The Left’s War on Women

Charles Schumer has declared that the Republicans are waging a “War on Women” because many of them are vocally opposing the regulatory ruling of the President’s administration with regard to birth control.  While much of the rhetoric is just political theater on both sides of the issue, Mr. Schumer’s real intent is to direct attention away from the failures of Mr. Obama’s term, a term that included record deficits, a stagnated economy, a doubling in the roles of the Food Stamp program, and an utter failure in Afghanistan.

The “War on Women” that I am talking about is the one against Afghani women.  The current administration has fumbled the efforts in Afghanistan to the point that we will probably have to withdraw and leave the nation’s women there at the mercy of the Taliban.  While it is easy to say that it is up to the Afghans to solve their problems, let’s examine the culpability of Mr. Obama.

Let’s start with President Obama campaigning in 2008 and saying that Afghanistan was the “important war”.  While the efforts in the last years of the Bush administration were at best suboptimal due to the concentration on Iraq, Mr. Obama has not given clear direction either.  After taking over in 2009, he challenged the military to come up with a clear path to an independent Afghanistan.  The military asked for 40,000 troops for a “surge”.  Mr. Obama, after dallying and analyzing for months, gave them 30,000!  Then, last autumn, Mr. Obama announced the premature return of 10,000 troops.

I believe that understaffing the American military actually increased the danger for coalition troops and made the planned efforts impossible.  Also, the hard exit announced by Mr. Obama and the early reduction in troop levels sent a clear message to Mr. Karzai to make other arrangements.  Follow that with an announced reduction in spending for Afghan security and you have a clear message to Afghanistan that you cannot count on us; they should make their peace with the Taliban.  Getting Karzai to ask for early withdrawal is the result of Obama’s policies.  A cynic might even suggest that this was planned from the start but I find that hard to believe since the failure in Afghanistan will be Mr. Obama's legacy.

That is how we got here.  At this point, another surge would make us look like the old Soviet Union.  We should not do it unless the Afghans somehow reverse course on their request that we withdraw.  If the Karzai government forms a coalition with the Taliban, it could well result in 7^th century Sharia law – again.  The result of that would be that Afghan women end up with the same kind of miserable existence that they had under the Taliban before the US went into that country.

While we give Mr. Obama high marks for the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the Afghan effort has been a failure under his watch.  Whether Afghan women end up with civil freedoms under the final Afghan government may end up resting with the Taliban.  Hope and Change has not worked out so well for them.  They are left to Wish and Wait.