is this hard power or soft power?

Isn't it upgrading the latter for the former...

Man, the flip way male bloggers have been covering this is pretty appalling. Think those four younger wives were particularly unhappy that they didn't have to sleep with the older warlord they undoubtedly married under compulsion from their elders? No, hahaha, too bus making dick jokes.

If they specialized in growing brocolli rather than being a strategic petro location, we wouldn't even be there, much less peddling our drugs there.

Woops, i forgot - we are there to promote democracy!

Have to aagree with Michelle on this one. His child brides were probably happy the old geezer couldn't perform - not a good way to win "hearts & minds" among women - I guess the govt doesn't care about that.

His child brides were probably happy the old geezer couldn't perform - not a good way to win "hearts & minds" among women...

Maybe. But then again maybe they're far more likely to suffer severe beatings and other forms of violence from a frustrated and embarrassed tyrant than from a proud and satisfied one. Horrible story all ways around. Although it sounds like clever thinking on the part of our people, I can't imagine it would be that difficult for somebody sympathetic to the cause of the Taliban to eventually find a non-western source of ED medication to undercut this effort.

Michelle, your Western values don't carry much weight in Afghanistan. Save your breath.

Ah yes, the "Western" value of the bodily integrity of women. Why is it cultural relativists never find it condescending to assume that Afghan men are "culturally" incapable of not raping their women?

Agree with the morally-not-so-clear posts.

As for hard or soft? Turgid.

Think those four younger wives were particularly unhappy that they didn't have to sleep with the older warlord they undoubtedly married under compulsion from their elders?

Do you have any evidence as to what they thought about the issue, or are you just making up what you would feel in their place and projecting it onto them?

Anyone who doesn't like political pundits making up what the American people think or believe (often in disregard of poll data that shows that the American people don't think or believe that at *all*) shouldn't make up what Afghanistani wives think or believe, either. Ask them, or don't, but don't answer *for* them.

There's certainly potential cause for concern here, but you're putting too much weight on unfounded speculation about what the wives might have felt about the deal.

(The tricky moral questions of whether or not it would be *right* to stop the Taliban at the expense of encouraging what might be marital rape could fill another whole thread by themselves. We don't seem to scruple at murder to stop the Taliban and other enemies, so...)

Is it really fair to assume that, because women are frequently treated badly in Afghanistan (more so than, say, China, the USA, etc), that Afghan men should be presumed rapists until proven non-rapists -- or, at least, they're probably bad enough that their wives would rather they have ED than not have ED, and that giving an Afghan man (or at least a 60-year old Afghan warlord) viagra brings more misery than joy to his partners?

I don't know. I wouldn't presume that the answer is no, here, but I wouldn't presume it's yes either.

Hmmm... I actually had a different moral qualm. Is it ethical to leverage medical treatment in order to further our foreign policy agenda?

Granted ED as far as medical conditions go is pretty benign, but where do we draw the line. What if the next warlord it's a brother with HIV that needs medication? Or a son with congestive heart failure that needs a transplant? A granddaughter who needs surgery to fix a cleft palate?

In the grand scheme of things I don't think it's so bad to leverage the happy penis pills, but I do think we need to have a conversation about where the line is.

So! The War on Terror has come to this. Bribing war lords with penis pills intended for Baby Boomer men.

Why don't we just give these out to everyone in the world for free? After a few days, everyone'd be so relaxed and satisfied, we'd whip up a peace treaty in no time flat.

On a serious note, this could be dangerous for these war lords without a doctor's examination: Viagra can cause problems for patients with heart disease, etc. I'd hate to think we'd lose an allied tribe of people because we killed their leader with the Pill.

Presumably he exerts hard power over his wives.

And yet, we can't legally get it without a prescription?

But then again maybe they're far more likely to suffer severe beatings and other forms of violence from a frustrated and embarrassed tyrant than from a proud and satisfied one.

Better to be raped than beaten, eh?

