Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the green-robed statesman who tries to rule between a rock and a hard place, first signed, then unsigned (well, sort of) a piece of legislation governing relations between men and women in his country. Now Western commentators are congratulating themselves on having successfully pressured him. Before the punditry gets carried away, though, we should remember three things about the nation of tribes nestling among the peaks of the Hindu Kush.
 

First, some of the Afghan laws we find so outrageous used to be our law, too, until 25-30 years ago. A husband couldn’t be charged with raping his wife in Canada until the 1980s. In this respect, the bearded patriarchs of Afghanistan are only about a generation behind their vociferous Canadian critics.
 

Second, whatever Afghanistan’s President signs under pressure from his patriarchal constituents one day, then unsigns (pending re-examination) under pressure from his matriarchal protectors a day later, he’ll sign again at the sound of the first loud noise. No matter how long the West’s missile-toting matriarchs stay in Karzai’s country, the Pashtun patriarchs will stay there longer.
 

Third, we should remember we’re not in Afghanistan to improve family law. We’re there to eradicate the terrorist foe. We didn’t go to Kabul and environs to decorate Eastern landscapes with Western motifs. We didn’t go to replace autocracy with democracy, or an androcentric society with a gynocentric one. If we had, we’d be crusaders, just as Osama bin Laden keeps insisting we are. We went there to get the murderous SOB, not to prove him right.
 

Self-defence is one thing; proselytizing is another. Sending soldiers halfway around the globe to smash the cauldron in which al- Qaeda types brew terror is a defensive move; sending soldiers to interfere with another country’s customs, even barbaric customs, is an offensive gambit. The first is an effort to preserve ourselves; the second, an effort to extend ourselves. The first is an act of war; the second, strictly speaking, could be a war crime.
 

To say war should be avoided whenever possible isn’t a pacifist view. It’s a patriotic view. Many professional soldiers share it. Loving one’s country means cherishing peace — not more than anything, but more than many things, including national pride and influence. Mature patriots go to war only for the national interest, which they define as their country’s security, honour and independence.
 

Patriots of another type are more, shall we say, gung ho. They consider glory, ideals and destiny part of the national interest. They feel, sometimes for valid reasons, that their way of life brings prosperity and happiness. Bellicose patriots, being of a crusading or missionary bent, endorse military measures not only to pre-empt foreign or terrorist threats, but to further their country’s dominance or cultural sway.
 

Such patriots aren’t necessarily militaristic or imperialistic. These days, especially, they’re liberal, or at least think of themselves as liberal. In this incarnation they promote “humanitarian intervention” to pacify regions. They’re into nation-building, atrocity prevention, putting an end to ethnic cleansing, exporting democracy (or socialism, feminism, green-ism, whatever) and let their Cruise and Predator missiles sponsor what they view, sometimes not unreasonably, as enlightenment. For bellicose patriots, it’s nation-building that validates the toppling of a hostile tyrant in Iraq, and it’s the liberation of women that justifies deposing the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
 

To me, these are the things that risk invalidating both missions. As a rule, people should build their own nations and liberate their own wives, not their neighbour’s.
 

Wars are too costly and risky to be validated by anything but national self-interest. True, just as wars cause collateral damage, they may bring collateral benefits. Democracy for Germany and Japan was a collateral benefit of the Second World War — but that wasn’t what it was waged for. The Allies used their bayonets to run the Axis powers through the heart, not to pitch democracy into their backyards. Allied victory created the conditions for democracy, but post-war Japan, West Germany and Italy built their own nations. So did east-central Europe in the post-Cold War era. The victorious powers led the horse to water. They didn’t try to make it drink.
 

Having experienced the trials of war as well as the tribulations of oppression and terror, I feel a nation should take up arms without fail or compunction if by undergoing the first it has a reasonable hope of avoiding the second. I’m not remotely a pacifist. I think that failing to go to war for the right reasons is as big an error as going to war for the wrong reasons. But if there’s a right reason other than a country’s security and independence, or the security and independence of its allies, I can’t think of any.
 

