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[Starver]

(The GOP webpage touting the incredible achievements of the Gingerbread Man's involvement in Afghanistan has suddenly gone missing over the last day or two, for example.)

I've not heard much current talk of Trump's involvement, and you can be sure that if the position were reversed, Trump would be blaming the current mess on the inherited conditions. From two terms previously, even, if he had the chance. Biden seems to be taking it on the chin, though. Refreshing. Hopefully the political 'reward' isn't counter to the better part of the intentions.

(Actually, I'm theorising that (if Trump hadn't totally forgotten his commitment/reversed the decision due to <insert style="some reason; handwavy; typical deflection" />) the only thing stopping it from getting worse would be intelligent commanders filling in the gaps in his vague 'get it done', including the kind of ones currently expressing unhappiness in Biden's withdrawal. Someone like Bolton could make it better or worse but someone who just happens not to be flavor-of-the-month will be a sacrificial firing such that those who wish to believe Trump gets nothing wrong can conveniently transfer their dissatisfaction upon them....  But I left my transdimensional portal device in the other universe, so I can't really go and check the facts on this at the moment. Also my time machine is parked somewhere in 2027 (one of the Thursdays, I think), so I can't even check if this is going to get worse than the current panic-fed crisis. Maybe the sensible, comparative moderate elements manage to wrangle an Afghanistan that people didn't have to fall/under from planes in order to try to escape from. It's a developing situation and maybe just a sticking plaster needing to be ripped off rather than a tourniquet that might have been better, on balance, to leave tight for a little longer.)

[martinuzz]

What sort of shit bastard thinks that a society should be complemented for letting girls get an education until they can be sold? It's 100% fucking useless to be educated half as much as the rest of the populace and then sold into a life where 90+ percent of your demographic is never employed.

You literally linked an article showing all the ways Martinuzz was correct, and also how it's way, way worse than he initially stated. I didn't even realize how bad it was until you linked that article. And no, we absolutely do have "yet to see" what the laws look like, because they've been in full control of the country before, and all of the current policies and practices as described in the article you linked are a direct representation of that time.

Ignorant, indeed.

Indeed. It is terrible.

In no way did I mean, even in the slightest, to compliment the Taliban on that promise.
I am extremely skeptical, seeing how the Taliban treated women and girls in the past (and present).

What use is an education if you're forced to leave it halfway primary school, to be married off and caged like a bird with a cloth over it's cage, in eternal darkness, not even free to sing?

Maybe I am being pessimistic, perhaps the Brand New Friendly Neighborhood Modernized Taliban is going to 'respect women rights' and whatmore they say. I truly hope so.

This is the part where I'm confused about 'age of majority' being brought up at all when, as per the quoted bit of wikipedia, it has no relation to maturity (adulthood), sexual consent (rape), marriageable age (child brides), school leaving age, etc etc, each individually and independent of the age of majority.

That makes it totally irrelevant, right?

Nobody's saying that they stop being children and therefore stop being child brides because it's presumed the local age of adulthood is nine. It's being said that children may be taken out of school because they become child brides at age nine.

Yeah, I have no idea where the semantic discussion about marital age suddenly came from either. It is irrelevant.

[Starver]

Good news for girls in Afghanistan: Taliban says they will allow girls to go to school until they reach adulthood.

Minor detail that still needs to be adressed, girls are considered adult at age 9.

Persist with the wilful ignorance then, you will just end up making a fool of yourself.  Let me make it clear for you - adulthood and marriagable age are different things (and not just in Afghanistan).

Semantics. You really think a 9 or 12 year old girl forced into marriage and rape cares if it is called adulthood or marriable age?

And then to call me ignorant... Geesh.

That's called moving the goalposts.  Since that is a very different point.  If you read any decent article it is clear the girls are married of as minors (that is, as children to make it specially clear for you).

Sorry, but you're fighting over a terribly insignificant hill to die on, SFAICT.

"Considered adult" does not imply legal (even religiously-legal) definition, merely treatment. A child up to {{arbitrary age >> 9}} can be guaranteed they won't be forbidden schooling by the government, but without also a legal requirement to be schooled then they could so easily be removed from the system early. Either by the parents (especially if they support/acquiesce-to early marriage, for whatever reason they consider it necessary/expedient) or the husband (having taken over lawful guardianship, or having taken unlawful guardianship in a bride-kidnap situation which already means greater crimes that need to not be overlooked/left unpunished).


If we trust that they will allow education of girls, as reportee, the primacy of defacto or dejure definitions of adulthood is hardly relevent. Obviously I'm examining the martinuzz's phrasing (probably a translation of a translation of the true statement, at best, and paraphrasing dotted here and there throughout by various parties, likely to hide any original conviction or subtlety couched in the original deliberately precise statement), but this was in the same context that you had. I get that you have a different opinion of what it all means, but outside of that specific interpretation you should now appreciate that there's no contradiction or goal-post movement necessary.


