She's not blonde, it won't work.

Saw it yesterday. The subtitle reads "what happens if we leave Afghanistan."

I'm not sure why it doesn't read "We've been in Afghanistan for almost 9 years and this stuff still happens all the time, plus we've blow up tens of thousands of innocent people as well." as that would be more accurate. Perhaps TIME will issue a correction next issue.

"what happens if we leave Afghanistan."?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Unless this happened a decade ago, it should say "what's happening while we stay in Afghanistan." Really no editorial stance on the war, Time?

You could have an image of genital mutilation or all sorts of horrifying stuff from many countries, where we are not involved.

The question is: why are we putting 10 years of war and billions of dollars into Afghanistan, specifically?

Is this really the best, most effective and cost-efficient way of affecting change?

This is nothing but pro-war propaganda from Time.

where was their cover with this photo?:
http://karma-dharma-bhutadaya.blogspot.com/2009/05/us-military-fucking-things-up-yet-again.html

or any of these?:
http://mindprod.com/politics/iraqwarpix.html#IRAQWARPIX

If you don't buy this war they'll shoot this girl. If you do buy this war, they'll shoot her anyway, if she lives in an area controlled by Taliban the Karzai government is willing to cut a deal with.

Or maybe we shot her already. She was at a wedding we bombed because a jealous neighbor reported it as an al-Qaeda meeting.

Get out and let Pakistan deal with it. If the ISI want to play footsie with the Taliban, they can deal with the inevitable refugees and Taliban shakedowns and car-bombings.

Remember the leaked CIA documents regarding the exact same thing.

If people don't trust you and the war you are fighting anymore, tell some stories of dead soldiers or mistreated women...

No wonder, the time wasn't one of the magazines releasing a top story on the last Wikileak.

The worst thing: politicians over here in Europe are just repeating the same bullsh*t the big bad wolf said already.

Get out and let Pakistan deal with it? Seems to me we tried that once before...

WikiLeaks released a CIA doc a few months ago outlining ways to boot support for the Afghanistan war in Europe. One was the "woman" card.

http://file.wikileaks.org/file/cia-afghanistan.pdf

Without commenting on the politics, the homage to the famous National Geographic cover is pretty obvious.

To comment on the politics, wait, didn't this happen while we were there? Seems hard to claim this is what happens when we leave, then, doesn't it?

No, this was done by the Taliban. She posed for this photo and there is a whole cover story about it, the Taliban intimidates women with threats and very often makes good on them.

It's a horrible reality of life over there. But the assumption that we can change this reality with military force is pure wingnut fantasy.

The Wikileaks document dump has shown pretty conclusively that after 9 years and hundreds of billions of dollars, the Taliban is as strong as its ever been, thanks to help from Iran, Pakistan, Karzai and opium sales.

In fact it's so bad there that one can't help but wonder if the people who believe that we have no intention of winning this war, and are only there to occupy this natural resource rich nation, are on to something . . .

It saddens me greatly to see someone suffer such brutality. It's heartbreaking.
But our continued military occupation of this country will never do anything to change something such as this? It can't.
We have humanitarian avenues for helping countries and people, not the least of which would be the UN.
This is one fucked up, stone age country primarily tribal run and officially "governed" over the years by dipshits and criminals. It's time for us to get the military the hell out of there and help the people via other means the best we can.

is it jus me or are there similariles between this and this
http://www.labnol.org/internet/favorites/the-young-afghan-girl-by-steve-mccurry/624/

Sorry Gelkin didnae your post.

In fact it's so bad there that one can't help but wonder if the people who believe that we have no intention of winning this war, and are only there to occupy this natural resource rich nation, are on to something . . .
Thats Crazy Talk.Shhhhh.

It is rare that I see such short sighted, unknowing and inane comments on the boing boing. It's cool tho. Cant always be reasonable.

Of course this is worth fighting for. Religious cults that mutilate their young, treat women as cattle, and rule with late-night assassinations, they deserve to be destroyed.

The unfortunate problem is that we have no idea how to do it. It may not be possible. There are known knowns and there are known unknowns, and there are unknown unknowns.