I could not agree more with Michelle. I clicked on the link to Ezra's post on this story, hoping and praying that his reaction would be different, would express some indication that he understood the women being fucked by these warlords actually might have wishes that differed from their husbands. The most difficult thing in the world to get men anywhere and of any political persuasion to believe, it seems, is that, even in arranged marriages with four wives to one husband, and a culture that thrives on misogynist violence, women might not be cheering and giving each other high fives over their husbands'acquisition of Viagra.

I truly am shocked, and that's a word I don't use much in the context of politics any more.

Christ, get over yourselves Michelle and Kathy. Left wing moral authoritarians like yourselves resemble the wacko religious right: quickly, let us instill our socially constructed values on others that we don't agree with, while we are it ... let's bomb Baghdad cause dem the bad brown people, AMIRITE?!

I also love how Michelle assumes that the women involved are 'oppressed' and must be 'saved' from the 'rapists'. As if polygamy were some unnatural affront to her worldview and that the women were incapable of being happy.

Get over yourselves you meddling, moralistic, white privileged female versions of Stalin.

Eric...chill out.

Kathy and Michelle, point taken. However, the positive trade off here really isn't very debatable. Afghanistan is a crappy place to be a woman, end of story. Though it was *especially* crappy when the Taliban ruled the country.

If the Taliban regain control, you will not have done the women of the country any favors by taking on, what is in the grand scheme of things, a petty moralistic stance on what is a very low cost/low risk/minimal blow back strategy of winning even temporary allegiances from local power brokers.

The best chance the women of Afghanistan have for a better future is seeing the Taliban defeated. Though, one needs to be realistic even then, Afghanistan ain't an egalitarian utopia.

TD, I appreciate your reasoned response, but I would say two things.

1. I am by no means in favour of letting the Taliban regain control. Nonetheless, I have no evidentiary basis on which to conclude that some small step forward for women is worth giving these warlords cookies (or viagra) over.

2. Keep in mind that your measurement of "low cost/low risk/minimal blow back" strategy is apparently given from the male view, because if women are being forced to have sex as a result of this distribution, I'd say they'd find that a big cost.

3. To whoever said "I'm just guessing" about how these women feel, you are correct. The point is that you're just guessing too, and if my guess leads to a lesser likelihood that these women will be raped, I'm happy to run with my assuming ways at the expense of yours. Many, many women in these societies report marital rape; I am not making up this concern out of thin air. And I have to question the motives of people who claim that there is no concern that this is happening here.

If the Taliban regain control, you will not have done the women of the country any favors by taking on, what is in the grand scheme of things, a petty moralistic stance on what is a very low cost/low risk/minimal blow back strategy of winning even temporary allegiances from local power brokers.

I don't think acting like women's opinions or wishes don't matter is a "petty moralistic stance."

Power is indeed the issue here. Were it otherwise, the CIA would be going around Afghanistan giving birth control pills to Afghan women. But the CIA does not get quid pro quo from giving Afghan women birth control pills.

It seems to me that this policy of giving ED pills to the power brokers -- who, by definition in Afghanistan are exclusively male -- is an implicit acceptance of the male monopoly on power in Afghanistan. We're using that monopoly to our advantage, to the disadvantage of Afghan women's self-determination rights. I don't see how doing that can help create a society where women have more power.

The question isn't even whether we oppose or support this stupid short-term trick of the American's in Afghanistan. That's irrelevant (and doomed to failure).

What's really disgusting is the predictable response to the story by male leftists - who, until it's pointed out to them in stark terms, can't figure out the effect of this Viagral bounty on the four younger wives of a 60 year old patriarch. It really isn't that hard.

I'm not shocked Ezra Klein didn't see it, but I am a little surprised that somebody would argue cultural-relativist-style, that we can't know the women are unhappy.

You try being one of four young wives of a 60 year old tyrant in a country where you are barely seen as human and only then will your opinion have more weight than that of the "white women" (Kathy and Michelle) who can discern the likelihood of abuse here.

And before you call me a white woman imposing my cultural values on Afghanis, save your breath. I'm a Pakistani woman.

I don't want to shock any of your Western minds, but child brides aren't ok with being raped in Afghanistan any more than they are in Utah.

From the Un office of the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs:

KABUL, 13 July 2005 (IRIN) - The United Nations, government officials and rights bodies in the Afghan capital, Kabul, have expressed grave concern about the widespread practice of girls marrying early, as the country marked World Population Day on Tuesday.

