Petraeus seems bent on stripping our men bare, almost literally, to make them symbols of a non-threatening openness that he and other counterinsurgency (COIN) zealots insist will win what he calls "the decisive terrain" -- aka, the Afghan people. Of course, that same "terrain" includes not only poor Aisha, but also her cowardly, complicit father, her murderous in-laws, her acquiescent town elders, and corrupto-crat Karzai, whose silence on the plight of women worries observers already concerned about Kabul's and Washington's overtures to the Taliban. Meanwhile, as one female Afghan parliamentarian estimated to Time, fewer than a dozen of the 68 female parliamentarians in Afghanistan support women's rights. Time writes: "The rest -- proxies for conservative men who boosted them into power -- aren't interested."
Aren't interested? Incredible -- at least to people who believe that for a battered bride, no-fault divorce beats slavery and murder. To Sharia-culturalists, however, such "women's rights" violate their code. This is something that Westerners, convinced they are born to be loved and envied, can't grasp. "Is America going to abandon the women of Afghanistan?" an overwrought Christiane Amanpour demanded of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on ABC, brandishing Time's Aisha edition.
It is Islam that abandoned these women, Christiane, not America, and not just in Afghanistan. Whether prisoners of Islamic law or promoters or Islamic law, such women are beyond the reach of America's ineffectual attempts at "nation-building" -- unless, of course, the nation being built is also wholly de-Sharified. Short of a intergalactic missionary movement enforced by robo-conquistadors, that ain't going to happen.
"Live your values," says Gen. Petraeus. "This is what distinguishes us from our enemies." Amen, general. But how about living them -- and guarding them against Sharia -- at home?