Oh, My Afghanistan

Just when I think I've heard it all--there's always more.

On the one hand, President Trump seems to have ordered all Afghan refugees, who are here on legal visas of one kind or another, including--or especially--those who've helped and worked with American armed forces, to self-deport and to do so within seven days or risk being arrested and deported by DHS.

What? Why? Is so clean a sweep meant to right the extraordinary overreach of the Obama-Biden administrations? Is there any possibility of a more targeted or surgical cleansing? Get the Islamist Jihadists first? The drug lords second? The criminal gangs next?

But wait, then there's this. My people. In this case, Ellie Smeal, the founder of Feminist Majority Foundation and a former President of NOW. She actually wants us to sign a petition to the United Nations (!) to outlaw "gender apartheid" in Afghanistan as a "crime against humanity." She sent this information in an email or a newsletter. I could not find it at her website.

She asks the United Nations to "never recognize the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan. The Taliban must never be allowed to occupy Afghanistan's seat at the UN."

Hmmm. Perhaps Smeal should also be asking the UN to unseat the mullahs of Iran, the Pakistani version of the Taliban, as well as all of UNRWA, and other genocidal Islamists who run Hamas and whose representatives have been angling for recognition at the UN.

Smeal, who no doubt absolutely means well, thinks that such symbolic virtue-signaling will make a difference of some kind. She launched a well-funded campaign against the misogynistic Taliban in the 1990s which, alas, neither led to American boots on the ground (on behalf of women’s rights) or to the totally mishandled and disastrous American military departure in 2021.

One of its many consequences: The Taliban was able to enrich its coffers by selling billions of dollars’ worth of American military equipment left behind to Islamist terrorist groups everywhere, anywhere.

Nice going Joe.

If one wants to improve the terrible lot of Afghan girls and women--the place to apply pressure is Qatar, which serves as the diplomatic face and the primary banker for the Taliban. One has to bring a ton of cash. And have diplomatic leverage as well.

Neither the United Nations nor the global or American feminist community has ever been able to do so. What's different now?

Or Smeal and Company can try some really heavy lifting and find ways to physically rescue girls and women from the Taliban--just as we did.