Nearly 60 percent of marriages in Afghanistan involve girls below the legal age of 16, according to reports from the Ministry of Women's Affairs and NGOs. Some girls are married as young as nine.

Rights and health activists say that such marriages increase the maternal mortality rate and deny young women an education or any kind of independent life. Often, after a child marriage, husbands and/or parents-in-law refuse to allow the child-wife to go to school under threat of violence.

“Badakhshan [northeastern province] has the highest maternal mortality rate in the country and one of the main reason is under-age marriages - even as young as seven in some cases. This needs to be addressed,” Paul Greening a project officer of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said on Wednesday in Kabul.

Afghan minister of women’s affairs Masouda Jalal, called early marriage “a violation of equality” and condemned the traditional practice as harmful to girl’s health, their education, political participation and economic opportunities.

“Child marriage and early childbearing mean an incomplete education, limited opportunities and serious health risks,” Jalal said.

Child brides are not physically mature and can sustain injury during sexual intercourse.

“It is a shame to say that even in the capital Kabul we treat pregnant mothers as young as 12 years of age,” said a midwife at Malalai hospital, the leading maternity and gynaecology unit in the capital.

Afghanistan's civil code sets the minimum age of marriage for females at 16 and for males 18 but in rural and even some urban areas, the tradition of marrying off daughters while even younger in order to receive money remains common among the poor.

A recent study by Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) has found 500 girls who had been given away or traded as part of local conflict resolution practices. Of these, 90 percent were under 14 years old. Most become the 'property' of the family or individual who receives them.

I suppose they just get child brides to "consent," so there is no rape, right?

Do we have any evidence as to how old these women are, and how they feel about a rejuvenated warlord? Yes, they may be miserable about it, but equally, they may find that hubby is much nicer now. Or, for all we know, they had a whale of a time. It's as silly to construct the worst scenarios out of ignorance as it is to assume the best. How about assuming that we don't know, and refraining from moralistic rhetoric either way?

It's called empathy, for fuck's sake.

Really. Not. That. Hard. To. Imagine.

Ah, male privilege. Would that it were abolished.

I'm with Apostate, upthread. Take that for cultural relativity.

And, we can't know either way, so there's no point? Are you capable of making decisions in your own life? With that world-view, seems to me your ass'd be stuck on a fence for forever. Maybe if you peaked out from behind your hard-on you'd learn a thing or two about the world and REALITY.

So much heartache and pain are caused in this world so some jagoff can jizz on/in someone whether that someone likes it or not. Ridiculously unnecessary pain. For jizz.

Get over yourselves and your cocks.

"Get over yourselves and your cocks."

Oh boy, did that need to be said! It is absolutely horrifying to read the male commentators on "liberal blogs" speculating about how these 11 year old CHILDREN, are probably loving being fucked by a 60 year old man.

Oh please, shut up and zip your pants you idiots! I expect this from right wing men. They call the c word, a whore, speculate that you must be fat, not shave your legs, etc.

But from liberals? Oh, please, just shut up already, you are depressing women everywhere.

Sooo.... Catherine, Angryyoungfemme

You all decide that it's okay to assert that Arab men all rush out and rape 11 year old girls after getting Viagra.

You all can treat ED as a joke, demanding we treat it differently from other diseases because maybe someone somewhere might commit a crime if we treat it...

Apparently, those two thoughts don't spur any of you to maybe examine your puritanical views (that diseases that impede sex are somehow less serious that diseases that impede other functions) or at the very least your view of other races (that somehow, Arab men should not get Viagra because... well... everyone knows they all have 4 wives and rape little girls).

Before you start casting dispersions on others you should really consider what the things you've said say about you.

Rape is a serious problem in Afghanistan. The United Nations and many human rights organizations have been reporting on this for years. And I would like to point out that this is not a problem restricted to women. Young girls AND boys are at risk of rape.

The doubters can Google it for themselves, if they actually care enough to do so.

