--Give generously to relief agencies both large and small with projects in Afghanistan
--Give generously to groups like RAWA.
--Support every kind of multilateral agency promoting relief work and consistent internationalized standards of justice, cultural and historical preservation, and humanitarian development.
--Maintain firm focus on gender equality not as a form of cultural imperialism but based on lots of objective experience that societies are healthier when women and children have equal or greater focus alongside weaponry and fanaticism.
--Lobby our elected representatives to fund not only the most fanatical anti-Soviet nutcases but also humanitarian basics like education run by someone besides mullahs. Stay engaged with the questions and not leave matters to proxies with their own agendas!
--Try to suppress a gag reflex when certain naive fruitcake Chirstians with a supposed housing project try to fight the Taliban with Bibles. Why suppress the gag reflex? Do these people care about Afghan civilians only as hash marks to be recorded in the "win" column when suitable noises are made in the direction of Jesus or do they also care about Afghan civilians as real people?
--Recognize both the benefits and the limitations of pragmatic accommodation with measures such as (ugh!) the US State Department's approach to demining: we (the US) doesn't want to ban landmines because of all the bad people who have them, but we will try to help get rid of them in a measured semi sensible way (never mind it's cheaper to prevent them getting laid and mislaid in the first place).
--Barf on the shoes of a certain President who pats himself on the back because military campaigns have meant that some women can now go back to school even though many many more still face rape, abuse, and everyday denials of fundamental rights at the hands of the thugs said President is cozying up to.
Can "leftists" do these things? Sure! Are "leftists" the only people who do and should do these things? Nope! Can various flavors or parochialism, ignorance, and insufficient internationalism get in the way of "leftists" doing these things? YUP!
Note, I am trying hard but not succeeding to avoid sweeping generalizations on many fronts.
Dorene Cornwell
In a message dated 9/22/02 3:21:53 AM Pacific Daylight Time, furuhashi.1 at osu.edu writes:
> What could Americans have done to show concern for the lives of
> Afghan civilians in the period 1979-1989? Since US activists, by and
> large, could support neither the Soviets and Afghan socialists nor
> CIA-backed mujahideen, was there anything they could and did do? Any
> organized social force independent of both the Soviets and the
> CIA/mujahideen that you could and did practically support back then?
> --
> Yoshie
>
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