You know what, I rather hope that a rational Taliban governance actually is truly supportive of female education. But there'll be certainly be a few more Malala-like incidents from less enlightened elements that now find themselves ruling patches of the country. At least until/unless there is a big show-crackdown on the religious-right-style of imposing values. Someone needs to prevent the rise of theocratic-anarchy. The trouble being that anyone big-bad enough to get the country into line soon enough is necessarily big-bad enough to not have a natural Human Rights lean to them.

I can but watch it unfold, with trepidation. I hope to be surprised.

[Random_Dragon]

To get us off the topic of name-calling and arguing over inane semantics, Abott's got the 'rona. He probably won't have very severe symptoms because he's able to afford all the fun treatments and is most likely actually vaxxed, but...

[Gentlefish]

I come back after years to shitpost on American Politics imploding and we're talking about the policies of a Middle-Eastern coup.

...Like we expected anything else to happen after the "mission accomplished" banner was flown.

[StrawBarrel]

huh. according to this NPR article Abbott is getting the fun drugs.

Governor Abbott is receiving Regeneron's monoclonal antibody treatment," the statement said.

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/08/17/1028574761/texas-governor-greg-abbott-tests-positive-covid-19-coronavirus

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has been fully vaccinated, has tested positive for the coronavirus, his office announced Tuesday. Abbott has opposed mask mandates, and his orders have drawn legal challenges.

Things sound pretty bad for Texas. Just sounds terrible

[Random_Dragon]

Yep, we're having some of the same bullshit to deal with that Florida has been stuck with basically this whole time.

[feelotraveller]

What sort of shit bastard thinks that a society should be complemented for letting girls get an education until they can be sold? It's 100% fucking useless to be educated half as much as the rest of the populace and then sold into a life where 90+ percent of your demographic is never employed.

You literally linked an article showing all the ways Martinuzz was correct, and also how it's way, way worse than he initially stated. I didn't even realize how bad it was until you linked that article. And no, we absolutely do have "yet to see" what the laws look like, because they've been in full control of the country before, and all of the current policies and practices as described in the article you linked are a direct representation of that time.

Ignorant, indeed.

Steady on there son.  You can get emotive as all fuck but it's not going to change facts.  It is better that some girls can sometimes get some education, than no girls can ever get any education. Yes we should complement precisely that, no more, whether it is Afghanistan, Africa, or elsewhere.

The article I linked is about current day Afghanistan (historical references are specifically noted), or to be precise, Afghanistan over the last few years (American puppet government years) rather than when the Taliban were running the show.  Get your ducks (or ignorance in line).  It is mainly drawn from the 2018 Unicef report if you want to go looking at sources.

Separately in the last day or so Ben Messaoud, chief of Afghanistan field operations for Unicef said he was “quite optimistic” about working with the Taliban after they “expressed support” for allowing girls to continue attending school.  Take that as you will.

This is the part where I'm confused about 'age of majority' being brought up at all when, as per the quoted bit of wikipedia, it has no relation to maturity (adulthood), sexual consent (rape), marriageable age (child brides), school leaving age, etc etc, each individually and independent of the age of majority.

That makes it totally irrelevant, right?

Nobody's saying that they stop being children and therefore stop being child brides because it's presumed the local age of adulthood is nine. It's being said that children may be taken out of school because they become child brides at age nine.

I've no idea how you have come to understand this.  The age of majority is precisely the legal/cultural definition of adulthood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_majority
"The age of majority is the threshold of adulthood as recognized or declared in law. It is the moment when minors cease to be considered such and assume legal control over their persons, actions, and decisions, thus terminating the control and legal responsibilities of their parents or guardian over them."

We are talking about adulthood because martinuzz insists that the Taliban consider 9 year old girls adults. They don't, it's preposterous. Even when married off they remain children, in the Taliban's eyes as well as ours. That the commitment to female education as given by the Taliban might only extend to adulthood also makes it relevant. 

Sure the child's guardian might remove them from school but that is the case whether they are married or not.

[Micro102]

Isn't the age of consent/majority/whatever irrelevant here? The Taliban are taking over the government and will inevitably change laws. We know there are accusations of child marriage in their group already. We have seen pedophilia problems in religious organizations. We won't be able to do anything about if even if we guess what's going to happen correctly.

I really don't see why there are pages of argument over something that we can't truly predict, will eventually see, and can do nothing about.

[martinuzz]

Feelotraveller, you are focussing too much on semantics. It's probably indeed what Starver said, translation of translation.
It's completely irrelevant, I could have posted marital age, majority age or whatever wording, the statement of my post would remain the same.

[Bumber]

Biden seems to be taking it on the chin, though. Refreshing.

Is he really? He said the buck stopped with him, but assigned a whole lot of blame everywhere else. Then he went back to resume his vacation.

The major issue (at least for me) isn't whether Trump/Biden should've pulled out of Afghanistan. It's how it was done. Biden gave an arbitrary deadline of 9/11 (which was bad optics,) then decided to leave hastily in July, leaving military equipment (including tanks and aircraft) to the Taliban, and people stranded.

What should have happened first was the evacuation of non-combat personnel and relocation of equipment to secure areas. Support for the Afghan fighters would continue from secure air bases and with assistance from US troops. Once everything was ready, the troops could leave and the withdrawal would conclude. Preferably, this would happen in winter (when the Taliban typically retreats to Pakistan to regroup,) letting the Afghan government hold the line for longer without the US. Edit: Forgot to mention moving imprisoned terrorists, which have now been set free.

