Jeanette Pryor

She isn’t the President’s daughter, they just have the same name.  She isn’t Obama’s daughter, they are just the same age.  She doesn’t go to Sidwell Friends School, she sits at a little desk in a hut in Kabul.  But next year, the Americans will be gone, the Taliban will be back, so she won’t go to school anymore.  The mullah will come to look at her.  They will give her to one of the old men with a beard, and she will go home with him, home to cook for him, home to wash his clothes and fetch his water, home to sleep in his bed, even though she is only eleven, eleven like the President’s daughter.  But, she isn’t the President’s daughter, so it doesn’t matter.  But it should.

It should matter that the Obama Administration started, in March, to unveil the Tale of the Magical Moderate Taliban.  This “Aladdin’s Lamp” is going to make the President’s troubles in Afghanistan disappear with one artful stroke of his hand. The sudden discovery of the previously unheard-of anti-Al Qaeda Taliban means that the Administration can end our “occupation” and return the rule of Afghanistan to its, ahem, rightful leaders.  What was, only yesterday, a haven for terrorists and the home of the masterminds of 9/11, will be restored to (Shari ‘a) Law and Order. Obama can bring the troops home, declare the war a success, because, after all, as the renowned Islamic scholar and historian, Joe Biden assured us in March, “Only 5 percent of the Taliban is incorrigible, not susceptible to anything other than being defeated.  Another 25 percent or so are not quite sure, in my view, the intensity of their commitment to the insurgency.  And roughly 70 percent are involved because of the money, because of them being — getting paid.” 

By putting those 70 percent reliable mercenaries in charge and throwing in a few UN Peacekeepers for good measure, we will have “Peace in our times.”  A fairy tale fit for a Nobel Peace Prize winner!  Everyone goes home happy. Everyone except the eleven year old girl.  And she doesn’t matter. But she should.

In 1998, after the Taliban had ruled Afghanistan for only two years, Physicians for Human Rights, traveled to the land of the “Moderate Taliban,” and issued a report containing the following statements, “The Taliban regime, a radical Islamic movement that took control of Kabul in September 1996, has had extraordinary health consequencesfor Afghan women. Support for women’s human rights…suggeststhat Taliban policies regarding women are incommensurate withthe interests, needs, and health of Afghan women.”

Some of the specific findings from the report are profoundly disturbing.  “The majority of these women attributed their symptoms of depression to official Taliban policy compared to only 30% of women in the non-Taliban-controlled area.” 

“Perhaps the most telling sign of Afghan women’s health in this study is women’s perception of their mental health, and high prevalence of suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and an increase in the prevalence of major depression over the last two years, particularly in women living under Taliban control. The majority of women exposed to Taliban rule attributed their symptoms to official Taliban policy. Although the Taliban claims that its policy of gender restrictions is rooted in Afghan history and culture, this claim is clearly contradicted by the views of Afghan women themselves.” 

These few excerpts from the official report of Physicians for Human Rights  from 1998 paint a picture of what is waiting for the women of Afghanistan, once Obama and his Administration give the order to surrender the country to the Taliban. In spite of “Professor” Biden’s assurances that the majority of the men in the country were only going along with Al Qaeda out of fear or greed, this offers no reason to think that, once the United States and Her allies have pulled out of the country, the Taliban will not immediately return to its former regime of terror, supported by the very “moderates,” who capitulated before. But it will be the other women and children who will suffer, so it doesn’t matter. But it should.

Barack Obama will not send enough troops to win a true victory in Afghanistan.  He is the long awaited, long nurtured ideological child of the Weather Underground, he will never escalate the War.  Nor will Obama allow many more soldiers to return draped in Flags while he stands and salutes, as it is impossible to deflect the blame for their deaths from himself while he is Commander in Chief.  The only solution he has, is to make a deal with the Taliban.  They will keep Al Qaeda out, until the cameras are gone and the dust settles, and then, when the Genies start to emerge from their holes in the ground, no one will know.  

No one, except the little girl. It is true that the War brought her danger, but also a chance for a  life with a future that could be shaped by her own dreams, instead of inexorable slavery.  It will be a crime of the greatest inhuman magnitude if we turn our backs on her and allow her to be buried alive again.  

What if the girls we are about to sell out did not live half a world away?  What if the burqa was for the President’s daughter?  What if the Magic, Moderate Taliban was going to decide which old man would take our daughters home to marry?  But no, the victims will be the other little girls, not our little girls. The burqas will be for the other little girls, not ours. So it doesn’t really matter.  But it should.