by James Glaser
March 9, 2004

Immolate—to sacrifice, to kill as a sacrificial victim.

Several times I have heard the President or somebody in his administration talk about how much we have helped the people of Afghanistan and they always make a point of talking about how much better off the women of that country are now.

Then I read an article by Carlotta Gall, in the New York Times, about how really horrible it is over there for many women. Some women are forced to marry men twice or three times their age and they can then become forced labor for there new family.

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission is now reporting that in the past six months, 40 women have burned themselves to death in the city of Heart, in western Afghanistan. They have no numbers for the whole country. In different parts of the country women use different means to end their lives. "Some take tablets. Some cut their wrists. Some hang themselves. Some burn themselves."

They are all trying to get away from forced marriages. Many are beaten, abused, and living in despair. When young girls marry, they leave home to live with their husband's extended family, where the mother-in-law rules the household. "Often they are seen as little more than a new source of labor." Some of these women are still children when they are forced to marry.

Sure America has all of these good intentions when we go in and take over a country and in Afghanistan like so many other countries, we try and set up a government that we think will be good for these people. The trouble is we don't know what we are doing and good intentions are not enough. In Afghanistan we set up a government in the capital city of Kabul and installed our pick for President, Harmid Karzi. He rules that city and a band of land right around it.

The rest of the country is still ruled by War Lords. They are the people that have been in charge in the rural areas for years. They still run the country and grow the poppies to make opium to sell. They live by tribal law and the constitution we paid them to vote for is not in force there. To this day the Afghanistan's President is guarded around the clock by American soldiers.

We didn't win in Afghanistan. Yes we closed down the al Qaeda training camps and kicked the Taliban out of power, but the country is still pretty much in the Dark Ages. War Lords still rule their piece of the land and people pay taxes to them. They all have their own army and still fight each other. Now they do send some sort of "tribute" to the Capital, but all and all it is much the same as it was 500 years ago.

Washington is telling us fairy tales when they say things have changed over there. Poppy production is still the cash crop for the whole country. Opium, heroin, and hashish are the currency. Washington is trying as hard as they can to keep the country from breaking out in tribal conflict so that some day an oil and gas pipeline can be built across the country. Afghanistan has to be stable for several years before major oil corporations will start pumping millions into the construction of a pipeline.

The same holds true for Iraq. Today the puppet government we set up signed the constitution we designed for them. They never even bothered to show it to the people before they signed it. George Bush and the White House have their fingers crossed hoping they can get out of the country as soon as possible.

Washington wants their hand picked people in power, like in Afghanistan, so that our country can control Iraq's oil. We are now finding out why Saddam Hussein ruled with an Iron fist. Iraq has three groups of people living in one country and they do not trust each other or get along. The Kurds know if they don't get independence now, they never will. Saddam's tribe is hated by the rest of the country because they have been in charge of everything for decades and the Shiite are the majority and have been the door mats of the country.

The United States has a totally different culture than Iraq or Afghanistan. We think differently than those people do. We treat each other differently. We have different customs and laws than they do. We even have a different climate than those countries; we eat different food and speak a different language.

So here we are trying to turn these two countries into little Americas. It isn't going to work. Those people are going to drift back to the kind of government they feel comfortable with. Imagine if some country came over here and said you are now going to have a Prime Minister instead of a President, or what if they said there would no longer be State governments? It wouldn't work and we would fight it all the way. Well, duh, that is what is going to happen over there.

No matter how much we tell these people that our way is better, they are not going to buy it. It will take generations to change customs over there. These people were not fighting for liberation. These people were not fighting for freedom. We didn't go over there to help out a movement to kick Saddam out or the Taliban for that matter.

We just barged right in and yelled, "You're Free Now!" and those people looked around at the rubble and graves we made and had not a clue of what we were talking about.

Sure George Bush and those in Congress can say we had the best of intentions for going in over there, but really nobody in either country was asking us to. We are forcing our system of government and our way of life on to two groups of people that never asked us to.

Americans do not understand why families give their young daughters away to be married to men three times their age. Sure I will tell you it is wrong, but saying it and stopping it are two different things. We can't walk in and say to these people that the way they live is all wrong and they now have to do everything our way and then leave. They will fall right back into their old ways. Are we as a nation prepared to keep troops in these countries for generations? That is what it will take if we want to change a culture.