Today I read an article titled "News Flash: The Taliban Violate Human Rights," about how the international human rights community has, for the past ten years, pretty much ignored the many acts of torture and murder and maiming and oppression committed by the Taliban, instead usually focusing its condemnation on US and NATO actions. It really got me thinking about things.
I'm a fairly liberal person. I believe in the existence of a social safety net (including strong public schools), and I believe that the government should have hand in regulating the marketplace for the benefit of the citizens (minimum wage, child labor laws, environmental laws). I support abortion rights and gay rights such as marriage and military service. I would like to see a single payer health care system in the US. On the other hand, I find a lot of liberals to be just as ridiculous as Sarah Palin or Glen Beck. They can't see past their own ideology any more than conservatives can, and can be just as sheep like.
Let's take Wikileaks. Sure... information wants to be free! Government secrecy is always bad! Nevermind how many American allies and their families in Afghanistan will be uncovered and murdered (the Taliban doesn't really do that, anyway). Nevermind how many Americans had to die to collect that strategic intelligence, now worthless (shouldn't have joined the military, bro). Nevermind any of the delicate work done by the State Department in navigating international diplomacy, or whether our standing in the world will be diminished by disinclination of foreign states to expose themselves by speaking freely to us (the U.S. should lose its standing anyway, because what did American hegemony ever do to improve human rights and security around the world? Pax Americana? Is that a new restaurant?). I'm all for whistleblowing. Whistleblowing is an important mechanism that allows our systems to regulate themselves from within. But Wikileaks discloses far too much information far too broadly with far too little justification for the disclosures.
For this, and for all of my moderation, I am regarded as fairly neo-Conservative by many of the liberals that I know. That pisses me off. You really can't see the difference between me and someone who wants to abolish the federal government and privatize ownership of the sun, moon, and sky? Doesn't that further undermine credibility in how accurately you are interpreting the world?
So why did it take this loose organization of international aid workers ten years to realize that the Taliban was committing by far the larger number of human rights violations in Afghanistan? Analysis of that type of institutional bias could probably fill a novel. We've been in Afghanistan for ten years, spent billions of dollars, and lost thousands of American lives trying to win a counterinsurgency by winning hearts and minds. Maybe if the aid community spent more time helping the U.S. military help the Afghan people, and less time spouting condemnation from Kabul, things would move a little faster.