"we have no idea how to do it"

Because there is no successful example in history to learn from. You can not yank a culture through the natural progression of equal rights violently and expect it to work.

Remember it was not too long ago (a couple hundred years) that Christian communities were just as brutal. Salem witch trials, the inquisition, and so on.

Meanwhile, at the upper right of the page, there's a similar image advertising an iPhone app for detecting zombies. Wotta world.

Pyster,

If you have an argument to make, then by all means do so.

Please don't say things that are true. It frightens the other children.

What is on the table is funding the Taliban to perform atrocities while committing atrocities ourselves including thousands and thousands of civilian deaths....or leaving thus cutting out our killing of cilivians and simply letting the Taliban come up with their own money to perform atrocities (admittedly they won't have any trouble doing that).

There are no other possibilities on the table. If we think we can keep the peace and be a force for good in Afghanistan after thousands of years of failed attempts at occupation by other countries (including Russia) and warlords we are exceptionally arrogant. If we still think we can do it after eight years of making the Taliban stronger and weakening Afghani support for the U.S. we have reached a level of arrogance that would have astonished Alexander the Great.

Pyster, these comments aren't inane. They are in fact self-evident.

Well if we're going to stay there until Afghanistan is "free", we're going to need more cannon fodder. When are you headed over?

We "yanked" (no pun intended) Germany and Japan into reasonably humanistic states - via military occupation - in a relatively short period of time.

The reason that worked is that every Japanese and every German were made well aware of the unconditional surrender of their murderous leaders.

The other reason that worked is we weren't trying to bleed Germany dry. The marshall plan wasn't a joke. If we were serious about helping Afghanistan we'd have pulled our troops out of there nine and a half years ago and sent academics and engineers instead a la Thomas Barnett of the Pentagon's plan ( http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/thomas_barnett_draws_a_new_map_for_peace.html )

But we're not, we have no intention of winning over hearts and minds, no intention of helping the country. The Pentagon isn't stupid, neither is the White House or Congress. They know they can't simultaneously fund their enemy and win a war. They know they can't bomb civilians and generate good will. They aren't there for any of that.

another reason the rebuilding of Germany and Japan worked was because both of those countries were fairly modern with large industrial capabilities (a.k.a. jobs and sources of income) and an educated citizenry. they already knew how to be modern, well-behaved countries (more or less). we just helped them get back to it.

Afghanistan has none of that.

I thought that girl was going to receive pro bono medical attention here in the US and get her nose rebuilt. Have they not done anything for her yet? Does she have to do X amount of time as a neocon shill/sideshow exhibition before they'll rebuild her face? Do you think the shit-brained warmongers really believe this poor girl is a good poster child for their cause?

It takes a lot to really disgust me, but Time did a fine job of it here. Why not just show a frame from that video of the poor guy getting his head sawn off with a knife? "WHAT HAPPENS IF WE DON'T REMAIN AT WAR." Yeah, you sociopathic shits, what happens is we don't have to lose American lives anymore.

Yeah, cleek's right that was probably a lot more important than the Marshall Plan when all was said and done.

Germany and Japan both had strong national identities before WWII ever started. Afghanis have always identified more strongly along local, tribal, and secular affiliations. Any terms of surrender the central government (such as it was) might have agreed to are meaningless to the average guy with an AK-47.

Plenty of people commenting elsewhere that it would be cheaper, and take fewer months, to airlift all the persecuted women from Afghanistan to the United States than it would be to civilize the men. So at least people are coming up with solutions to the problem, rather than believing we have to keep giving away all the United States' money to the war machine.

(D'oh, I meant "sectarian" not "secular")

The reason that worked is that Germany and Japan were already modern, developed nations. There was also an absence of any insurgency. And if 'unconditional surrender of murderous leaders' is all it takes, please to explain why Americans and Iraqis are still killing each other 7 years after the complete surrender of the Ba'ath Iraqi government and military. Doesn't everybody know? Should we make some sort of announcement or put up some fliers?

