I must take exception to the very unprofessional attack lodged against my integrity by blogger Melissa Roddy ("Correcting the Record on Bibi Ayesha," posted Sept. 7) as she tries to make the case for keeping US troops in Afghanistan by rerunning the story of Aisha, the mutilated young Afghan girl pictured on a recent TIME magazine cover. That cover made such an indelible impression on the American public that most readers seem to have ignored reporter Aryn Baker's carefully nuanced article suggesting caution in negotiations already underway with the Taliban. Similarly, Roddy ignores the argument of my recent editorial in the Nation and zealously denounces me for having "untruthfully claimed" that when Aisha told me her story, "the Taliban didn't come into it at all."
To disprove that fact, she quotes a member of Women for Afghan Women, the American organization running the Kabul shelter where Aisha lived for several months. The staff member, Esther Hyneman, reportedly said that while I did meet Aisha at the shelter, it was only for a few minutes, that I spoke through a translator, and that Aisha answered in monosyllables. For the record, Ms. Hyneman was not in Afghanistan at the time. In fact, I had a very long conversation with Aisha, with particular attention to the circumstances of the dreadful assault. And while the shelter normally provides a staff member to translate for visitors, I worked with my own translators -- two of them to insure accuracy -- which may help to explain why the story I heard differs so substantially from the official version put out by Ms. Hyneman. When the TIME cover story appeared, I also verified with other sources who had also talked with Aisha that the Taliban had nothing to do with her personal tragedy. I would have told these things to Ms. Roddy had she bothered to ask, but apparently the official story was the only one she wanted to hear.
She is right, however, in saying that some commentators have made improbable arguments to disprove that story, mainly because it is used so shamelessly to manipulate public opinion in favor of continuing a war that almost everyone involved acknowledges cannot be resolved by military means. Roddy is right also to fear that the withdrawal of foreign forces may set women back, particularly in Kabul where many women made some gains after the fall of the Taliban. But she doesn't seem to be aware that women have already lost much of that progress to creeping Talibanization within the Karzai government that the US put in place, still supports, and in effect fights for. Those of us who have spent years on the ground in Afghanistan know that in three decades of hopelessly misguided foreign policy, the US has created for itself an immensely complicated dilemma that very probably has no good solution. But war is never, anywhere, good for women -- and it is never fought on our behalf. The question that demands our attention now is not whether American troops should stay or leave Afghanistan. That decision has been made. The question now is how to make a kind of "peace" in which women might still live.
I am sort of confused here as to what we should do. That women were beneath contempt by the Taliban government is without question but what will it be like after we leave and the Taliban are right back where they were when we invaded and did the single worst war making decisions in history?
So tell us, since you have been on the ground there for years, you MUST have some idea of what to do other than just say something must be done.
What?
"Stones for Schools," and he is no right winger for damn sure. Just a truth teller with boots on the ground. (He's the one who wrote Three Cups of Tea). It's the same messianic fervor as Christian missionaries of times past who permeated third world cultures, believing they knew better. Turns out, no they didn't.
Certainly not when by many counts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have killed THOUSANDS of women and children.
Certainly not when mobilizing to fight in AFRICA -- gang rapes, butchery, failed states, etc. -- isn't even on the table.
Oh ye of little, or should that be too much, faith Sue? Both you and Melissa wholeheartedly believed in the simultaneous validity of two incompatible realities. That, as far as I believe, is an impossibility. What is possible is that one of you, both of you, or else I am mistaken. By your willingness to reevaluate the approach to your own evaluation, you have reasserted its soundness. Keep that up, and a lot of us are likely to discover how deluded we are. Why, we might even find that what we think we are killing each other for is a pile of complete, though previously unchallenged, claptrap.
There should be a demand for accuracy in news. Those who are not extremely skeptical about all claims that the truth is black and white and simple, will be misled continually by today's mass media. Mass media is now more about ideology and propaganda, than any kind of balanced objectivity.
An interesting post that just serves to confirm the lack of any limit on the calumny that is common in today's media.
News blackout in 3,2,1.........
I am far more inclined to credit Ann Jones who has done the legwork: who visited Afghanistan and perhaps learned a thing or two which countered collectively accepted wisdom. And then she enlightened the rest of us. Clearly, factually, neutrally, objectively.
I agree with the previous posters; please continue to elucidate and enlighten us, Ann Jones.
by describing in detail the professionalism that drove the interview. This is my first experience
of the mind, character, and authority of Ann Jones, and I am instantly convinced that she speaks
the truth, has had the experience on the ground in Afghanistan to be an invaluable resource
for the strategic decisions facing the United States, not that she shall ever be used so intelligently.
The rest of us, some of us, can be smart and await eagerly whatever she has to say about
Afghanistan from this moment on. And I very much doubt that tomorrow either Melissa Roddy
or Esther Hyneman shall have a very nice day. Not at all.
Fanned, faved, tweeted.
Peace, best wishes.
fanned you at some point. I keep hoping that all this fanning business if nothing else is a distillation process that filters intellectually compatible people into circles of exchange. Maybe that's a smarty pants way of saying "cliques." But boy, something has to distill
besides the moonshine that some posters seem to enjoy. Thanks again.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/will-marshall/hillary-rebuts-the-declin_b_711113.html?ir=World