Only if you're prepared to occupy the country for several generations until the attitudes of the population change. Otherwise, you'll just have another Afghanistan where everything reverts back as soon as you leave.
I would argue the Masih was playing “hide-the-ball” when responding to Sam’s question about what percentage of people want what. She mentioned how most of the younger generation in Iran want more women’s rights. This is likely correct but ignores the size of the older population and ignores the differences between the urban population and rural population.
In my experience, roughly 20% of Iranians are supportive of the Islamic Republic and will defend its morally atrocious domestic actions and its support of Islamism/Jihadism abroad. Another 30% fall into an apathetic bucket where, sure, they’d be bothered by the death of Mahsa Amini, but they’re not really bothered by the systemic injustice. Beyond that, there are numerous different reform opinions from “let’s change a few laws” to “down with the regime”. Iranians in exile have much less to lose from complete overhaul than do the domestic population and are, therefore, more gung-ho on the end of the Islamic Republic — even to the point of suggesting a US invasion — but even most of those in the reform-option camp would see a US invasion as one of a foreign power trying to dominate, not liberators.
I took a “Global Politics” summer class at Brown University where the instructors were very polished neo-lib think-tank people and they were assured that Iran would be soon turning a corner because 66% of their population is under 35 and more ppl have access to cell phones and VPNs, etc.
… the only problem is that this class was over 20 years ago.
People have been repeating these one dimensional “demographics is destiny” talking points for decades despite being constantly proven wrong.
Regardless of why we invaded, during the occupation, women's rights improved. That progress was lost when the Taliban returned to power.
The idea that we could have "destroyed Islam" with AKs is so stupid I don't even know where to begin. Looking at the demographics, 99.7% of Afghanistan are either Sunni or Shia Muslim. There was absolutely no way any government could have been formed without it constituting a Muslim majority, unless propped up militarily by the West forever.
The women of Afghanistan don't want to "destroy Islam" any more than the men do.
Many want to see the lot of women improved. But that doesn't equate to the destruction of their religion.
Also, the idea that you're just going to give a bunch of AKs to more secular-minded Afghan women, and we'd have a utopia is absurd. This is the real world. Things aren't that easy.
I don’t go in for any of the “religion of peace” apologia, but your view of Islam and Islamic cultures is utterly facile. Ignorant to the point of actual bigotry.
> when we invaded and occupied afghanistan we did not in any way whatsoever try to emancipate the women from islam.
That's not correct. Tens of thousands of girls and women attended school and gained education under the protection of US soldiers while the US occupied Afghanistan. It was US military policy to help them learn, and it was a significant point of contention with Islamists in charge. Losing those social gains for women was also a primary point of concern of Republicans and Democrats when Trump issued the order to pull out at the end of his administration, and again when Biden executed that order at the start of his administration.
> Educating Afghan girls, a rallying cry of former first lady Laura Bush, in particular, became a U.S. focal point in Afghanistan. Soon after the U.S. invasion, tens of thousands of schoolgirls garbed in black uniforms and flowing white headscarves began attending schools across the country, symbols of tangible progress that are still touted by the international community today....Almost twenty years on, teachers like Nadia, and their students, are grappling with what could be the end of education for generations of women and girls in Afghanistan.
https://time.com/6078072/afghanistan-withdrawal-taliban-girls-education/
Here's another good example of when Laura Bush talked in the radio in place of President Bush to drum up support for educating women in Afghanistan, and to warn about the Taliban's Oppression of Women. She talked about it often, and president Bush often echoed her concerns, and touted US achievements of helping those women.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacked/transcripts/laurabushtext_111701.html
Me: "To cook a roast chicken you need to be willing to wait at least an hour."
You: "So that's all you need then, time? Not an oven, not heat, not kitchen equipment?"
Yes, obviously, you also need to change minds. But it takes time for people's minds to change.
The point is "occupy the country"
Its not about the time. Its about moving in and forcibly kicking the ones in power now, out.
You're just creating more martyrs and a reason for the occupation to fail.
I don't think you've understood my comment. Pointing out that to change cultural attitudes via occupation would take generations is not an argument **for** occupation; it's an argument **against** this sort of endeavour.
If you asked, "can I knock down a brick wall by punching it?" and I replied, "yes, but only if you hit it multiple times a day for hundreds of years", I hope you wouldn't take that as me endorsing the idea! Pointing out how inefficient and time-consuming that approach is should clearly put one off the idea.
Absolutely NOT.
War is a very serious and terrible thing. It should be entered into very cautiously and under very strict parameters.
But I do agree that at the very least, we should not be sending airplanes stuffed with pallets of cash to the mullahs of the Iranian regime which arrests and executes women for being caught in public with their hair uncovered.
So don't declare war on them, but please stop appeasing them and funding them.
Sadly no. Arguments that are not much better than this have been used as reasons for war. Perhaps never the **only** reason though and perhaps never the **actual** reason. For instance, one of the many many reasons Putin put forth for his war in Ukraine was to stop the proliferation of LGBT rights.
Ah yes, war, a thing that has definitely improves the lives of women.
Seriously though, please go to bed Mr. Cheney. We tested the Better Living Through Violence hypothesis and the answer was definitely "No"
Tbf, there was a generation of young girls in regions of Afghanistan and Iraq who gained education while the US occupied those countries. So, Bush and Cheney (mostly Laura Bush) were actually correct the US could enable that.
Unfortunately, that quickly ended in Afghanistan when Trump and Biden ordered and executed the US exit from the country.
In Iraq, the Taliban recently banned women from university, but they can still attend school in their younger years. Imo, the fact that they got an education was worth while....maybe not worth trillions of USD or the lives spent to temporarily give them that taste of freedom, tho. We probably could have done more good with that money and effort, but Idk.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/mar/18/iraq-girls-women-education-president-bush-invasion-promise
You're basically repeating the "we'll kill them for their own good" justifications that the Bush administration used for Iraq. Preemptively invading a country is psychotic behavior and any country that does so is incapable of creating good outcomes.
