- Terry Glavin: The bravest woman in Afghanistan, isn't
"Bravest woman in Afghanistan" my ass, Brian Platt, my colleague at the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee, observes. Brian also discovers that to ask the only pertinent question of Malalai Joya - have you even thought about the implications of what you are demanding? - is to be dismissed and shouted down by Joya's fans for asking an impertinent question.
During my many conversations with feminists and progressives in Afghanistan last year, one thing that came through loud and clear was that the "troops out now" posture so commonplace in polite society in western countries has no support among Afghan women's leaders. What was also clear was that Joya and her backers with the so-called Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, to the extent that they are thought about at all, are regarded as faintly ridiculous and marginal characters, at best.
- osted: November 16, 2009, 3:15 PM by NP Editor
If you read the outpouring of coverage on Omar Khadr on the weekend you might be wondering why President Obama hasn't kept his pledge to close Guantanamo by the end of this year, and why he's allowing cases like Khadr's to go to the military tribunals George Bush was so heavily abused over.
You'd think there would be a ready explanation for those two questions. There has, after all, been a flood of coverage on the Khadr case and Guantanamo. A new wave hit on Friday, after the White House decided to split the trials, sending some Guantanamo detainees to tribunals and others -- like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- to a civilian criminal court.
But there isn't. Coverage on Khadr's predicament concentrated on finding critics to blast the decision, without trying to explain it. Maybe that's because the media outlets disagreed with it. But last time I looked, news reports were supposed to inform and explain, not just take positions and then seek out rent-a-quotes chosen because they agree with the reporter's position. That's what we get on Khadr, though: an announcement followed by ritual denunciations by civil libertarians, lawyers sympathetic to Khadr, members of the NDP and "activists" whose expertise, as usual with activists, is limited to their firm belief in the righteousness of their opinions.
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