In order for your analogy to work, we'd first have to build the Afghans the modern nation they have never possessed, then destroy it, then rebuild it again.

The solution is to send in all-female special forces, trained to SAS standard. Give them the job of castrating rapist warlords, defeating the male forces in battle, and training women to defend themselves.

The mistake has been to imagine you can change Afghan society with only male soldiers.

Plenty of people commenting elsewhere that it would be cheaper, and take fewer months, to airlift all the persecuted women from Afghanistan to the United States than it would be to civilize the men.

Then again a credible claim that America was stealing Afghanistan's women probably wouldn't fly too well over there either. They might even come over here to get them back.

No. This will be one of those occasions I dont bother with statements or arguments on the actual topic. I understand where you are coming from with the "If you have something to say" as I've said it before. I will just have to pass this time.

If you support the war (and they've had plenty of time to finish it) then you have absolutely NO grounds to whine about taxes. NONE

Wrong headline.

Here's the correct one:

"The True Face Of Religion"

Couldn't agree more.

No discussion of peace is serious without pointing out religion as the source of war.

No discussion of energy policy is serious without hydrogen-boron fusion (or another clean form of fusion) as the ultimate goal.

Bush and Bin Laden are on the same side.

Wow, this is the most bullshit cover I've ever seen.

Good point.

Regarding Germany and Japan: apples and oranges. Those were actual wars, and Germany and Japan were worn down fighting abroad, when they surrendered, they literally had nothing left, as they had sent all their able-bodied men off to die fighting the allies.

When the governments surrendered, the "culture" went with it.

Afghanistan, on the other hand, wasn't such a bad place 30 years ago. Turning the country into a warzone to fight the Soviets by proxy is what ruined it; when we came back after 9-11, we pretty much finished the job.

Many of these types of areas may well have progressed along the path of civil rights just fine in the past hundred years, were it not for the boot of imperialism pressed down on their necks.

But my point was, it is not merely by military force that we can bring about improvement. The US and other allied nations gave Germany and Japan a hell of a lot of money, so that helped, but we also helped them along the road to industrialization and modernization; compare that to the way the US has treated other nations since WWII, and our foreign policy has been one of stifling the embryo of democracy abroad and propping up western business-friendly kleptocracies that will turn their nation into natural resource exporters, cash crop economies or human-resource rich nations chuck full of sweatshops.

If you think the plan for Afghanistan is any different, particularly in light of the huge amount of precious minerals they have there, you're deluding yourself.

You could say the Taliban did this to that poor girl, and you'd be right. You could also say Globalism did it to her.

"If we were serious about helping Afghanistan we'd have pulled our troops out of there nine and a half years ago and sent academics and engineers instead"

And they would have been dead within the week. They kill their own, they're far more willing to kill whitey.

Vietsploitation?

Uhh...you guys are hypocrites. I don't know whether we ought to stay in Afghanistan or not--now that we're there, it seems, pulling out isn't going to help anyone but us. Really shouldn't be there in the first place.

But regardless, for us to freak out because Time used a shocking picture in support of the war, while simultaneously lauding as heros the people who used shocking pictures to end the war in Vietnam is...well, hypocritical. It is a reality that women will suffer more if we pull out. Of course, it's also true people will die as a result of the war itself. War is horrible, and complicated, and there are no simple answers.

For more Time_fail, see the #1 "most popular" article on the right-hand colum: "Why Are French Women Killing Their Babies".

Hello! Do they think infanticide, or crazy people, is only something that happens in France?

Maybe the next Time cover should be on "Why news magazines sensationalize information", there would at least be some informative content there...

I don't mind that they used a shocking picture, the horrific treatment of women in that country is a valid and ongoing concern. What bothers me is the caption that accompanies the photo, and the implicit assumption that leaving Afghanistan will make things worse for young women like this one. (Maybe it will and maybe it won't, but the editors could have at least added a question mark.)

The soltion seems simple enough to me, leave them alone. They can then throw off their own tyrants, or not, but as long as there is an occupying army spreading carnage across the land, the hatred will be on them, and not the Taliban. Why do you think Osama wanted us to invade? He didn't want to see a legitimate government form and a modernization of the country, and that's exactly what would have happened over the years, had we not invaded.