I realize that from a practical perspective, this question sounds like such a nonstarter that you think it warrants a smug response, but I think there’s definitely a discussion worth having regarding how much bloodshed you’re willing to accept responsibility for if it means that you could prevent even more suffering. This isn’t a neocon position, in fact Anarco-Communist Ian Banks explores this idea quite a bit in his “Culture” novels.
We don't need Iain Banks when we have the past twenty years of actual history.
The question isn't "How much bloodshed are you willing to accept responsibility?" It's "should we blunder out way in to another Iraq?"
Other than that being gross violation of international law and leading to likely very high levels of death, destruction, and impoverishment? Sounds like a great idea. Paul Wolfowitz would love it
> People will perceived it as a search for oil or imperialism or racism or whatever their bug bear is.
Well, it seems like an awfully convenient excuse to use for those purposes.
Consider what happens when you go down this path. Just how many countries are out there that treat women poorly? A nation going to war with them would certainly have a hell of a fight on their hands, especially if they are fighting them all at the same time. Additionally, even if you do it one at a time, after seeing it happen the first couple times, what’s to stop the others from forming a defensive alliance, forcing you to fight all of them at the same time?
Now consider that since you are doing this for countries that treat women poorly, where does this end? If you do not also declare war for their treatment of other marginalized groups, that would imply you don’t care about them. Do you therefore need to go to war with nuclear nations like China?
It would be better to work on exporting cultural values to them through other means.
I agree with you that this is the real world case. I probably should have put a few more assumptions into my question.
Treatment of women is much simpler than treatment of marginalized groups. China could argue that it locks millions of Uighurs/Tibetans in concentration camps, castrates some, bulldozes markets, mosques and temples and chains butchers knifes to walls because they are a danger to society.
It's a bad argument but there is no such argument for the treatment of women.
"Women are inferior to men and need to be controlled so that their irrational passions do not lead to the downfall of our society."
"Women are a man's property to do with as they please according to God, and therefore we have the right to do whatever we like with them."
"A woman ate an apple and got us all kicked out of a garden."
There are plenty of (bad) arguments that can be and are made to attempt to justify the treatment of women. Arguments made against Uighurs are no more reasonable than arguments made against women. The same goes with basically any oppressed people.
Not to mention, there is simply the fact that violently overthrowing a government with an outside force doesn't tend to ingratiate local populations, especially when those local populations are going to suffer greatly from the war.
What measurement are we using for the correct treatment of women?
The US is not doing great at the moment with the abortion laws. Should they start by declaring war on themselves?
The last civil war went pretty well why not. I'm not sure whether I'd put them firmly in my list of 'good countries' that are leading my alliance.
Buuut in the global scheme of things they are pretty good. Western countries just look up their own ass and not to the world so they beat themselves up more than they should
>The last civil war went pretty well why not.
It went pretty well? 620k soldiers died, plus an estimated 200k more civilians. The same percentage projected onto the US population today would be over 8 million casualties.
All that, and, if you believe it was fought for the ideal of freeing southern Blacks from their oppression, the substance of that wasn't accomplished until over 100 years after the war ended.
No but you didn't answer. What is the measurement? Is it based on the laws of the country?
Because now you've only offered your judgement call and with all due respect nobody will get behind that.
I think you answer your own question:
>Countries that are relatively equal seem not to put pressure on countries that treat women terribly. They even give them ironic offices in the UN.
War requires a will to commit forces, see it through, follow through on the required occupation afterwards. If that will to go to war existed, there are a lot easier ways to push a culture in a new direction. We could, as you say, put pressure on them and not give them ironic offices in the UN.
I think a more defensible ethical position is to present an objectively better society, and pump out as many Hollywood movies, tv shows and video games as possible that show that you have a better way of life, then distribute far and wide. That, and find a way to fund women in these societies. It's their community, we should try to empower them to change it.
War should be your last resort, which absolutely doesn't apply here. Would you be comfortable sending off your son and daughter to war for the liberation of women? Women who do not ask to be liberated and would likely hate you for killing their sons and brothers and messing with their beliefs and customs? Also good luck convincing them that your intentions were pure and as stated.
> It seems logical to me that a central goal should be a world where women and girls are treated with respect and have the same rights as men and boys…But could we argue that the deaths of thousands now are worth it to improve/save the lives of millions over the next generations.
You're taking a lot of hate for your question, but I think it's a good one. Except, I'd generalize it and ask: should liberal nations forcefully depose despotic regimes, *period?*
Sam touched on this point in the [episode with Dan Carlin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdXZ2eqTg1I&t=904s):
> I think more or less everyone would acknowledge that if there was something we could do to liberate the North Korean people without too much bloodshed, we should do it. It's really a hostage crisis. We have a couple of maniacs, or generations now of maniacs, with bouffant hair holding millions of people hostage, starving some significant percentage of them, and brainwashing them with an ideology that is clearly totally out of register with any real understanding of what's going on in the world. These people think they're a master race. They're essentially a cargo cult armed with nuclear weapons.
> If you talk to liberals and conservatives about this, the real problem is just a practical one. There is no way to resolve this hostage crisis without massive loss of life. They have nuclear weapons. But even short of that, they have so much artillery aimed at Seoul that there's no way to do it without a horrendous war.
> But if we could wave a magic wand and change the situation, disabuse these people of their mythology and their intellectual isolation, and cancel that regime, everyone acknowledges that would be a good thing.
He's basically saying the same as you, OP. If the opportunity to liberate a people with "limited bloodshed" exists, he's for it. I'm for it too. The problem is, there is no way to do it while containing the damage. It's a practical problem.
