(This one is for comrade Mike Flugennock, a great fan of the media-hog shown above.)
Medea Benjamin, the grinning face and pointed beak of Code Pink, has begun to take her responsibilities as a world leader seriously (what's next -- will she be dating Bono?)
'Code Pink' rethinks its call for Afghanistan pulloutHow great is this? She's even adopted that gabbling military-corporate doublespeak -- "parameters of an exit strategy" -- "timeline" -- "opened ourselves" (yuck, as my daughter would say).Kabul, Afghanistan - When Medea Benjamin stood up in a Kabul meeting hall this weekend to ask Masooda Jalal if she would prefer more international troops or more development funds, the cofounder of US antiwar group Code Pink was hoping her fellow activist would support her call for US troop withdrawal.
She was disappointed.
Ms. Jalhal, the former Afghan minister of women, bluntly told her both were needed. "It is good for Afghanistan to have more troops – more troops committed with the aim of building peace and against war, terrorism, and security – along with other resources," she answered. "Coming together they will help with better reconstruction."
Code Pink, founded in 2002 to oppose the US invasion of Iraq, is one of the more high-profile women's antiwar groups being forced to rethink its position as Afghan women explain theirs: Without international troops, they say, armed groups could return with a vengeance – and that would leave women most vulnerable.
... During their weeklong visit here, in which they met with government officials, politicians, ministers, women activists, and civil society groups, the small team of Code Pink members had hoped to gather evidence to bolster their call for US troop withdrawal within two years, and capitalize on growing anxiety back home about the war.
While the group hasn't dropped its call for a pullout, the visit convinced them that setting a deadline isn't in Afghanistan's interests, say Ms. Benjamin and fellow cofounder Jodie Evans.
"We would leave with the same parameters of an exit strategy but we might perhaps be more flexible about a timeline," says Benjamin. "That's where we have opened ourselves, being here, to some other possibilities. We have been feeling a sense of fear of the people of the return of the Taliban. So many people are saying that, 'If the US troops left the country, would collapse. We'd go into civil war.' A palpable sense of fear that is making us start to reconsider that."
And needless to say, it's doubly great that the Woman Question is what made the scales fall from Medea's formerly anti-imperial eyes. If the Afghan women -- or at least, the Afghan Ministry Of Women(*) -- want the legions there, then the legions must stay until Their Job Is Done.
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(*) Why don't we have one of these? I would so apply for a government job in this outfit. Windows system administration, window-washer, you name it -- I'd take it.
Comments (14)
Here http://blog.stevenpressfield.com/2009/10/interview-with-a-tribal-chief-part-2-warlords/ is a perspective you won't often hear considered.
Posted by Jay Taber | October 10, 2009 9:35 PM
Posted on October 10, 2009 21:35
"why madame
our armed boys over there
are legions of decency
boys on a mission
a mission to restore and protect
the violated rights of ...13 year old girls "
with that conclusion senator wingate
trails off into revery
" body of a women...mind of a child "
Posted by op | October 10, 2009 9:41 PM
Posted on October 10, 2009 21:41
Well, that's her job, isn't it? Sabotaging the anti-war movement, I mean. She's been doing this kind of thing for her democrat masters at least since '04. Probably longer.
Posted by AlanSmithee | October 10, 2009 11:24 PM
Posted on October 10, 2009 23:24
a general conjecture
prompted by nothing much in particular
towit:
hunting for subjective motivation
is a hunt for nothing signifigant
(out side the chambers
where the authorities
dole out individual punition)
example at hand
"She's been doing this kind of thing for her democrat masters at least since '04. Probably longer"
alan's intentional wrecker claim
--a common one
in fact one i've mocked her with myself --
in my case cia drone
in
alan's
agent of the Dembots
what if she's
a perfectly independent
riding on free will
spotlite seeking
self delighting pink chickadee
would it matter ??
can't we judge public acts
cogently enough
on their alleged
"objective signifigance"
and leave it at that ??
would save us some considerable collective time ...eh??
calling out
little miss beaky here
may well agitate
the irascible thomian spirit in us
even to a rage
shouldn't we be hanging her
in effigy
for what she inevitable is in fact
an enemy of the world's people
ps along these lines
i often chuckle orecollecting
the flaming title
of an old pamphlet
i once read
by some gaelic maoist figment called
--i think--
the dublin mass criticism writing group
here it is ...brace yourselves now
william butler yeats :
enemy of the irish people
Posted by op | October 11, 2009 12:19 PM
Posted on October 11, 2009 12:19
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2007/05/media_medea.html
Posted by op | October 11, 2009 12:23 PM
Posted on October 11, 2009 12:23
"palpable sense of fear"
Medea needs a nice long stint working as a sanitation engineer, preferably in some rural Southern jailhouse.
