When Can We Leave?

Afghanistan.
The graveyard of empires.
It looks like we're stuck.
If we had never gone there, or if we had gone there, taken out the Taliban, and come home, we could act like we didn't know how bad things were there, in terms of human rights, and never pay Afghanistan even a passing thought.
Now we have all seen it, particularly the human rights abuses towards women and children.
We cannot, in good conscience, turn our backs on them.
On Fox yesterday they showed a photo of a woman, a formerly beautiful woman, who'd been disfigured by the Taliban for attending school.
These people, the Taliban, and Hamas and Hezbollah and Al Qaeda, and other Islamist criminal organizations, give new meaning to the word "cruelty".
Their brutality towards women is not their "custom", it's criminality, but even if it was "tradition", woman do not deserved to be enslaved by these evil despots.

We should insist that the U.N. become more involved.
We can pressure this body more than any other member.
We should threaten the UN with sanctions if they continue to overlook human rights abuses by anyone.

It is sad that we probably are there now because of the military-industrial complex need for money, power, and control.
Nonetheless, as a moral nation we must defend innocent victims.
Even if we must do it alone.