyone who wanted away from the Taliban and religious law.

Mostly that's "basically all women".

As the Taliban has a concept of "women" and a bunch of really shitty rules they apply to "women" of that concept, I think that makes the Taliban's definition of "women" to be automatically qualifying for refugee status.

I imagine we can do the same to all groups for which the Taliban limits or excludes freedom, including trans people, LGBT, etc, and especially to children as there are likely many children in Afghanistan who would probably very much like to not have their clitorises cut off.

I would even offer educational services. That way if they ever return home, if Afghanistan ever gets less shitty for women, they even have the means to improve the country.

Imagine, Afghanistan's educated professional class could be 100% post-return refugees.

I'm all for instantiating an underground railroad to refugee people out of Afghanistan.

Some people seem to be forgetting that to "offer a visa to basically all women", you can do it in a way that doesn't call out "women" but still gets the same result, and then some. "Anyone restricted unduely by provincial or Taliban law" is mostly women, some LGBT, and atheists/apostates.

It gets harder when you expand it like this--I cast deliberately narrow to make it very unlikely to get Islamists.

Ideally, it would be all non-Islamists, but they're much harder to identify.

 

[Elixir]

Ideally, it would be all non-Islamists, but they're much harder to identify.

Impossible to identify if you can't define. What is the defining difference between a Muslim and an Islamist?

 

[J842P]

Ideally, it would be all non-Islamists, but they're much harder to identify.

Impossible to identify if you can't define. What is the defining difference between a Muslim and an Islamist?

Islamists believe that Islamic countries should be theocracies. A Muslim doesn't necessarily believe this at all.

 

[Derec]

It gets harder when you expand it like this--I cast deliberately narrow to make it very unlikely to get Islamists.

If you offer visas to all Afghan women, then you are bound to get a lot of Islamists.

 

[Derec]

Impossible to identify if you can't define. What is the defining difference between a Muslim and an Islamist?

An Islamist believes that Islamic Law should form the basis for a system of government (even a moistened bint lobbing a scimitar would be better!) and that Islam should expand to control all the World.

 

[Derec]

Powerful argument. Typical right wing extremist bullcrap.

It's not bullcrap. You are BSing around here that you are fine with Islamism and really afraid of Christians, when there is no comparison between the two. For an example, anti-gay American Christians refuse to bake a cake, while anti-gay Muslims throw gays off roofs. Get a fucking grip on your Islam apologetics!

"Christians" murder, rape and try to create mob rule.

You'll find crime everywhere. Your claim was specifically about terrorist attacks, where your claim was that Christians commit most, and worst of them. I guess 9/11 does not count, nor the Pulse shooting nor the Boston Marathon bombing.

They attack the American Capitol at the behest of a half-witted charismatic criminal,

*sigh* that was a pretty short and relatively minor riot, compared to what your side has been doing since 2014 and especially in Summer 2020.
And the Capitol was attacked on other occasions too. A black Muslim named Noah Green attacked the Capitol in April and murdered a Capitol police officer. And in the 80s, an all-female Communist terrorist group bombed the US Senate - then they got their sentences commuted by Clinton. But I guess to the Left no dates other than January 6th matter ...

deny science and grovel to greedy oligarchs as they seek to divide the country and destroy democracy. I don't see ANY of the many many groups they vilify doing the same, or even close. But "Sure Jen" is all you can come up with? Lame.

It was a reference to your claim that Christians "are responsible for the most and the worst Terrorist attacks". That statement is so ridiculous, "sure Jen" was the appropriate response.

Way to shift the goal posts though. Your statement was about terrorism specifically, not about all these other things. Not that Islam is not worse on all these too, no matter how hard you stan for it.

I am please to own that label in these times - it's like "right-leaning centrist" of the 1970s,

Not at all. "Right-leaning centrists" did not believe that Islamism was preferable to Christianity. Or any of your other leftist positions frankly.

which beats the shit out of the Nazi party unto which you cleave, Derec.

I do not. That is fucking slanderous! That said, I expect no better from you.

 

[Derec]

The name was familiar so I looked up Hoda Muthana, the US born daughter of a Yemeni diplomat and who later joined ISIS, then repudiated ISIS and has had her American citizenship stripped. Two courts have upheld this removal of citizenship from Muthana. Note: She did not join ISIS out of any religious fevor.

Why do you not think she joined ISIS out of "religious fervor". Why do you think she joined? Fringe benefits? Pension plan? Marriage prospects?

And her supposed "repudiation" of ISIS was solely to try to get back into US. And technically, her citizenship wasn't stripped, it was deemed that she was never a US citizen because her father was a diplomat and that her passport had been issued in error.