Here's an article from Time on the epidemic of child rape in Afghanistan: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1833517,00.html

The point is, supplying Viagra to tribal officials may appear to be a clever strategy, if one assumes that the people these men are having sex with have consented. Unfortunately, in Afghanistan, as in MANY other places, this is a dangerous assumption that ignores the rape epidemic.

It is almost unfathomable to me that the vast majority of men don't even give pause to think of the effect this policy has on women - and if they do give it a thought, it's a giddy, juvenile thought. You said boner... heh heh heh - like something out of Beavis and Butthead.

The lack of empathy of men toward women shouldn't shock me since I've seen it over and over, but it still does.

I find it extremely hard to believe that any thinking, feeling human being wouldn't think about or acknowledge the impact this policy has on women. Then I read blogs and the point is brought home in an undeniable way: Men, including so-called liberal men, think their boners are more important than women's (really girls') bodily integrity.

It's disgusting.

Not only do you dismiss women's concerns out of hand, but you get *angry* that women have the nerve to suggest that child brides in Afghanistan may object to their elderly husbands demands on their bodies.

You dismiss without a thought reports from the UN that a sizable percentage of the "wives" are actually children as young as seven years old.

I don't even know why I bother. The men posting on this thread seem to lack the very basic human emotion of empathy. No surprise, really.

Apparently, those two thoughts don't spur any of you to maybe examine your puritanical views (that diseases that impede sex are somehow less serious that diseases that impede other functions) or at the very least your view of other races (that somehow, Arab men should not get Viagra because... well... everyone knows they all have 4 wives and rape little girls)."

Fool, read the article. The CIA agent brags that "these men have 4 & 5 wives, and this puts them back into an authoritative position".

Stop hiding behind racism to justify your misogyny you pos!

Very well said Wendy Anne. What I find so disturbing about "liberal" men is that they are the first ones to sniff out the slightest whiff of racism, and jump up and down as they righteously condemn it, and then look around for the high-fives from other "liberal" white men, as they all congratulate themselves for being so fucking enlightened.

But a woman...well she wants to be fucked. Even if she is pre-pubescent and the man in question is 60 years old. In this country, these CIA agents would be arrested for facilitating pedophilia and these "liberal" men would be tsk tsking it.

But the Afghani girls must want it. It's their "culture".

WHO is the racist??????

This discussion is hilarious....and, in some ways, typical.

It's hilarious because the issue has quickly degenerated into a feminist meme where even the liberal men are all evil and it's typical in that here we have found a way of getting intelligence during wartime from generally not all that cooperative leaders and yet....AND YET...this doesn't seem to trump any social issues in some foreign country for liberals.

Being patriotic means valuing your countrymen more than others just as family means valuing your relatives over others.

Liberals need to get with the program and thank God we have just one more tool to get the information needed to save AMEICAN LIVES.

"Being patriotic means valuing your countrymen more than others just as family means valuing your relatives over others."

I can be proud to say I'm not a patriot then. I don't believe in valuing the life of an American over the life of someone else.

Also, I agree with the women in this thread. Sadly, we know that liberal men are as much our allies as conservative men - which is not at all.

I find the feminist posts in this thread frankly, and unsurprisingly, racist. We know nothing directly about the women in question at all. All we have are assumptions.

We don't know how old they are: is it 15? 25? 35?

We don't know that they dread sex with their husband; it's entirely possible that they actually enjoy it and would look forward to.

Do they want children? We don't know - but married women typically do.

Were they compelled? Is their marriage worse than other arranged marriages, typical for their culture? We don't know.

But we do know that they're dark-skinned muslims, and that is good enough for people to project terrible things onto the men in question without a shred of evidence. And that is the dictionary definition of bigotry.

Would western women feel that Viagra was such a terrible thing for their impotent husbands? If not, on what basis other than racism is it justified to assume that Afghan women would feel differently?

Marc: Not that I don't already have doubts about your reading comprehension, but let's try this again: but the feminist posts in this thread have cited to UN reports and, for example, the article itself, for evidence that these warlords are often involved in the systematic abuse of young women. This is, frankly, the first forum in which I've seen this disputed. Even Laura Bush knows the situation for women in Afganistan is dire.

