It's long been fashionable to claim that the US Government used Afghan women as a justification for waging war in Afghanistan. It's not a particularly orginal, well-supported or sophisticated argument, but it's become a meme. It's slightly less fashionable, but still barely frowned upon in the post-modernist classrooms of western arts faculties, to write off the whole enterprise of women's rights (and indeed, human rights writ large) as an imperialist adventure perpetrated by patronizing western feminists, being forced upon the dominated, resistant masses of developing countries. It's these two trends, and the fact I've seen them surface more than once among UBC political science students, that prompts me to publish a detailed response to one particular undergraduate student's article regurgitating these tired claims.

The following is a response to "Feminist Ethics and the Rhetoric Surrounding Women and the War in Afghanistan," by Allison Rounding, which was published in the 2012 journal of the Political Science Students' Association of the University of British Columbia. I delivered a keynote address at the journal launch, also published here.

This homogenization of Afghan women, coupled with a homogenization of American women as all emancipated, is an exercise of Western power and therefore must be named and deconstructed.

It’s a line so classically post-modernist, it might have been generated by the Post Modernist Random Essay Generator.

Such is the flavour of Allison Rounding’s article, “Feminist Ethics and the Rhetoric Surrounding Women and the War in Afghanistan.”

On April 2, 2012, I delivered the keynote address at the launch of the journal of the Political Science Students' Association of the University of British Columbia. It was a well organized, brief event with a good Q&A session, and I'm grateful to the Association for the opportunity to respond to one of the articles featured in this year's journal, "Feminist Ethics and the Rhetoric Surrounding Women and the War in Afghanistan," by Allison Rounding. A detailed response to the content of that article can be found here, and you can read Rounding's article here. Meanwhile, here is the transcript of the keynote address.

Good afternoon and congratulations to the students who have worked so hard to produce UBC’s Journal of Political Studies.

I’m speaking to you today in my role as an aid worker in Afghanistan, but I’m also a student, at least for another couple of months, here at UBC, and a dozen or so years ago now when I started my university studies, I minored in Political Science at McGill University.

It’s been fascinating since then to go out in the field, and see how the theories of the classroom resonate, or don’t, in many cases. I’ve tried to keep one foot in scholarship and one in practice for as long as I’ve implicated myself in this work, and these two worlds often clash, but they also often also produce opportunities to innovate and test out theories in the real world, and they’ve helped keep me grounded academically, I hope.

But I came to Afghanistan not from a scholarly interest, but from a crisis of conscience.

The weird views of liberal Americans on foreign policy vis a vis Afghanistan have plenty of precedent from past conflicts. Sam Schulman explores the history in We Who Are About to Bug Out Salute You

The intellectual and practical defects of our Afghanistan policy are bizarre and difficult to understand. But our pro-Taliban policy has a more obvious moral defect (you are excused from the discussion here, Professor Walt), which has evinced a nearly unanimous lack of interest on the part of our own media and political elites. It seems like only yesterday that we applauded the emergence of Kabul’s women and girls from the shadow of Taliban rule; it was only yesterday that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowed never to let that era return. But our normally stalwart and reliable humanitarian community, and our even more predictable feminists, seem completely to have forgotten the fate of Afghanistan and its women as Obama has gradually revealed his intention to negotiate with Taliban officials.

On March 4, 2010, the 22nd-ranked University of Maryland’s Men’s basketball team pulled an upset win over then fourth-place ranked Duke University. After rushing the court, Terrapin fans them promptly stormed into the streets of College Park, blocking traffic, destroying property, screaming and rioting. 

They clashed with police officers, fully decked in riot gear. The incident garnered national attention when a student was filmed receiving a brutal beatdown from nightstick-wielding cops despite his posing no threat whatsoever to anybody.  After his arrest, the police report accused him of aggressively approaching a horse, which was proven false by the video. Several officers, as well as the Prince George’s County Chief of Police, lost their jobs over the incident, several more were indicted and may face jail time. The victim of the incident, Andrew McKenna, was forbidden from revealing his settlement, but rumors swirled around campus that he quit his job the day he received it.

Because rich people do silly stuff sometimes, like spending $120 million on a painting -- when they could have spent $120 on a decent frame and a replica print.

That $120 million could have been used to fund a whole bunch of mobile tech startups, add multiple production lines on a factory that actually makes stuff in the USA, or capitalize an international mining or energy firm employing thousands of executives, professionals and blue-collar workers. It could have created all kinds of profits (yes, profits. Rich people won't invest in businesses out of the goodness of their hearts) and regional spin-offs for the benefit of the society.

Instead, some rich dude is going to have a $120 million conversation-starter in his living room.

The next time a Republican tells you that we need to give tax breaks to the rich so that they can build the businesses that create jobs, throw this in their face. Rich people can be just as stupid with their money as the rest of us.

Jonathon Narvey is the Editor of The Propagandist

It's not just Warren Buffett. More and more of America's wealthiest elites are coming out and shouting, Tax Me, for F@%&’s Sake!

Maybe the Republicans, who do so love to dote on their wealthy constituents, ought to listen to what their people are telling them. Folks like Stephen King:

I guess some of this mad right-wing love comes from the idea that in America, anyone can become a Rich Guy if he just works hard and saves his pennies. Mitt Romney has said, in effect, “I’m rich and I don’t apologize for it.” Nobody wants you to, Mitt. What some of us want—those who aren’t blinded by a lot of bullshit persiflage thrown up to mask the idea that rich folks want to keep their damn money—is for you to acknowledge that you couldn’t have made it in America without America. That you were fortunate enough to be born in a country where upward mobility is possible (a subject upon which Barack Obama can speak with the authority of experience), but where the channels making such upward mobility possible are being increasingly clogged. That it’s not fair to ask the middle class to assume a disproportionate amount of the tax burden. Not fair? It’s un-fucking-American is what it is.

"Mr. President, remember when the country rallied around you in hopes of a better tomorrow? That was hilarious. That was your best one yet."

The White House led by American President Barack Obama has given political cover to Islamists in the Middle East. Sadly, it's not clear that the Republicans offer an alternative.

Obama has encouraged those reactionary elements by suggesting that Islamists who try to achieve sharia states through the political system rather than through suicide bombs are legitimate and worthy diplomatic partners. The Arab Spring has been spun as a positive development in Middle Eastern democracy, rather than a catastrophe for democracy and human rights. Islamists are scrambling to sieze power through corrupt elections (and plan to hold on to power by even more corrupt elections).

Frank Gaffney is the Founder and President of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. and the host of Secure Freedom Radio. Today he releases a 10-part course on the insidious influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in America, which "connects the dots" and explains why the USA is still threatened by the rise of this jihadist network.

This is the second article in a series by Joseph Suh on why he wants to serve in the military. Read the first article, Why I Want to Serve

I left off my first article noting that the United States has been involved in atrocities in its past. However, these should be seen as lessons from history. Although the military industrial complex and other shadowy factors may influence American military involvements, they aren't absolute controllers of US foreign policy today.

Let's take for example, the war in Afghanistan.

Surely, the consequences of this conflict are extraordinarily difficult to deal with but the intent – what the war planners wanted to happen – is a different story.

The US leadership obviously mis-managed the political aspects of the war. They didn't take into account significant aspects of the country, such as how difficult dealing with tribalism and how incompetent the Karzai Administration would be.

Obviously, US national security interests are in play here. From al-Qaeda's attacks on the World Trade Centers in 1993 and 2001 to the 1998 bombings US embassy bombings in Africa, the US should be rightfully worried about terrorists breeding in Afghanistan (and Pakistan; but that, for a later essay).