Btw, here is an article about her and her family. It's from 2015, when she first went to join ISIS. The article only identifies her only by her first name - the fact that she was a daughter of a Yemeni diplomat was not mentioned back then. Her family was always hardcore Islamic, Hoda just turned it up to 11.
Gone Girl: An Interview With An American In ISIS

Like many in the Hoover community, the women in his family dress modestly and wear the hijab whenever they leave their home.
Many people, including Hoda during her Kik exchanges, described her parents as “very strict,” a fact that Mohammed does not dispute. “I'm sure that every family controls their kids like I do, and like I did to Hoda,” He said. “But [ISIS] found somehow, some way to go through.”

How oblivious can somebody be? The strict Islamic upbringing is what made her all the more susceptible to ISIS propaganda. ISIS is basically Islam straight, no water or ice. It's that "old time religion" of Mohammed and his companions.

The use of the phone, however, was limited by the family’s conservative rules. “When [Hoda] get a cell phone, she went on it like any teenager happy with a phone, and she opened Facebook and I saw some of her pictures, herself, and I told her, ‘No, that's not acceptable,’” he said. Although Hoda’s brothers and Mohammed himself have Facebook accounts — with pictures of themselves visible — the women of the family were not to have social media accounts or use messaging apps to communicate with anyone besides family members.

As you can, see, they had very strict Islamic rules in her family.

What Hoda had on her phone, Mohammed said, were Islamic apps. “Nothing but hadiths, Qur'an, suras. Nothing suspicious that makes me worried about her actions. Nothing.” If anything, he and his wife were concerned that Hoda might be secretly talking to boys.

Although she had been a practicing Muslim all her life, over the year and a half before she left for Syria, she had visibly become more devout, due, in part, she said, to scholars and interpretations of Islam she found on the internet.

“I started getting interested in my deen [religious life] around 2012,” Hoda said on Kik of her religious awakening. “I felt like my life was so bland without it. Life has much more meaning when u know why ur here.”
[...]
Hoda’s newfound dedication to her faith was a source of pride to her father, particularly her commitment to memorizing the Qur'an. Mohammed said that she would write out the words of the holy book in English and Arabic to help her memorize, filling many books. He was particularly proud, he said, when Hoda memorized one of the most important chapters of the Qur'an, Surat Al-Kahf, which tells the story of the societal backlash against the first adopters of Islam, who were forced to flee their homes and seek shelter in a cave. According to Muslim teaching, people who recite this surat on Friday will be forgiven their sins until the next Friday.

Not religious fervor, eh? Bullshit!

It's a long read, but you get the point.

 

[Derec]

This piece, dated June 17, 2020, seems....prescient:

I see that claim a lot on the Left. But what specific acts of terrorism motivated by "white supremacism" are there to rival Islamic terrorism in severity? With Islamists, we have 9/11, we have the Boston marathon bombing, we have the Pulse night club mass shooting (by an Afghan btw.). Then we have smaller attacks casualty-wise, but not for lack of effort - like the NY/NJ bombing (also by an Afghan), several other NY attacks (like the attempted subway bombing in 2017), the Ohio State ramming attack (by a Somali "refugee") and countless others. And that's just US. Europe has had even bigger problems with Islamic terror - subway bombings, concert hall massacres, people targeted over Mohammed cartoons are common occurrences in Europe.

Note also that in US white people make up close to 70% of the population while Muslims are ~1% and that therefore Muslims are disproportionally committing terrorist attacks even if "white supremacists" committed more terrorist attacks than "Islamic supremacists" as raw numbers not normalized for relative population size.

 

[Derec]

You're over conflating ISIS and the Taliban and using a supposed post from someone who purports to be an American who has joined...ISIS. I'd be very suspicious about the authenticityof that post.

I know they are different groups, and often at each other's throats, but they share the toxic ideology of Islamism. It's more like PFJ/JPF/CFG rivalry than any real disagreement over fundamentals.
As to her tweets, they have been shown to be authentic.

We know as a fact that girls were long forbidden any education at all in Afghanistan and that only changed under Americans. We also know as a fact that women are being forcibly removed from their workplaces, from their jobs, from school and being confined to their homes and families are being pressured to turn over any unmarried female to be forcibly married off to Taliban.

Yes, Taliban are bad news for Afghanistan, especially for any women who have ambitions beyond being a prim and proper Muslim wife.
All the more reason why Biden (and Trump before him) should not have abandoned Afghanistan to the Taliban.

I realize you have a very skewed view of Islam but this is a bit reactionary/coocoo for you.

Huh? What is in any way "skewed" about my views of Islam?