But regardless, for us to freak out because Time used a shocking picture in support of the war, while simultaneously lauding as heros the people who used shocking pictures to end the war in Vietnam is...well, hypocritical.

No . . . it is not merely the picture, it is the misleading propaganda that accompanies it.

When you show a naked little girl running away from a burning village, that is honesty.

If you show that same little girl and say "this is what happens if we leave Vietnam", that is proganda, and it's a lie.

The reason it was so easy to "convert" Japan and Germany to liberal values after WWII is that we bombed both countries back to the stone age, in a brutal way that would be unacceptable in the modern world.


Do you know how many major cities in Japan were still standing after the war? Kyoto. That's about it.


Do you know how many major cities in Germany were still standing after the war? None.


And because most of our problems in Afghanistan are with the rural populations, bombing civilians in cities (even if it were morally acceptable, which nowadays it isn't) wouldn't help much.

I have no idea how to fix Afghanistan. But the whole "land war in Asia" thing just seems to keep repeating itself in my mind.

i've yet to hear about any plastic surgeons stepping up - seriously, anyone else want to see that happen? U.S. KNOW-HOW AT WORK!

How about 'Timesploitation' - anything to sell a fucking magazine (sorry but this really pisses me off). Reading the justification for why they put this picture on the cover is total bullshit. I thought I was just gonna see the cover and then write a comment like a few above have said that, 'This is what happens when we stay in Afghanistan' or something along those lines. Instead when I get to the picture Richard Stengel is writing his justification of why he put this picture on the cover of Time Magazine. I smell bullshit.

Of course to be fair to Stengel and Time my first thought was when I saw the picture, "U.S. Marines fight off first wave of Talabani Zombie Corps"

So that pretty much cancels out my righteous indignation.

How about pictures of a few children WE mutilated, for balance?

I came to say how amazed I was at the big block of reasonable comments at the top. It was like a river of relief, the realization that this isn't slashdot.

There is very little I can say that hasn't been said.

Guns don't bring peace. End the war.

If helping was our intention, perhaps we could. But looking to history I am not overwhelmed by examples of force of arms being used in the service of humanitarianism. (WWII is always hauled out for this purpose, but I invite you to look a little closer.)

If we are in Afghanistan to help women, what of Saudi Arabia?

Their attempts at justification are childish. And this propaganda is near cruelty.

"When you show a naked little girl running away from a burning village, that is honesty.

If you show that same little girl and say "this is what happens if we leave Vietnam", that is proganda, and it's a lie."

Hear, hear.

It might be interesting to know what Aisha thinks about us staying in or leaving Afghanistan, seeing as how Time thinks she is a good poster girl for the subject. Did they bother to ask her?

Rethink Afghanistan has posted this video segment in response to the TIME magazine cover. Please watch.
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=419294772434

In fact it's so bad there that one can't help but wonder if the people who believe that we have no intention of winning this war, and are only there to occupy this natural resource rich nation, are on to something . . .

You can't engage in mineral extraction unless you've got infrastructure, and, more importantly, no IEDs going off when your trucks drive down the road, and no gun battles raging near your company's HQ. So your comment doesn't make sense.

The recent "Look! Afghanistan is rich in mineral resources!" story, based on a years-old report, seemed like a trial balloon floated to prop up sagging support for the war. But we're not there for its natural resources, any more than we went to Iraq for oil. Just sayin'.

What's frustrating is that it doesn't seem possible to successfully convince the US government that they're wasting lives and money in this quagmire.

but we also helped them [Germay and Japan] along the road to industrialization and modernization;

Oh really, is that why the Soviets carried of our machinery to the East and why the Western allies whitewashed certain scientist to build your moon rockets?

Actually, as victors go, the Americans were pretty swell guys - if the French and British had listened to them after WW I, well, there probably wouldn't be a Roman numeral.

