The New York Times and Afghanistan

For the most respected newspaper in the country the New York Times publishes a lot of idiocy.

The recent article A Dogged Taliban Chief Rebounds, Vexing U.S. by Scott Shane is full of the kind of naivete that one expects and laughs at in undergrads.

"Much of the world celebrated his ouster, and Afghans cheered the return of girls’ education, music and ordinary pleasures outlawed by the grim fundamentalist government."

Cheered? Are you fucking insane? These people have been living in a warzone for most of their lives, I'm sure as hell no expert but I don't see them cavorting around cheering the return of music. To take a blind guess, I think they're worried about themselves and their families and which violent assholes are going to be threatening them next. I would be shocked if they weren't perfectly aware that some violent assholes would be threatening and killing them soon.

The article is weirdly admiring of this particular Chief, repeating ad nausem that he is uneducated and has achieved so much! isn't it weird? isn't it such a story? Geezes. That kind of fetishism of education is almost enough to make me understand where the right is coming from with the anger at hypereducated elitism. No, I don't think you really need education to be an effective warlord, actual experience fighting is maybe, just maybe more valuable, and leadership is mostly innate. I know it kills us that West Point and MBA aren't the be all and end all but that's just freaking stupid. Education isn't fucking intelligence and it sure as hell isn't effectiveness.

The article doesn't mention that all the warlords, absolutely including the ones we deal with and support and give money and guns too are crushingly oppressive to women and are willing to fight for the right of husbands to starve their wives for refusing sex. There might be reasons to support and deal with those kind of people, like the life of your child, or fighting for the freedom of your homeland but none, none of the fucking reasons we're in Afghanistan can justify dealing with that kind of evil. That this isn't even discussed, that it is blindly accepted what kind of brutality the U.S. is supporting, for no good reason, is a tragedy and an indictment of the American politicians and the American public. Because we let this go on.

There's no morality here. None.