But we shouldn't mistake the practical problem for the moral one. *If* it was possible to liberate the North Koreans with limited bloodshed, *and* it was possible to replace the regime with a stable, liberal democratic regime that the people would embrace and put to good use, then **it's for the good of everyone on Earth to do just that**. The same could be said for Iran and the women living there in misery. What's the moral argument *against that?*
The same could *also* have been said for Iraq. Same for Afghanistan. Unfortunately, as we now know, it simply *wasn't* possible. But *if it had* been possible to make regime change in those places, institute stable liberal democracy, and have a people that embrace and cherish their new liberalism, why wouldn't we want to do that?
Again, we can point to all the failures to pull this off, but that's a practical problem and not a moral one. And our moral center of gravity on this *should* make us willing to do it, because if we *do* face a situation where this sort of forced regime change *is* possible, we need to know that we're prepared to do it. Why *shouldn't* we be prepared to do it? Why *wouldn't* we want to propagate liberalism in our world where it will be accepted and cherished?
No, declaring war on a country for their treatment of women is not only over-interfering but fruitless. The greatest leap forward for the freedom of oppressed peoples of all stripes is this thing right here, the internet. It's doing it's work and gradually eroding the power of oppressive states that rely on suppression of information.
Yes, though it really wasn’t the reason. It was an accidental benefit for the afghans. I genuinely feel for the generation of afghans that benefited from the us occupation in this regard. Now it’s back to the 6th century.
Agree. If they'd made it clear it was their one and only reason I would have supported it.
But you're right it wasn't a reason at all really. If it was they wouldn't have pulled out
For everyone acting like this is absurd, what if a country did not allow black men to be educated, work or leave the house without a white person? what if they were required to have sex with people they did not love and killed for having sex with people they loved ? Would war be justifiable in this case?
>Would war be justifiable in this case?
It doesn't matter if it's justifiable or not. If the vast majority of people in that country wanted things to stay how they are enough that they'd be willing to kill over it, that's a war you're probably going to lose. Especially if they've convinced most of the blacks that what is happening is the will of their chosen deity.
A mistake for who? If it had let the confederate states secede when they wanted to, I suspect the US would be in a much better place than it is now. As is, a lot of the problems it currently faces is a direct result of its decision to fight that war and force people to stay in the union against their will, who's ancestors are still bitter about it to this day. We could've had universal healthcare, sensible gun control laws, real equality for LGBT people, and other things that progressives really want. But we've been denied all of these things because for some reason, we think letting people who are trying to navigate modern society with a 2,000yo book of morals split off and go there own way is somehow a bad thing.
And it took about another hundred years before black people had any real freedom anyway. So the question is, did anybody *really* win that war? Liberals are miserable, conservatives are miserable, and I think we're just about a stone's throw away from having to fight a second war.
North Korea likely doesn't allow this, no one is protesting them because it's a fairly esoteric thing to do. Saudi Arabia and USA have been buttbuddies for decades including with many Republican leadership positions, they only recently started being less awful in how the treat women. We still took their money and sucked their dicks.
War isn't justifiable unless an UN-mandated country is breaking international law. If someone tried being in the UN and doing this, they should be kicked out or have their leadership overthrown by force if necessary to bring them back in line.
Idiotic. And you must be a woman to submit such an absurd, juvenile and emotionally-driven comment. Or perhaps one of these contemporary Douglas Murray-admiring gay neoconservatives
When that war goes bad and we have to draft citizens, are we going to draft women to fight alongside men or are we going to exempt women from the draft like we do now?
I would be irate if I, a male, was drafted to fight a war for equality when women are not drafted. Even under proposals to draft women, supporters argue ["that women can hold many warfighting positions without serving as front-line infantry troops".](https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4730560-senate-democrats-require-women-draft/) That is not equality.
No! You are effectively asking if we should kill people for mistreating women. We don't do that in our own countries. Why should we go to other countries, that otherwise don't do us any harm, and kill their people and destroy their property because they organized their society differently than us. That's idiotic and immoral.
South America would be fine. Central America and east/ south east Asia would be mostly fine.
The borderline countries will pull their heads in once we declare war on the worst
Realistically democratic countries will never care about this that much.
If they face national security threat from that country this might be possible. Gender apartheid is adjacent to such behaviour but they can't be the cause.
Wait until we have military robot infantry. Elysium the entire Middle East with robot baby sitters until they are capable of governing themselves. Which, given their history, will of course, be never.
In war, almost always, the greatest casualties are the civilians. It's hard to know when war will be worth it before hand. After hand, we often realize it wasn't worth it, but we're stuck with it by that point.
I think we've learnt how well (/s) things can go when you declare war without a very specific plan to get out of there.
The only way we'll get to the objective is with diplomatic pressure, education, and media. They can't contain women forever.
I agree the good countries should be spending trillions on your second paragraph. They have won a lot of minds around the world but now they are stagnating from their own self flagellation. And women who are stuck with dreams of freedom but see now path to it, and watching the shit ideas in their countries being exported to the good countries and respected.
No. You have 2 idealistic premises: there are universal human rights and there should be a central authority to enforce those rights, even if using violence. Both those premises remove sovereignty of other nations, even if it comes from well meaning intentions and compassion.
War doesn’t change the hearts and minds of the general population. Slow but steady progress through normative pressures seems to be more effective. Saudi Arabia has made slow progress but rights have improved due to economic and political pressure from the West, for example.
The US occupied Afghanistan for 20 years and undoubtedly improved the lives of women and girls during that time, but it all vanished as soon as we left and the Taliban regained control.
Those countries that treat women poorly are the same countries that treat men poorly.
It's much easier to argue an intervention from a human rights perspective.
This is only half correct. They do also treat men poorly, but it is worth noting that the women are treated vastly, vastly worse, even by the men that get treated poorly.
I used to assume women have it worse in general but now see that as one of my cognitive biases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-are-wonderful_effect is a demonstration of that cognitive bias.