But please stop deluding that you created the modern democracies of Japan and Germany. You were the midwives, but if if the Germans and Japanese hadn't had their prior modernisation to fall upon and the will to do it right this time, well, let's say continental Europe and East Asia would be a lot less peaceful today.

"But we're not there for its natural resources, any more than we went to Iraq for oil."

Why do you think we are in Iraq? This is an honest question.

The oil fields were the first targets secured, and contracts have been negotiated. It's a net loss financially, no doubt, but the public foots the bill and private corporations reap the benefit.

It's TIME, what would you expect? A picture of mutilated corpses at a wedding party with the subtitle "this is what happens if we stay in Afghanistan"?

We parodied this magazine cover at Great Big Lies. Check it out Boing Boingians. http://greatbiglies.org/2010/07/30/time-magazine-is-a-tasteless-propaganda-rag/

I'm not finding the charity referenced in the article, "WAW or women for afghan women" on any of the charity watch/advisor sites. Anyone know more about this charity? I don't give to any unless I have an independent report that they are what they say they are. Any others to consider as well?

I don't know dude, that sounds really cold-hearted to me.
You really support leaving millions of women in abusive relationships, with no hope of escape?

They're people too.
Don't think that you're better than them, just because you were born in a nicer country.

Are you going to cook up some popcorn to watch the Taliban come back?
Not our problem, I guess.

Why do you think we are in Iraq? This is an honest question.

Primarily because George W. Bush and his neocon supporters wanted to depose Saddam Hussein from the day he set foot in office. In the post-9/11 environment, Bush was finally able to do what he wanted to do. (It "helped" that a whole lot of government officials, including prominent Democrats like Clinton and Gore, had already made public statements that Hussein had WMDs and was going to use them. Plus, after 9/11 the US wanted revenge, even if it was against a country that had nothing to do with the attacks.)

As to why Bush personally wanted to off Hussein so badly, I can only guess.

To my knowledge, no one's made that much headway into oil extraction in Iraq, have they?

By come back, you mean stay, right? These abuses are happening in Afghanistan now. Meanwhile, you really support bombing men, women, and children without managing to improve their situation? They're people too. If we don't think we're better than them, we should try and find out what they want.

That's because Bush and his neocon supporters genuinely didn't expect things to go so badly in Iraq. I don't see any reason to believe their ideas about being welcomed, a free-market democracy quickly winning over the people, or at least the UN taking things over, weren't sincere. Definitely they didn't want to get bogged down like this - if you remember they made threats about moving on to other enemies like Iran and Syria, which quickly became impossible.

When they went in, oil was secured quickly, and they invited companies to divide up the corresponding assets. That suggests to me that while oil may not have been the reason they went to war, it was still something they were paying very close attention to. That nobody's made much profit off of it says more about how many things have gone wrong in Iraq than what they hoped to accomplish.

First of, what has happened to this girl is as pure an act of terrorism as I've seen: the goal is to terrorize other women.
In fact, this is exactly -but exactly - the barbarity practiced by Genseric, King of The Vandals, against the wife of his son Huneric. She had been sent to be the latter's bride by the Emperor Theoderic I...

..."King Theoderic I had more than nine children, although it is not known whether these were by his wife or by concubines:

1. daughter (-after 442). She was sent back to her father at the time of the 442 revolt with her nose and ears mutilated[65]. m ([429] or after[66], repudiated 442) as his first wife, HUNERIC, son of GENSERIC King of the Vandals."

Source:http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/TOULOUSE.htm#dauTheodericMHuneric

That being said, I am less than willing to expend our tax monies on the task of protecting Afghan women from Afghan men. To tale on a "mission" like that just seems bizarre and unachievable.

Leaving these barbarians, seemingly intent on reviving crimes which were current long before the advent of Islam, to rusticate in their mountain fastnesses seems the better path.

Typos in the above: "First off", not "first of".
And "take", not "tale".

This type of crime disturbs me...as do any crimes where action to prevent such would be insurmountably difficult and fruitless.