As a counter, all that people seem able to come up with is that it is racist to assume that these men might use Viagra to force sex on their unwilling wives. It would only be racist to say so if we hinted that this propensity to rape women was related to their race. Personally, I'd be willing to bet it's far more correlative with their status as powerful men in a highly violent society, among whose attributes, apparently, and again, this is drawn from the souce material, is the prestige they get from proving their virility.

Point being, again: I don't have to think that all Afghani men rape all Afghani women to believe that some, and even many do, and the UN is willing to back me up on this. Do you have stats you're willing to share that show that sexual violence isn't part and parcel of this particular milieu? Because otherwise, you're just trying to make people angry by calling them racist rather than advancing the discussion.

P.S. Thank you, soullite, for giving me a big laugh this morning with your ridiculous assertion that we are dismissing ED as a joke by simply questioning the dispensing of Viagra to men who have (a) no clinical diagnosis as such and in fact (b) no other reason for their droopin penii than age as far as we know. As someone remarked on another website, hell hath no fury like a man who has had his "right" to 24/7 erections scorned.

Do they want children? We don't know - but married women typically do.

Were they compelled? Is their marriage worse than other arranged marriages, typical for their culture? We don't know.

But we do know that they're dark-skinned muslims, and that is good enough for people to project terrible things onto the men in question without a shred of evidence. And that is the dictionary definition of bigotry.

Okay, Marc. It is a patriarchial assumption that married women "typically want children." Many women in countries such as these are sick and tired of being pregnant all the time.

"without a shred of evidence?" Google child brides in afghanistan if you want to know more.

And as far as western women and Viagra? I personally know western women who rue the day Viagra became available. Now they have to fuck the man forever. Maybe there's a reason nature intended men to eventually give it up.

I would also like to send a news flash to men: The penis does not give a woman an orgasm, the clitoris does. You don't need an erection to give pleasure to a woman. Your dick is not the center of anyone's universe but yours. But this is not about a woman's pleasure. Its about putting some warlord "back in an authoritarian position," which reeks of using sex to dominate and control. Can't you see that?

I'm not shocked Ezra Klein didn't see it, but I am a little surprised that somebody would argue cultural-relativist-style, that we can't know the women are unhappy.

Of course we *could* know they are unhappy - if we asked them and they said they were unhappy, for example.

The whole point is that we can't "know" they're unhappy by sitting in our armchairs meditating on the issue. Their happiness or unhappiness occurs in THEIR MINDS, NOT OURS, and that's why it can't be simply made up and forced on them.

That's the whole point of cultural imperialism - assuming that you know how other people are going to react because they're just like you.

What probably actually happened was a mixed bag, which means that the collateral damage of this "operation" included some rape, in the same sort of way that the collateral damage of ordinary military operations includes some murder. Is that worse, less bad, about the same? Hard to say, I think.

Here is a current news item.

"Sun, Dec 28 04:55 PM

London, Dec 28 (ANI): As pupils are regularly disappearing from schools, an organization is rescuing British girls as young as nine from forced marriages."

I'm not a patriot then. I don't believe in valuing the life of an American over the life of someone else.

What a shocker! An American liberal is not a patriot!

Stop the presses...

I'm not a patriot then. I don't believe in valuing the life of an American over the life of someone else.

What a shocker! An American liberal is not a patriot!

Stop the presses...

And I suppose that you don't value your family more than outsiders either....

Nice...

I'd like to send a news flash to you, Nolabelfits: you can't extrapolate from "some men do x" to "all men do x". The existence of child brides in Afghanistan doesn't imply that all brides there are children. The automatic assumption that men in a foreign culture are bad, and that women in a foreign culture share your negative attitudes about sex, isn't sustainable. In fact, it's ugly - far uglier than any offense that "all liberal men" allegedly have committed here.

Now if there was actual evidence that matters were different you'd have a case. However, all that you have is generic hostility and stereotyping. And that is what bigotry is. I carry no brief for the treatment of women in Afghan culture - but I'm not willing to automatically assume that all men there are raping children.

It's also deeply ironic to have women who have no idea what impotence is like can dismiss it so casually - and then complain loudly about how those nasty men lack empathy.