I used to find myself vastly more protective of women overall until I saw how vulnerable men are.
I don't think I can argue the point well in this particular case but have seen a similar pattern emerging when it comes to Muslim countries. Think of the systematic sexual abuse of boys the American military bumped into, "bahji boys"(?) and how that continues.
Or the response when a few hundred girls were kidnapped by Muslim terrorists in Africa while thousands of more boys had previously been burned in a similar way or been made into child soldiers.
Look at who is murdered as apostates.
When it comes to education, while the girls aren't allowed it the boys are forced and that education turns out to be almost fully religious.
I'm already sensitized to what I've read and heard about Muslim women having to endure. I just assume we are less sensitized to what those men are having to endure because of the Muslim faith.
While the boys are being indoctrinated, the young girls are also being indoctrinated. The difference is that the girls are occasionally also raped. Imo, that *is* worse.
I understand fascism is one of today’s buzzwords thrown at just about everything but I promise it has a well defined definition. Now would be a good time to take a refresher.
I think you and all the ex-Muslim wannabe Western feminists (female or male) are out of their mind to even suggest that an appropriate reason for the powerful and free countries of the West, including the US, to go to war with any theocratic, namely Muslim society is the latter forcing restrictions on freedom for women. The idea of risking the lives of millions, or even thousands, simply because they enforce women wearing a cloth on their head is unbelievably counterproductive to the point of stupidity
The reality is that modern history has shown that no society can break free into modernity without allowing women to have complete freedom and power over their own reproductive capacity. And this happens through not only access to effective birth control, but unfortunately the necessary evil of removing barriers to abortion access as well, an issue that even the US bafflingly seems to still struggle with as well
Another reality of modern history is that many of these Muslim societies resort to increased theocratic control after having their internal politics interfered with, democratically elected leaders overthrown and therefore their secular and genuinely progressive development thwarted (I know the word ‘progressive’ has become a dirty word for many, so that’s why I qualified it with the word ‘genuinely’ to specify, for lack of a better term, the ‘classical’ variety of progressive, not to sound too Dave Rubin-esque with his past ‘classical’ liberal bullshit)
Aside from the obvious example of the CIA overthrow of Mosaddegh in Iran being an almost direct precursor of the Islamic Revolution a quarter century later, even the autocratic example of Iraq had a similar dynamic. The reality is that as brutal as the Ba’ath regime in Iraq was under Saddam Hussein, there was no greater secularizing force and therefore no greater check on theocratic Shia Iranian influence on the government in Baghdad, particularly before the first Gulf War of the early nineties. In fact, into the early 80s before the devastation of the Iran-Iraq War which was primarily brought on by the CIA and Mossad arming both sides, Iraq had one of the highest rates of university attendance in the region, including amongst women, and with its vast oil wealth, Western policy makers during that time were predicting that Iraq would become a major regional as well as middle international power
So before we start considering regime changes and the accompanying military devastation, ‘reformers’ like Masih Alinejad and other similar shrill wannabe Western feminists should learn a little history and a little concept called realpolitik, which is something practiced by ALL powerful regimes, including the one in Tehran she hates so much
Using that logic , you should support the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan because there was massive local resistance to the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) feminist reforms such as raising the minimum age of marriage and banning forced marriage.
If the Soviets were allowed to run Afghanistan it would look like the Stan countries like Tajikistan today that are militant secularist countries that have banned hijabs and put an age limit on visiting masjids.
All nations are treating women and girls horribly. If you truly believe this is a worthwhile cause, say the #1 major change we should see globally, then you should put radical feminists in charge of all countries immediately. Any countries refusing this proposition will be invaded and leadership executed for treason against female humanity.
However, you might not enjoy the life you live when you're thrown into a prison for aggressive males because you find the rad femmes have a much more extreme view on social change than you.
The best way to fight any ideology that harms people is simple: make sure that culture has a free and fair exchange of any non-destructive ideas.
Nah I'm not that crazy. I'm saying equality not bullshit. Scandinavian countries, Australia new Zealand, west Europe canada thailand etc are more than good enough
Only if you're prepared to occupy the country for several generations until the attitudes of the population change. Otherwise, you'll just have another Afghanistan where everything reverts back as soon as you leave.
If you have listen one of the latest Sam’s podcasts about Iran, you would know that what you said likely not true about Iran.
I would argue the Masih was playing “hide-the-ball” when responding to Sam’s question about what percentage of people want what. She mentioned how most of the younger generation in Iran want more women’s rights. This is likely correct but ignores the size of the older population and ignores the differences between the urban population and rural population. In my experience, roughly 20% of Iranians are supportive of the Islamic Republic and will defend its morally atrocious domestic actions and its support of Islamism/Jihadism abroad. Another 30% fall into an apathetic bucket where, sure, they’d be bothered by the death of Mahsa Amini, but they’re not really bothered by the systemic injustice. Beyond that, there are numerous different reform opinions from “let’s change a few laws” to “down with the regime”. Iranians in exile have much less to lose from complete overhaul than do the domestic population and are, therefore, more gung-ho on the end of the Islamic Republic — even to the point of suggesting a US invasion — but even most of those in the reform-option camp would see a US invasion as one of a foreign power trying to dominate, not liberators.
I took a “Global Politics” summer class at Brown University where the instructors were very polished neo-lib think-tank people and they were assured that Iran would be soon turning a corner because 66% of their population is under 35 and more ppl have access to cell phones and VPNs, etc. … the only problem is that this class was over 20 years ago. People have been repeating these one dimensional “demographics is destiny” talking points for decades despite being constantly proven wrong.
Mostly due to them being brainwashed/institutionalised like a lot of the USA/UK with politics. Thinking option 1 and 2 are the only options.
How many millions of lives and trillions of dollars are you prepared to wager on this hypothesis?
I don’t. But the original premise stated here is likely wrong.