And I suspect this unforgivable act is one of provocation, to keep the foreign forces fighting, rather than just terror. Although it certainly is the latter, I suspect that the Taliban needs a war against foreigners in order to thrive, in order to justify their terror, their seizure of bloody power.

The Taliban thrive on war. Deprive them of their food.

Are not all US Armed Forces out of Saudi Arabia?
I mean, the US bases in Saudi are no longer operating, are they?

So to the extent that Bin Laden wanted them out of there, he has succeeded.
OTOH, to the extent that the US wished to prevent Afghanistan from continuing to be a "safe haven" for terrorist attacks upon their own country, the USA, they too have succeeded.

IMHO, both sides have had some limited success in their stated goals.

I think destroying people who act in this way toward children is a valid reason for us to be in Afghanistan, Iraq, and any other part of the world, assuming that protecting children is the actual reason we are there. People who blow up schools, and the girls that go to them, and cut off young girl's noses, need to be wiped out. THAT is a good use for our military power; a much better use than we traditionally have. Of course, at some point, we need to start on the jerks in the US who send their kids to Sunday School and pump their young brains full of nonsense.

No. I disagree...there is a lot of crime in the USA and indeed in Canada, and in the other NATO countries, that we could - and should - be addressing first.

And sadly, one can find several other nations which also leave dead woman and children laying on the ground as a result of their Government's policies and goals.
I'm afraid that THAT is not a good enough reason to start a war, or to invade a country. The despotism and tyranny must threaten us and ours, for us and ours to go to war.
I do not want to open the doors for "moral war".
We wish to limit the causes of war, not expand them: that is the best way to protect the women and children and indeed men too, of the future.

War enables cruelty and violence: it does not curtail it.
Turn the other cheek, and ask them to hit you again. Oddly, that can work sometimes.

Oh , and I do not agree with the death penalty, in any case. So "destroying"anybody is right off the table: depriving them of their freedom, that's something else.

By reacting too strongly with your emotions to this act of violence, you're being suckered by the Taliban into continuing a fight which only benefits them, hard though that may be to understand.

I think destroying people who act in this way toward children is a valid reason for us to be in Afghanistan, Iraq, and any other part of the world

Yeah, the concept of being the world's policemen and righting all the wrongs sure is an idealistic, romantic dream, isn't it? That's what I thought about the siege of Sarajevo.

Now, where the @%$&*! are you going to get all the money and cannon fodder, er, soldiers to do that? The United States can't even decide whether it wants to spend money to help its own citizens.

Interesting idea, especially as oil inevitably becomes more scarce. Aren't Islam's holiest sites located in Saudi Arabia? Be kind of risky to declare war on them.

Most of these atrocities are happening because of the invasion of Western culture into Islamic culture. If nobody went in and tried to liberate women, fewer women would be stepping out of line from their culture's norms and fewer women would be getting sulfuric acid sprayed on them as a result.

A misleading headline like this is a great way to affect change. But I doubt the war or the headline will bring about change.

Disagree, about Iraq's "lack of resources".

Iraq has plenty of oil. So much, that they have not even bothered to explore big chunks of their land. If that happened, there's a good chance that their reserves would top Saudi Arabia's.

Remember too that Iraq was exporting oil 50 years before the Saudis discovered that they had some, too.

And that with Turkey and Syria, Iraq was a primarily secular society, prior to the US invasion.
Indeed, the rise of "fundamentalist" Islam has occurred in lock-step with the growth of Anglo-French and later American influence and activity in that region during the 20th Century, after the defeat of the Turks in WW 1.

We are all the prisoners of history: but sadly some are more imprisoned than others.

Politics aside, we've still got a pretty girl with a cruelly messed up face. The question should be, how does a plastic surgeon rebuild that shapely nose? Cartilage from the ear, presumably, but how to reconstruct the fine muscles of the nares? Any volunteers to pay for reconstruction? How many thousands more like her are there? Cough it up, poseurs. And who wants the job? Red Cross? Red Crescent? Doctors without Borders?

The photograph is beautiful. The light, her hair, the color of her scarf and the way it hangs, her expression, all so pretty, and then the shock of that nose. It's very powerful.

