aesthetic point

A Modest Proposal (with apologies to Jonathan Swift) -

In today's New York Times, Nicholas Kristof laments the precarious situation of women in Afghanistan, and worries what will happen to them when US forces leave. And suddenly the solution hit me:

Take the women and children when we leave!

Let's see how long the Taliban (any government) will last with NO FEMALES to do the grunt work and be the whipping-post. A century from now there would be no Taliban to worry about - they will find out the hard way how thoroughly they need women.

Women trapped in domestic abuse are advised to leave their abusers, but usually outside assistance is needed. Let us provide that assistance to a whole society suffering from domestic abuse.

Let the men do what they will - shoot each other till no one is left? Pillory anyone less devout than the one in charge? Whatever they want to do - it's a system with a limit: a time limit. Since not every man is disrespectful of women, let any man petition individually to reunite with his family, but before he can rejoin them, he must make a solemn oath to respect all persons - and having experienced the absence of women, he will have a better understanding of how important they are.

And imagine how much we'll save - we won't need to send young Americans over there to be damaged physically and psychically, we won't need to spend money we don't have on weapons - the Afghan women won't be the only ones better off!