I've heard there were unmet obligations the Taliban had to meet as part of the withdrawal deal Trump made, though I haven't looked into it. (I don't get why Biden would feel bound to that deal anyway, considering all the other ones he's ignored.)

[feelotraveller]

Feelotraveller, you are focussing too much on semantics. It's probably indeed what Starver said, translation of translation.
It's completely irrelevant, I could have posted marital age, majority age or whatever wording, the statement of my post would remain the same.

No it would lose the implication that somehow the Taliban's verbal committment to a step in the right direction for the education of girls and women is irrelevant.  It's not.

It is also remarkable that you have not posted about child marriage in Niger, which leads the statisitics  by percentage of marriages, in the Africa thread. Nor commented about India, which has the great number of child marriages as an absolute number/national figure in whatever thread would be relevant.  My conclusion is that your aim is not to highlight the problems of child marriage (which continued to be a significant problem in the non-Taliban Afghanistan) but rather to use the emotional issue to denigrate the new proto-Afghani government even as they are making announcements that are something of an advance in other areas.

We don't know what their stance on child marriage will be yet.  Sure it's fair enough to point to their previous stance - notwithstanding that without outlining why they think/thought it an acceptable practice you are not doing the issue even a passing justice - but you are hardly doing them justice in other areas either, such implying that women will be forced to wear the burka again, which is not what has been stated by the new regime - hajib yes, burka no.  No doubt you will turn this into a new point for (anti-)religious vitriol rather than acknowledging it as a promising development.  (The hajib debate I'll note is far wider than "Taliban' or even "Afghanistan'.)

Nup, you're mudslinging alright (...at best).

[martinuzz]

Please stop framing me as some kind of troll.


EDIT: also, before you accuse me again of not posting about similar unjustices in other parts of the world..

In Nigeria, it looks like the 276 schoolgirls Boko Haram kidnapped in 2014 have ran out, so today they attacked a school and kidnapped new schoolgirls.
51 out of the school's 701 students are missing.

Why haven't those fuckers been wiped out yet, sad. Probably because there are no oil reserves in Boko Haram territory.

Of the 276 girls that were kidnapped in 2014, 57 escaped in the beginning, 107 escaped later, or were released, but 112 are still missing/being held by Boko Haram.
The escapees told horrible stories about forced marriage, and forced prostitution for the militia members.

And I am pretty sure I at some point also expressed concern about child marriages in India, sorry if I cannot be bothered to use the broken search engine any further.

[Starver]

Biden gave an arbitrary deadline of 9/11 (which was bad optics,) then decided to leave hastily in July, leaving military equipment (including tanks and aircraft) to the Taliban, and people stranded.

You probably forget that Trump had set May 1st as his withdrawal date. Not that I think it would have happened then, but the draw-down for that would have been even more hasty (or incomplete).

Logistics-wise, you cannot leave bases of combat personnel alone in forward (or 'backward') firebases without a significant proportion of support staff. And (for better or worse) clearly the intent was also to not telegraph the departure. Try cutting that Gordian Knot without one or other compromise. 20:20 (or even 20:21) hindsight is wonderful. In a gradual retreat, at what point do you put the anchors on (and even reverse the build-down) as the biding Taliban run in hot on the heals on the heals of Biden's tail-end troops because they are at least as prepared (and the local army as unprepated) as they obviously were in this case.

And if Biden had encountered those/other problems, or especially if he had just perpetuated the stalemate, you know that would have been cause for cries of "no, you should have...", up to and including just mustering everyone and packing things up as much as possible in just one night. Woulda, coulda, shoulda...

I already said I can't confirm which is the best of all worlds, and that my opinion is just opinion. And so is yours.

(Talk not of vacations. Trump's 'me time' is legendary. If he could properly President while golfing or Twittering, Biden can President from the properly equipped/staffed Camp David, which he was indeed at over the weekend but returned from on Monday and has not, SFAICT, returned to.)


Maybe I shouldn't have even mentioned my thoughts on this. I'd been mulling them over since the flash departure from Camp Bastion (as much as applied at the time) and so on. It's much too early to have a decent analysis. In the context of female entitlement it rather rolled out. Even with a bit of Pre-Post Editing, as I recall, to give it more brevity - not that you'd know that.


(Feelo, at the risk of more argument, the mud has come thicker from your hands. Which I think comes from overthinking on your part. I know a lot about overthinking, and I cringe for having just demonstrated it here. The bit-bucket is far fuller of my backspaced/abandoned/filtered post-texts than you'd credit.)

[Bumber]

Hunter lost another laptop. Apparently stolen by Russian drug dealers, according to a video he had stored on the repair shop laptop.

You probably forget that Trump had set May 1st as his withdrawal date. Not that I think it would have happened then, but the draw-down for that would have been even more hasty (or incomplete).

A May 1st (is that the start of or end of?) withdrawal would've been under the condition that the Taliban not take any additional territory, which they had violated.