[удалено]
Regardless of why we invaded, during the occupation, women's rights improved. That progress was lost when the Taliban returned to power. The idea that we could have "destroyed Islam" with AKs is so stupid I don't even know where to begin. Looking at the demographics, 99.7% of Afghanistan are either Sunni or Shia Muslim. There was absolutely no way any government could have been formed without it constituting a Muslim majority, unless propped up militarily by the West forever.
[удалено]
The women of Afghanistan don't want to "destroy Islam" any more than the men do. Many want to see the lot of women improved. But that doesn't equate to the destruction of their religion. Also, the idea that you're just going to give a bunch of AKs to more secular-minded Afghan women, and we'd have a utopia is absurd. This is the real world. Things aren't that easy.
I don’t go in for any of the “religion of peace” apologia, but your view of Islam and Islamic cultures is utterly facile. Ignorant to the point of actual bigotry.
> when we invaded and occupied afghanistan we did not in any way whatsoever try to emancipate the women from islam. That's not correct. Tens of thousands of girls and women attended school and gained education under the protection of US soldiers while the US occupied Afghanistan. It was US military policy to help them learn, and it was a significant point of contention with Islamists in charge. Losing those social gains for women was also a primary point of concern of Republicans and Democrats when Trump issued the order to pull out at the end of his administration, and again when Biden executed that order at the start of his administration. > Educating Afghan girls, a rallying cry of former first lady Laura Bush, in particular, became a U.S. focal point in Afghanistan. Soon after the U.S. invasion, tens of thousands of schoolgirls garbed in black uniforms and flowing white headscarves began attending schools across the country, symbols of tangible progress that are still touted by the international community today....Almost twenty years on, teachers like Nadia, and their students, are grappling with what could be the end of education for generations of women and girls in Afghanistan. https://time.com/6078072/afghanistan-withdrawal-taliban-girls-education/ Here's another good example of when Laura Bush talked in the radio in place of President Bush to drum up support for educating women in Afghanistan, and to warn about the Taliban's Oppression of Women. She talked about it often, and president Bush often echoed her concerns, and touted US achievements of helping those women. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacked/transcripts/laurabushtext_111701.html
so, its just a matter of resources then? No need to change minds, just invade?
Me: "To cook a roast chicken you need to be willing to wait at least an hour." You: "So that's all you need then, time? Not an oven, not heat, not kitchen equipment?" Yes, obviously, you also need to change minds. But it takes time for people's minds to change.
The point is "occupy the country" Its not about the time. Its about moving in and forcibly kicking the ones in power now, out. You're just creating more martyrs and a reason for the occupation to fail.
I don't think you've understood my comment. Pointing out that to change cultural attitudes via occupation would take generations is not an argument **for** occupation; it's an argument **against** this sort of endeavour. If you asked, "can I knock down a brick wall by punching it?" and I replied, "yes, but only if you hit it multiple times a day for hundreds of years", I hope you wouldn't take that as me endorsing the idea! Pointing out how inefficient and time-consuming that approach is should clearly put one off the idea.
Can I just say I love your use of hypotheticals.
Absolutely NOT. War is a very serious and terrible thing. It should be entered into very cautiously and under very strict parameters. But I do agree that at the very least, we should not be sending airplanes stuffed with pallets of cash to the mullahs of the Iranian regime which arrests and executes women for being caught in public with their hair uncovered. So don't declare war on them, but please stop appeasing them and funding them.
There are a whole host of things to try and do before resorting to war. It should be an absolute last resort.
Exactly. We can do much more to promote Anti-Islamist Iranian perspectives and avoid dignifying regime advocates or members.
No. Next question.
is this a joke?
Sadly no. Arguments that are not much better than this have been used as reasons for war. Perhaps never the **only** reason though and perhaps never the **actual** reason. For instance, one of the many many reasons Putin put forth for his war in Ukraine was to stop the proliferation of LGBT rights.
It’s a thought experiment
The type of question asked by people with no plans to serve in the military.
Damn right.
Absolutely not. I find this to be an utterly ludicrous proposal.
Why?
Why don't you spend a year in a war zone and tell me why?
I'm almost certain you haven't. It's about future generations. Many of the most horrible wars had good outcomes. WW2 is the obvious example.
You would be wrong. Grow up.
[удалено]
Your post has been removed for violating Rule 2a: intolerance, incivility, and trolling.
[удалено]
As humiliating as wearing a burka is, it's nothing compared to getting shot at give me a break.
[удалено]
As opposed to going to war? Yes, absolutely. Being forced to wear some ridiculous clothing is better than dying.
[удалено]
Not doing the most extreme possible action about it doesn't mean I don't care about it.
Ah yes, war, a thing that has definitely improves the lives of women. Seriously though, please go to bed Mr. Cheney. We tested the Better Living Through Violence hypothesis and the answer was definitely "No"
Tbf, there was a generation of young girls in regions of Afghanistan and Iraq who gained education while the US occupied those countries. So, Bush and Cheney (mostly Laura Bush) were actually correct the US could enable that. Unfortunately, that quickly ended in Afghanistan when Trump and Biden ordered and executed the US exit from the country. In Iraq, the Taliban recently banned women from university, but they can still attend school in their younger years. Imo, the fact that they got an education was worth while....maybe not worth trillions of USD or the lives spent to temporarily give them that taste of freedom, tho. We probably could have done more good with that money and effort, but Idk. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/mar/18/iraq-girls-women-education-president-bush-invasion-promise
Every country was formed or maintained with war and some countries are quite good. What's the Cheney thing?
You're basically repeating the "we'll kill them for their own good" justifications that the Bush administration used for Iraq. Preemptively invading a country is psychotic behavior and any country that does so is incapable of creating good outcomes.
