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Child brides in Afghanistan
- Thread starter raptor10
- Start date
It's a different culture, different social mores. Not sure how this is relevant to aviation/military/news...it's been going on long before the AP or CNN...
I hope your not saying just because it is a different culture and different social mores it should be socially acceptable? It's still sad.
Sad by your standards, but completely normal and accepted in their culture. There was a time not so long ago that similar customs were practiced in Western culture. Many of these people are still living in the stone age, so don't expect them to modernize overnight just because someone sticks a camera in their faces. Regardless, what makes you think that Western culture is the ultimate standard of how the world ought to be? How very homogenizing of you.
Brett
It's the same thing with the combatants over there. A 14 year old boy is a soldier, not a "child" that we need to "protect" like so many ignorant Americans tend to think. That type of thought process is what is stifling our troops wrt ROE. If a 14 year old kid discovers your position (as in "Lone Survivor"), the only right thing to do is put a bullet in his head.
QuagmireMcGuire
Kinder and Gentler
Amen Brother Brett.
Do you have a setting that alerts you to every time I make a post so that you can always post right after me?!
1. ...so don't expect them to modernize overnight just because someone sticks a camera in their faces.
I don't expect them to. I never said I did.
2. what makes you think that Western culture is the ultimate standard of how the world ought to be?
I never said that either.
Brett, why can't we just get along? I mean we both even have something in common. We both like riding around in airplanes.
Perhaps not, but your words implied it - along with the ethnocentric thinking that drives it. We're not "not getting along," we're having a discourse - there's a difference.
Brett
Brett is right in that for long periods of history, it was not uncommon to marry off young girls as soon as they were physically capable of having kids. Why? Well, no one lived that long anyway, and it was advantageous to for nobles to have an heir and for peasants to have more more family to help work the land ASAP.
No one is going to modernize overnight, but there's a strange thing about the ability to pick your own spouse and your own life regardless of how your personal plumbing's fixed: Most people that get a whiff of it like the hell out of it. Unless, of course, they've got a vested interest in keeping someone else down. That's because it's the right thing to do. If all men (and women) really are created equal, why should you not have the same rights as an Afghan girl that you have as an American man? People have rights, even if those rights are being trampled on and suppressed by other people. We fought a war over that once.
No, no one is going to think exactly like us. That doesn't automatically make them wrong. But it doesn't make them right, either.
No one is going to modernize overnight, but there's a strange thing about the ability to pick your own spouse and your own life regardless of how your personal plumbing's fixed: Most people that get a whiff of it like the hell out of it. Unless, of course, they've got a vested interest in keeping someone else down. That's because it's the right thing to do. If all men (and women) really are created equal, why should you not have the same rights as an Afghan girl that you have as an American man? People have rights, even if those rights are being trampled on and suppressed by other people. We fought a war over that once.
No, no one is going to think exactly like us. That doesn't automatically make them wrong. But it doesn't make them right, either.
General Sir Charles Napier said:
I actually took a walk and came back before typing this because I was too spooled earlier.
Some cultures have practiced canabalism, is that OK? How about slavery? Still allowed in some cultures, notably the one we're fighting against now. That OK with you guys?
For those who think that "That's just their culture, so who are you to condemn it?" I would recommend the book "Winning the World" by Dr. Thomas Nichols of the Naval War College. It dealt primarily with the Cold War, but it's main focus was on incompatible ideologies and how some ideas can't peacefully coexist. If his thesis is true, and I believe it is, then you better be ready to fight for your idea of what is right because that bastard with the 9 year old wife is sure as hell ready to kill you for his.
Good guys - Bad guys. Yeah, it's that simple.
Some cultures have practiced canabalism, is that OK? How about slavery? Still allowed in some cultures, notably the one we're fighting against now. That OK with you guys?
For those who think that "That's just their culture, so who are you to condemn it?" I would recommend the book "Winning the World" by Dr. Thomas Nichols of the Naval War College. It dealt primarily with the Cold War, but it's main focus was on incompatible ideologies and how some ideas can't peacefully coexist. If his thesis is true, and I believe it is, then you better be ready to fight for your idea of what is right because that bastard with the 9 year old wife is sure as hell ready to kill you for his.
Good guys - Bad guys. Yeah, it's that simple.
CWJones411
IRR
I'm not a huge fan of us Westerners trying to impose our culture on others- but complete cultural objectivity is wrong. There are standards all humans SHOULD be allowed to live by. I think this violates a basic human right. Of course- I'm a self-righteous westerner, so ignore me.
But it's not that simple. It's not about condemning it or not, but understanding the context within which it exists. The real question becomes, what do you do about it? We can't just march in and say to a population that has been existing in shambles for decades, "Hello, Afghans. Here's a list of 20 things we don't like about your culture. Change them all by tomorrow or you're all dead." There has to be some kind of progression and it's not going to happen overnight. Certainly by fostering a more modern existence for these people, they will eventually come around, just like the cannibals in Polynesia did.
Brett
I'm not advocating changing their culture. I'm advocating kicking the living shit out of them so they keep their damn culture to themselves.
Some ideologies can not exist for long periods without expandinding into other cultures. Communism is noteworthy in this. Also noteworthy is another culture that has spread over wide areas of the globe twice in history and was only put back in its geographic bottle when completely defeated.
Again, good guys - bad guys. It's time to be one or the other. Not to sit back and contemplate our belly-buttons wondering why we can't just all get along.
Some ideologies can not exist for long periods without expandinding into other cultures. Communism is noteworthy in this. Also noteworthy is another culture that has spread over wide areas of the globe twice in history and was only put back in its geographic bottle when completely defeated.
Again, good guys - bad guys. It's time to be one or the other. Not to sit back and contemplate our belly-buttons wondering why we can't just all get along.
Just to gain a little perspective, not all of Afghanistan is like this - this weird strain of Pashtunwali-Islamic-Deobandi thought only really exists in the tribal areas and is one of the reasons that the rest of the ethnic groups in Afghanistan have resisted the taliban so fiercely. Progress to change is slow, however it is changing from within as it should.