“You’d go to war for honour,” a friend asked me, “but not for glory or pride. What’s the difference?”
 

A lot. Glory and pride are vanities but honour is integral to the national interest. In 1812, Napoleon’s army marched into Moscow for glory. In 1944, de Gaulle’s Free French forces marched into Paris for honour.
National Post

Photo: Afghan president Hamid Karzai speaks about a contentious new law restricting the rights of women. (REUTERS/Omar Sobhani)

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Commentary by the Ottawa Mens Centre

Firstly remember the Harper goal, to stay in Afghanistan, and he knows that the public are against that, so just generate propaganda to get the public on side, "rape is wrong, right"?
Therefore we must stay in Afghanistan and protect Afghan women, right?

Laws must be balanced, all to often politicians can't resist the propaganda value and put their hand into the cookie jar of justice and create utter mindless destruction.

Sure, rape in marriage is now illegal, but, has anyone looked at the number of allegations and convictions?

Most such allegations are made in the context of family law, and most are false, as are allegations of childhood sexual abuse, child assault, just 3 of many "silver bullets" that can destroy a man for ever, not to mention deprive children of a loving devoted father and grow up with a mother with a severe personality disorder.

Rape in marriage sounds gender neutral, but its not, its nudge nudge wink wink, men are only charged.

Just ask any man if he has been raped? Women think they can do it with impunity and immunity, thats socially acceptable, its practically not illegal, no charges have ever been laid, its a symptom of the fact that men are second class human beings in Canada.

Our Charter is a very sick joke, women are handed absolute power and a very large percentage will abuse that power, as will men with absolute power over women.

Problem is, most women have absolute power over their male partner and very few men if any have any such power over women unless of course, they mix it with the judiciary and are part of their social group and if they earn several hundred thousand dollars a year and even that is not enough to save many men from destruction.

We have Ontario Superior Court Family Division judges who make "Sheffield Orders" and "Power Orders" named after two underbellies who simply go with "she said" and dispense with any trial to dispose of "he said" or any evidence he may provide is "insufficient", that is, these two judges Allan Sheffield and Denis Power apply a Male Sharia type law, a Sharia style burden of proof requirement that is impossible to meet and if met its frequently ignored.

They simply engage in fabricated decisions that "justify" the decision by cutting and pasting what ever a mother says while ignoring totally anything a father says. They make their orders appeal proof by ordering costs or security for costs that ends the litigation and any possibility that the child will have a relationship with their father.

Then there is Justice Mary Jane Hatton, who will be supervising Ontario's reform of family law, thats like appointing of the wolf to redecorate the chicken coup.

Canada needs to look at the cess pool of injustice of Male Gender Apartheid before trying to tell the Taliban that they should be like Canada.

Canada's Male Gender Apartheid with duel legal treatments based on gender undermines the rule of law and threatens Canada's future, which is reflected in Canada's declining birth rate.

www.OttawaMensCentre.com

 

11:17 am

Mr. Harper needs to remember that Hitler also export his views of racial superiority which which were given token global opposition.

Canada is now wishing to export it's Doctrine of Gender Superiority thinly disguised under the term "Family Law".

In most provinces, especially Ontario, our prisons are overflowing and crowded with men whose only crime was asking the courts for their child to have a relationship with their father.

Our Family Court Judges, in many cases flagrantly abused their judicial discretion and, ordered impossible to pay support in a system that is next to impossible or extremely difficult to vary an order for support.

In other countries, child support is determined annually automatically by BOTH PARENTS TAX RETURNS, both incomes are factored in. Not in Canada, child support is tax free, that's a highly motivating factor for high income mothers to seek support from fathers on a fraction of their income that exacts the ultimate revenge, a lifetime of poverty and destruction, and in many cases indefinite repeated incarceration.

The Afghanistan people need to be warned of the sick dysfunctional Ontario Family Court and its cess pool of corrupt judges who are engaged in a War of Terror - against fathers.

www.OttawaMensCentre.com