Posted by Michael Dawson | October 11, 2009 1:54 PM
Posted on October 11, 2009 13:54
I'm more inclined to take the view that the orthodoxy of radicalism http://skookumgeoduck.blogspot.com/2008/01/orthodoxy-of-radicalism.html in the moral theatrics industry is a symptom of political illiteracy and an inability to critique false dichotomies. At best, residuals of state idolatry, drilled into public school children, hamper activist adults from becoming effective analysts. As always, dependency limits strategies.
Posted by Jay Taber | October 11, 2009 1:56 PM
Posted on October 11, 2009 13:56
Well, that's her job, isn't it? Sabotaging the anti-war movement, I mean. She's been doing this kind of thing for her democrat masters at least since '04. Probably longer
Any kind of anti-war movement that can be effectively saboutaged by Medea Benjamin probably deserves to be saboutaged anyway.
Creative destruction. Now that Medea's destroyed UFPJ and Answer it's time for Smitheeism to take control.
I'm sure he'll smash the imperial state in less than a week. And with his penis.
Posted by I am PWOG | October 11, 2009 1:59 PM
Posted on October 11, 2009 13:59
read the jay-link
key meme
"Coalitions" suffer from the fissibility inherent in ad hocism...of course this is true
the combined resource tax
on each group in the coalition
just maintaining the coalition
can exceed the value of redeploying
those same resources to independently
chosen and guided actions
and even more so
coalitions viewed as a "stage" toward consolidation is plain delusional
yikes !!!
one becomes two
far far far more readily
then
two becomes one
however there is a size
and it varies obviously by mission
below which
you aren't a self sufficient
and effective agent of change
my point:
there are all too many
lone wolf outfits
that play poorly with other groups
for one set of reasons or other
and i mean
even at the level
of keeping out of each others way
simple co ordination
not coalition
---something even looters
do fairly well--
and well... these loco lobo posses
quite often justify themselves
---to self and others--
by employing a rational
dangerously like
the one jay provides in his linked to piece
Posted by op | October 11, 2009 2:19 PM
Posted on October 11, 2009 14:19
pwog i am:
your messages are beginning to interconflict
and sarcasm
is served better with a lighter hand
are you young or just arrested !!!
Posted by op | October 11, 2009 2:30 PM
Posted on October 11, 2009 14:30
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3279/2828953316_ce1547b64d.jpg
my kinda pink
pal jodi
Posted by op | October 11, 2009 2:37 PM
Posted on October 11, 2009 14:37
Wow. That face fits. Smiling ruination.
Posted by Michael Dawson | October 12, 2009 2:12 PM
Posted on October 12, 2009 14:12
hmmm maybe medea should have asked malalai joya:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/25/afghanistan-occupation-taliban-warlords
or RAWA:
http://www.rawa.org/rawa/2009/10/03/afghan-women-resist-occupation-and-fundamentalism-rawa-tour-usa-2009.html
how 'bout instead of training an "afghan army" we just start arming urban women and organizing them into militias? just a thought...
Posted by dermokrat | October 12, 2009 9:35 PM
Posted on October 12, 2009 21:35
Please go easy on Medea. She has a cool, exotic, mythological first name. Her surname evokes the father of Poor Richard's Almanac.
Please go easy on Medea. She was unpopular in high school and envied the cheerleaders and pom-pom squad, who caught all the boys' attention.
Please go easy on Medea. She knows that self-promotion is the key to success in American culture. She just wants to succeed.
Please go easy on Medea. She hasn't the capacity for adult behavior.
Posted by Charles F. Oxtrot | October 15, 2009 2:05 PM
Posted on October 15, 2009 14:05