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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: average joe who wrote (4998)	12/15/2000 9:35:27 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

Young girls and young mothers have to be united against FGM and take the village harpies that perform the rite somewhere and lock them up. The "village harpies" are their mothers and grandmothers. Many of these cultures treat ancestors and living ancestors with a degree of respect approaching veneration; they are not likely to lock them up. There is no short term solution to the FGM problem. The only long-term solution that I can see is a large and sustained investment in education. An analogous problem would be the Indian custom of burning widows. This has been outlawed since the British colonial period, but still persists in rural areas. The point to keep in mind is that FGM and widow-burning are not imposed by governments on their citizens; they are voluntarily accepted, even demanded, by communities which consider them part of their traditional culture. This makes them very difficult to change from outside. The problem of the Taleban is totally different, not analogous at all. The Taleban are a governing body imposing oppressive measures by armed force and violence on unwilling women. We may not be able to change the Taleban, and we may not be able to remove them from power (although we seemed to find a great deal of political will directed toward the dismantling of previous Afghan governments that we disliked). We can, however, assure their victims, and those who are striving to create a less medieval environment that they have the full support - and this support can be material as well as moral - of the outside world, and we can make it plain to the Taleban that they will be a pariah among nations until they change their ways. The Taleban will not rule Afghanistan forever. Change will come. It will have to come from within, but it can be hastened if it is supported and encouraged from outside. I find it a little odd that so many of those who went on the warpath over an unpalatable regime in Nicaragua, supporting an interventionist policy that included deals with drug dealers and terrorists as necessary means toward the end of removing that government, are so willing to accept a government that terrorizes its own people and shelters major international terrorists.