I thought that it was obvious what I thought would happen to the girls. That was my point. The idea that we -- WE -- can make a stable government in Afghanistan and train the military and the police is a chimera. The powerful people there have to want this. I don't see any evidence that they do. The weak will suffer. We cannot protect everyone in the country unless we take over the country, and we aren't able to do so. We can't do the same in the Congo, Burma, Burundi, the Sudan, and the list goes on....The great question which is obscured by the details of this misguided operation is how the world deals with messed up countries -- even before one focusses on the ones that might be seedbeds for terrorism (and it should be noted that the main seedbed for terrorism in the world has been and is Saudi Arabia, which funds on a grand scale fundamentalist wahabi schools all over the world, and is a gallant ally of the United States, how stupid is that?). At the moment humanitarian needs and military invasions are mingled together in a hopelessly toxic way.   This could be improved (not made perfect, but improved) if certain countries who will remain nameless began to think internationally again in a serious way.   

yours,

Peter T.