I realize that from a practical perspective, this question sounds like such a nonstarter that you think it warrants a smug response, but I think there’s definitely a discussion worth having regarding how much bloodshed you’re willing to accept responsibility for if it means that you could prevent even more suffering. This isn’t a neocon position, in fact Anarco-Communist Ian Banks explores this idea quite a bit in his “Culture” novels.
We don't need Iain Banks when we have the past twenty years of actual history. The question isn't "How much bloodshed are you willing to accept responsibility?" It's "should we blunder out way in to another Iraq?"
Other than that being gross violation of international law and leading to likely very high levels of death, destruction, and impoverishment? Sounds like a great idea. Paul Wolfowitz would love it
> People will perceived it as a search for oil or imperialism or racism or whatever their bug bear is. Well, it seems like an awfully convenient excuse to use for those purposes. Consider what happens when you go down this path. Just how many countries are out there that treat women poorly? A nation going to war with them would certainly have a hell of a fight on their hands, especially if they are fighting them all at the same time. Additionally, even if you do it one at a time, after seeing it happen the first couple times, what’s to stop the others from forming a defensive alliance, forcing you to fight all of them at the same time? Now consider that since you are doing this for countries that treat women poorly, where does this end? If you do not also declare war for their treatment of other marginalized groups, that would imply you don’t care about them. Do you therefore need to go to war with nuclear nations like China? It would be better to work on exporting cultural values to them through other means.
I agree with you that this is the real world case. I probably should have put a few more assumptions into my question. Treatment of women is much simpler than treatment of marginalized groups. China could argue that it locks millions of Uighurs/Tibetans in concentration camps, castrates some, bulldozes markets, mosques and temples and chains butchers knifes to walls because they are a danger to society. It's a bad argument but there is no such argument for the treatment of women.
"Women are inferior to men and need to be controlled so that their irrational passions do not lead to the downfall of our society." "Women are a man's property to do with as they please according to God, and therefore we have the right to do whatever we like with them." "A woman ate an apple and got us all kicked out of a garden." There are plenty of (bad) arguments that can be and are made to attempt to justify the treatment of women. Arguments made against Uighurs are no more reasonable than arguments made against women. The same goes with basically any oppressed people. Not to mention, there is simply the fact that violently overthrowing a government with an outside force doesn't tend to ingratiate local populations, especially when those local populations are going to suffer greatly from the war.
They can argue that without their restrictions on women that their society will be impure and immoral. I think both arguments are equally absurd.
This sub is hilarious sometimes
War rarely changes thought.
What measurement are we using for the correct treatment of women? The US is not doing great at the moment with the abortion laws. Should they start by declaring war on themselves?
The last civil war went pretty well why not. I'm not sure whether I'd put them firmly in my list of 'good countries' that are leading my alliance. Buuut in the global scheme of things they are pretty good. Western countries just look up their own ass and not to the world so they beat themselves up more than they should
>The last civil war went pretty well why not. It went pretty well? 620k soldiers died, plus an estimated 200k more civilians. The same percentage projected onto the US population today would be over 8 million casualties. All that, and, if you believe it was fought for the ideal of freeing southern Blacks from their oppression, the substance of that wasn't accomplished until over 100 years after the war ended.
No but you didn't answer. What is the measurement? Is it based on the laws of the country? Because now you've only offered your judgement call and with all due respect nobody will get behind that.
Yeah good one. War will surely improve the women’s lives.
No. To even suggest we should is appalling
I think you answer your own question: >Countries that are relatively equal seem not to put pressure on countries that treat women terribly. They even give them ironic offices in the UN. War requires a will to commit forces, see it through, follow through on the required occupation afterwards. If that will to go to war existed, there are a lot easier ways to push a culture in a new direction. We could, as you say, put pressure on them and not give them ironic offices in the UN.
I think a more defensible ethical position is to present an objectively better society, and pump out as many Hollywood movies, tv shows and video games as possible that show that you have a better way of life, then distribute far and wide. That, and find a way to fund women in these societies. It's their community, we should try to empower them to change it.
War should be your last resort, which absolutely doesn't apply here. Would you be comfortable sending off your son and daughter to war for the liberation of women? Women who do not ask to be liberated and would likely hate you for killing their sons and brothers and messing with their beliefs and customs? Also good luck convincing them that your intentions were pure and as stated.
What is your assumption they don't ask too be liberated. Iran is the best example where they do. Taliban and Isis controlled places too
Are there any nonreligious nations that treat women especially poorly?
Save the children first. Declare war on the Vatican
They are making improvements. But they would feel threatened I hope
> It seems logical to me that a central goal should be a world where women and girls are treated with respect and have the same rights as men and boys…But could we argue that the deaths of thousands now are worth it to improve/save the lives of millions over the next generations. You're taking a lot of hate for your question, but I think it's a good one. Except, I'd generalize it and ask: should liberal nations forcefully depose despotic regimes, *period?* Sam touched on this point in the [episode with Dan Carlin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdXZ2eqTg1I&t=904s): > I think more or less everyone would acknowledge that if there was something we could do to liberate the North Korean people without too much bloodshed, we should do it. It's really a hostage crisis. We have a couple of maniacs, or generations now of maniacs, with bouffant hair holding millions of people hostage, starving some significant percentage of them, and brainwashing them with an ideology that is clearly totally out of register with any real understanding of what's going on in the world. These people think they're a master race. They're essentially a cargo cult armed with nuclear weapons. > If you talk to liberals and conservatives about this, the real problem is just a practical one. There is no way to resolve this hostage crisis without massive loss of life. They have nuclear weapons. But even short of that, they have so much artillery aimed at Seoul that there's no way to do it without a horrendous war. > But if we could wave a magic wand and change the situation, disabuse these people of their mythology and their intellectual isolation, and cancel that regime, everyone acknowledges that would be a good thing. He's basically saying the same as you, OP. If the opportunity to liberate a people with "limited bloodshed" exists, he's for it. I'm for it too. The problem is, there is no way to do it while containing the damage. It's a practical problem. But we shouldn't mistake the practical problem for the moral one. *If* it was possible to liberate the North Koreans with limited bloodshed, *and* it was possible to replace the regime with a stable, liberal democratic regime that the people would embrace and put to good use, then **it's for the good of everyone on Earth to do just that**. The same could be said for Iran and the women living there in misery. What's the moral argument *against that?* The same could *also* have been said for Iraq. Same for Afghanistan. Unfortunately, as we now know, it simply *wasn't* possible. But *if it had* been possible to make regime change in those places, institute stable liberal democracy, and have a people that embrace and cherish their new liberalism, why wouldn't we want to do that? Again, we can point to all the failures to pull this off, but that's a practical problem and not a moral one. And our moral center of gravity on this *should* make us willing to do it, because if we *do* face a situation where this sort of forced regime change *is* possible, we need to know that we're prepared to do it. Why *shouldn't* we be prepared to do it? Why *wouldn't* we want to propagate liberalism in our world where it will be accepted and cherished?
