"An Apology to the Woman Without a Nose on the Cover of Time Magazine"

As always, I am in awe of the slice-and-dice wit of the Rude Pundit, a blogger who does not suffer fools gladly, and who uses foul language and crude sexual analogies to make valid points.  He is a dark pleasure, and I read his blog daily.  You should too.

Many of you have seen the photo on the cover of Time Magazine last week, featuring Aisha, an unfortunate Afghanwoman who was horribly disfugured by the Taliban.  The photo is here; I don't want to post it.  Let me turn to the Rude Pundit, from 2 August 2010:

An Apology to the Woman Without a Nose on the Cover of Time Magazine:

Aisha, the 18 year-old Afghan woman on the cover of last week's Time magazine who  deserves all our sympathy, as does every victim of the particularly horrific violence committed against women by the savage and backwards men of places like the Congo, Somalia, and Pakistan. But, to Aisha and the women of Afghanistan, we owe an apology.

....

We owe Aisha an apology because we have fucked up the Afghanistan war so badly for us and for the Afghans that the only meaningful thing we can do now is get out. And even if that means more violence against women and more repression, we have to do it. For we are now in Afghanistan in a vain attempt to transform a society that won't transform.

....

We screwed it up, Aisha. First George W. Bush did by making Afghanistan into the Junior Pep Squad version of the misbegotten Iraq conflict. Now Barack Obama is screwing it up by thinking he can unscrew it. He can't. And now, Aisha, we can't. We have to leave. It's just that simple. We have to leave because things are so fucked up here, because we can't afford it anymore. The wars were the luxury of an empire bloated with cash and hubris. Now we have hubris and no cash. And every day we stay is another day that life will not get better for the women of your country, and we're sorry we promised that it would. Yes, there are ways we can make it better, but not this one. For what we are attempting to do, despite every effort to win hearts and minds, is bomb a culture into change. That ain't gonna happen. It didn't work even back in the 1990s.

....

(Note: we're never leaving Afghanistan.)