But come on, Time. you're making an impartial statement? Really. If your headline read, "Women in Afghanistan" or "Aisha's Story" or something to that affect, maybe. But you might as well have titled it, "Don't You Dare Leave Afghanistan If You Like Girls to Have Noses."

Q: Why not let each new issue of TIME front a photo of a civilian afghan kid that US troops have mained or killed? (a new kid for each new issue)

A: Because putting very similar and really horrible photos on the cover of TIMES for hundreds of years in a row will make conservatives drop their subscriptions.

"If I want to find out anything, I'm not going to read Time Magazine... cos they've got too much to lose by printing the truth, they'd go off the stands in a day if they printed the real truth..." -Bob Dylan 1965

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjXAFEZUBGY :)

People are killed and mutilated every day in the US. Should we invite someone to come occupy us indefinitely? It seems only logical. If you're Time.

What is happening with the US media is scaring the shit out of me. It's at least as scary as the mutilations and religious zealotry that pervades dark corners of our world. This cover is pure propaganda. How can something as complex as the war in Afghanistan be pitched like this?

Regarding the mutilation itself. You'll never correct these behaviors - this stuff will always happen. It's horrible.

But you can try to make things better where you live. All sorts of bad stuff happens in our neighborhoods that we have been desensitized too.

I think secularism is the only hope, but at times it seems we can't even keep church and State separate in N. America.

Maybe with Iraq's resources, proximity to Europe and with the influence of Turkey and Egypt they can emerge from this as a modern country and not another Iran. Assassinating Saddam and doing a deal with one of his inner circle to take over and keep the regime in place would have been a better course of action.

The Taliban is going to take Afghanistan back, because in the end they are the only ones who want it bad enough. What makes it sad is that all the efforts of our brave people working over there will have accomplished nothing. The Taliban would have given the US bin Laden and they would have provided a safe through-way for US pipelines. In fact they probably still will provide the latter.

Honesty? That's grand. I don't see propaganda when I see the original cover. "What happens if we leave Afghanistan" is not THIS is what's going to happen if we leave Afghanistan. It's over sensitivity to minutiae, and the West's dementia over the removal of unpleasant images and stories that the rest of the world deal with everyday.

It's provocative, not propaganda, but then it's all in the eye of the beholder.

People are mutilated like that and for those reasons in the US? Where, San Francisco? By whom, religious and traditionalist zealots? Are you sure? It sounds like you're wrong to me.

However, if Time is implying that this is what happens if we pull out, they're wrong: this is obviously happening regardless of our presence. We are not there for saving women, and recasting it as such is a blatant ploy to pull in the female vote and support a war whose support is fading.

To all those who don't care about the fate of these women or what may happen if we pull out or dismiss the humanitarian impact, what is your opinion on intervention in Serbia way back when or in the Sudan? I'm okay with leaving the barbarians to their business, but I thought liberals were made of sterner, more loving stuff.

The pics at the 'mindprod' link are horribly spectacular. Very disturbing. Should be required viewing for all civilians.

Her picture on the cover of Time is about the same as a picture of oil-covered birds.

she is still pretty to me.

While the interventionists have good intentions, the idea that we should become the world police and try to get every country to adopt our values inevitably leads to perpetual war.

While I was very much against virtually all Bush's policies, I am sure I would not have been willing to have him taken out of office and the county put under martial law by a foreign power. If that foreign power dropped a bomb on my cousin's wedding, I am sure that no amount of excuses would ever make me trust anything they offered me, and I would certainly try to undermine them at every turn, even if they seemed to be trying to help.

Does anyone else besides me remember George Bush trotting out Laura Bush during a press conference before this war started? He claimed that one of the reasons for action in Afghanistan was to end the brutal treatment of women. I knew that was a lie, given his indifference to women's issues in the rest of the world. But it still remains a documented justification for the invasion, albeit a hypocritical one, and another Mission Unaccomplished.

If you live in the United States you have no grounds to whine about taxes levied on you by your government. Don't like taxes? Move somewhere else. And good luck with that.