No, declaring war on a country for their treatment of women is not only over-interfering but fruitless. The greatest leap forward for the freedom of oppressed peoples of all stripes is this thing right here, the internet. It's doing it's work and gradually eroding the power of oppressive states that rely on suppression of information.
They used that as an excuse for the Afghan war.
It was working a bit until they pulled out
Yes, though it really wasn’t the reason. It was an accidental benefit for the afghans. I genuinely feel for the generation of afghans that benefited from the us occupation in this regard. Now it’s back to the 6th century.
Agree. If they'd made it clear it was their one and only reason I would have supported it. But you're right it wasn't a reason at all really. If it was they wouldn't have pulled out
Exactly. The whole thing was a big disappointing mess. To say the very least.
That's the most psychopathic thought I've heard in a while
For everyone acting like this is absurd, what if a country did not allow black men to be educated, work or leave the house without a white person? what if they were required to have sex with people they did not love and killed for having sex with people they loved ? Would war be justifiable in this case?
>Would war be justifiable in this case? It doesn't matter if it's justifiable or not. If the vast majority of people in that country wanted things to stay how they are enough that they'd be willing to kill over it, that's a war you're probably going to lose. Especially if they've convinced most of the blacks that what is happening is the will of their chosen deity.
So US civil war was a mistake?
A mistake for who? If it had let the confederate states secede when they wanted to, I suspect the US would be in a much better place than it is now. As is, a lot of the problems it currently faces is a direct result of its decision to fight that war and force people to stay in the union against their will, who's ancestors are still bitter about it to this day. We could've had universal healthcare, sensible gun control laws, real equality for LGBT people, and other things that progressives really want. But we've been denied all of these things because for some reason, we think letting people who are trying to navigate modern society with a 2,000yo book of morals split off and go there own way is somehow a bad thing. And it took about another hundred years before black people had any real freedom anyway. So the question is, did anybody *really* win that war? Liberals are miserable, conservatives are miserable, and I think we're just about a stone's throw away from having to fight a second war.
The north did not fight the war for their own well-being. They fought it for the well-being of the slaves.
North Korea likely doesn't allow this, no one is protesting them because it's a fairly esoteric thing to do. Saudi Arabia and USA have been buttbuddies for decades including with many Republican leadership positions, they only recently started being less awful in how the treat women. We still took their money and sucked their dicks. War isn't justifiable unless an UN-mandated country is breaking international law. If someone tried being in the UN and doing this, they should be kicked out or have their leadership overthrown by force if necessary to bring them back in line.
Idiotic. And you must be a woman to submit such an absurd, juvenile and emotionally-driven comment. Or perhaps one of these contemporary Douglas Murray-admiring gay neoconservatives
Interesting. First time I've met a peace-activist incel.
I think you stumbled into the wrong sub bud, this isn’t the Fresh n Fit circlejerk
No
When that war goes bad and we have to draft citizens, are we going to draft women to fight alongside men or are we going to exempt women from the draft like we do now? I would be irate if I, a male, was drafted to fight a war for equality when women are not drafted. Even under proposals to draft women, supporters argue ["that women can hold many warfighting positions without serving as front-line infantry troops".](https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4730560-senate-democrats-require-women-draft/) That is not equality.
No! You are effectively asking if we should kill people for mistreating women. We don't do that in our own countries. Why should we go to other countries, that otherwise don't do us any harm, and kill their people and destroy their property because they organized their society differently than us. That's idiotic and immoral.
Almost all non western countries are at risk of war in that case. It's not terribly practical.
South America would be fine. Central America and east/ south east Asia would be mostly fine. The borderline countries will pull their heads in once we declare war on the worst
This is one of the stupidest threads I've read in awhile.
I admire your algorithm. Lots of idiots in mine
Not surprising.
Realistically democratic countries will never care about this that much. If they face national security threat from that country this might be possible. Gender apartheid is adjacent to such behaviour but they can't be the cause.
Wait until we have military robot infantry. Elysium the entire Middle East with robot baby sitters until they are capable of governing themselves. Which, given their history, will of course, be never.
In war, almost always, the greatest casualties are the civilians. It's hard to know when war will be worth it before hand. After hand, we often realize it wasn't worth it, but we're stuck with it by that point.
No
Just allow all the women to emigrate, then the problem will fix itself over the course of 1 generation.
Maybe America should start by invading and liberating itself to restore women's reproductive rights across the country.
I think we've learnt how well (/s) things can go when you declare war without a very specific plan to get out of there. The only way we'll get to the objective is with diplomatic pressure, education, and media. They can't contain women forever.
I agree the good countries should be spending trillions on your second paragraph. They have won a lot of minds around the world but now they are stagnating from their own self flagellation. And women who are stuck with dreams of freedom but see now path to it, and watching the shit ideas in their countries being exported to the good countries and respected.