Zeinab was 10 and had no choice. Her father sold her for 1,200 US dollars into marriage to a 50-year-old deaf mute. Her wedding night was a brutal affair, which she later described it as "rape".
http://www.iwpr.net

The UN reports that 70% of brides in Afghanistan are under the age of 16. Many of the really young ones die from the marital rape. Many die in childbirth at 10 or 12 years old. And the younger the bride, the more valuable she is. I am sure there are women in Afghanistan in good loving relationships, but remember, we are talking about Warlords here who are high status men. High status men are likely to have the youngest brides. Sure they get older, so maybe they aren't children anymore, but I would bet there's a good reason to believe they started out that way. Based on the facts.

I hardly believe that a ten year old struggling through pregnancy made a conscious choice to "want" children. "Wanting" and "Not Wanting" children implies personal agency, implies choice. If you read up on it, you will see these children have no choice.

Of course my views on sex are negative when "sex" involves the rape of children.

It seems you can't handle the truth.

Two things:

First, to paraphrase Freud, sometimes a dick joke is just a dick joke. I don't think it's fair to take any joke made by me or any other male and extrapolate from it broad accusations regarding men and their lack of sensitivity. Having a sick sense of humor does not mean you don't care about the subjects being joked about. It means you're immature in certain ways and easily amused. Some people look at the world, see how screwed up it is, and make jokes about it. It's a coping mechanism, in part.

Second, if your thoughts on this are something along the lines of, "Well, how can we really know these brides are unhappy that their husbands now have Viagra?," you're kind of missing the point. Hypothetically, yes, maybe some 16-year-old bride is thrilled that her old-enough-to-be-her-grandfather husband can now perform sexually. Far be it from me to say otherwise. But that doesn't make any of this -- neither the society that embraces this sort of thing nor a society that fuels this sort of thing with gifts of little blue pills for the sake of forging alliances -- any less fucked up. The point here is choice: these girls don't have one. They are coerced into marriage and exist in a culture where the concept of "consent" doesn't really exist, and thus have no voice at all.

This isn't cultural chauvinism or cultural imperialism or West-o-centric culturalistic hegemonism or any other such phrase. It's an empirical observation based on the evidence we have, from the United Nations on downward. So saying, "Well, maybe some of the girls like it" is kind of a non sequitur. Any movement in the direction of giving the girls who are affected even less choice in their lives (and bolstering the potency of their husbands qualifies, I would think) should be condemned. Again: choice. Some Muslim girls grow up and decide to don a veil. That doesn't mean we can't criticize societies that force them to. Some American women grow up and decide to marry much older men. That doesn't mean it wouldn't be messed up if we enacted a federal law lowering the minimum marriage age to eight. In either case, a response of "Well, some girls will like this" wouldn't be adequate and would ignore a lot of potential suffering.

Here's another article for all of you disbelievers:
http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2008/12/10/two-women-and-a-small-girl-chopped-into-pieces-in-northern-afghanistan.html

"According to a report of Radio Azadi, on December 8th, a horrifying crime shooked the little village of Khomdan, some distance from Dasht-e-Qala District of Takhar province. Two women and a 2-year old girl were cut into pieces with an axe, by unknown armed men. It’s still not known who is behind this crime.

The residents of the area told the reporter of Radio Azadi that these women had been raped before being killed, but they say, police did not perform a postmortem to approve it. Even on the eve of the International Human Rights Day, Afghanistan was not spared of such human rights tragedies.

Although organizations that support women’s rights have talked about increase of violence against women in Northern provinces of Afghanistan like Badakhshan, Takhar, Qunduz and Baghlan, it can be seen that most of violence occurs in Takhar province where warlords have full control of the province. Gang-rape and self-immolation of women; murders by husbands and beatings are some examples of these extreme brutalities. The most prominent cases here are that of an 8-year old girl who was raped and then murdered by her rapist, and the mentioned incident."

"Fool, read the article. The CIA agent brags that "these men have 4 & 5 wives, and this puts them back into an authoritative position"."

Well done Catherine, you've demonstrated that a member of the Central Bureau of Intelligence is a racist.