No. You have 2 idealistic premises: there are universal human rights and there should be a central authority to enforce those rights, even if using violence. Both those premises remove sovereignty of other nations, even if it comes from well meaning intentions and compassion.
No. Good lord no. That’s insane, monstrous.
There is a natural tension between human rights and national sovereignty.
This is a seriously bad idea
Absolutely brain dead take. God I hope OP never goes anywhere near any position with a modicum of power.
No, we shouldn’t.
It would be a ridiculous reason to go to war for.
Nope. Other societies can live in whatever miserable way they want so long as they keep it on their side of the fence.
Maybe some kind of middle ground like tarrifs and other such moves for starters.
War doesn’t change the hearts and minds of the general population. Slow but steady progress through normative pressures seems to be more effective. Saudi Arabia has made slow progress but rights have improved due to economic and political pressure from the West, for example. The US occupied Afghanistan for 20 years and undoubtedly improved the lives of women and girls during that time, but it all vanished as soon as we left and the Taliban regained control.
This is the right answer. Thank you!
An ideological one
I seriously hope you’re a teenager.
Go on then mate. Off you go. X
No, but interesting thought experiment
I’ve been predicting the rise of Leftist Imperialism for decades, and now you post this and prove me right. I wish I was wrong.
I'm not a leftist
Those countries that treat women poorly are the same countries that treat men poorly. It's much easier to argue an intervention from a human rights perspective.
This is only half correct. They do also treat men poorly, but it is worth noting that the women are treated vastly, vastly worse, even by the men that get treated poorly.
I used to assume women have it worse in general but now see that as one of my cognitive biases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-are-wonderful_effect is a demonstration of that cognitive bias. I used to find myself vastly more protective of women overall until I saw how vulnerable men are. I don't think I can argue the point well in this particular case but have seen a similar pattern emerging when it comes to Muslim countries. Think of the systematic sexual abuse of boys the American military bumped into, "bahji boys"(?) and how that continues. Or the response when a few hundred girls were kidnapped by Muslim terrorists in Africa while thousands of more boys had previously been burned in a similar way or been made into child soldiers. Look at who is murdered as apostates. When it comes to education, while the girls aren't allowed it the boys are forced and that education turns out to be almost fully religious. I'm already sensitized to what I've read and heard about Muslim women having to endure. I just assume we are less sensitized to what those men are having to endure because of the Muslim faith.
While the boys are being indoctrinated, the young girls are also being indoctrinated. The difference is that the girls are occasionally also raped. Imo, that *is* worse.
If I were king, yeah I might. But it’s a pretty complicated question given how modern society functions.
I understand fascism is one of today’s buzzwords thrown at just about everything but I promise it has a well defined definition. Now would be a good time to take a refresher.
I think you and all the ex-Muslim wannabe Western feminists (female or male) are out of their mind to even suggest that an appropriate reason for the powerful and free countries of the West, including the US, to go to war with any theocratic, namely Muslim society is the latter forcing restrictions on freedom for women. The idea of risking the lives of millions, or even thousands, simply because they enforce women wearing a cloth on their head is unbelievably counterproductive to the point of stupidity The reality is that modern history has shown that no society can break free into modernity without allowing women to have complete freedom and power over their own reproductive capacity. And this happens through not only access to effective birth control, but unfortunately the necessary evil of removing barriers to abortion access as well, an issue that even the US bafflingly seems to still struggle with as well Another reality of modern history is that many of these Muslim societies resort to increased theocratic control after having their internal politics interfered with, democratically elected leaders overthrown and therefore their secular and genuinely progressive development thwarted (I know the word ‘progressive’ has become a dirty word for many, so that’s why I qualified it with the word ‘genuinely’ to specify, for lack of a better term, the ‘classical’ variety of progressive, not to sound too Dave Rubin-esque with his past ‘classical’ liberal bullshit) Aside from the obvious example of the CIA overthrow of Mosaddegh in Iran being an almost direct precursor of the Islamic Revolution a quarter century later, even the autocratic example of Iraq had a similar dynamic. The reality is that as brutal as the Ba’ath regime in Iraq was under Saddam Hussein, there was no greater secularizing force and therefore no greater check on theocratic Shia Iranian influence on the government in Baghdad, particularly before the first Gulf War of the early nineties. In fact, into the early 80s before the devastation of the Iran-Iraq War which was primarily brought on by the CIA and Mossad arming both sides, Iraq had one of the highest rates of university attendance in the region, including amongst women, and with its vast oil wealth, Western policy makers during that time were predicting that Iraq would become a major regional as well as middle international power So before we start considering regime changes and the accompanying military devastation, ‘reformers’ like Masih Alinejad and other similar shrill wannabe Western feminists should learn a little history and a little concept called realpolitik, which is something practiced by ALL powerful regimes, including the one in Tehran she hates so much
Should they invade us for our treatment of women? Who is the arbiter of how to treat women?
Braindead take
You can construct a set of metrics where any way of living is justified, that's all.
Using that logic , you should support the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan because there was massive local resistance to the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) feminist reforms such as raising the minimum age of marriage and banning forced marriage. If the Soviets were allowed to run Afghanistan it would look like the Stan countries like Tajikistan today that are militant secularist countries that have banned hijabs and put an age limit on visiting masjids.
All nations are treating women and girls horribly. If you truly believe this is a worthwhile cause, say the #1 major change we should see globally, then you should put radical feminists in charge of all countries immediately. Any countries refusing this proposition will be invaded and leadership executed for treason against female humanity. However, you might not enjoy the life you live when you're thrown into a prison for aggressive males because you find the rad femmes have a much more extreme view on social change than you. The best way to fight any ideology that harms people is simple: make sure that culture has a free and fair exchange of any non-destructive ideas.
Nah I'm not that crazy. I'm saying equality not bullshit. Scandinavian countries, Australia new Zealand, west Europe canada thailand etc are more than good enough