Kabul – Some days ago, at the Afghan Peace Volunteers’ Borderfree Center, I met Jamila, the mother of a little girl, Fatima, who comes to the Street Kids School, a program designed to help children working on the streets go to school. Jamila, a young mother of seven, smiles and laughs easily, even though she faces dire circumstances here in Kabul.
Nine years ago, at age 19, she fled escalating conflict in Pul e Khumri, located in the northern province of Baghlan, and moved to Kabul. Jamila had already been married for 12 years.
Her family, desperate for income, had sold her in marriage to an older man when she was seven years old. As a child, she lived in servitude to the family of her future husband, earning a small income for them through sewing and embroidering.
At age 13, She gave birth to her oldest daughter . With her when we met were two of her middle daughters, Fatima and Nozuko. Her oldest daughter is no longer with her, as, at age 12, she was given away, six years ago now, in marriage. Jamila is determined not to give her remaining daughters away in marriage while they are still children.
Hadisa, a bright 18-year-old Afghan girl, ranks as the top student in her 12th grade class. “The question is,” she wondered, “are human beings capable of abolishing war?”
Like Hadisa, I had my doubts about whether human nature could have the capacity to abolish war. For years, I had presumed that war is sometimes necessary to control ‘terrorists’, and based on that presumption, it didn’t make sense to abolish it. Yet my heart went out to Hadisa when I imagined her in a future riddled with intractable violence.
Hadisa tilted her head slightly in deep thought. She listened attentively to different opinions voiced by fellow Afghan Peace Volunteers. She struggles to find answers.
But when Hadisa turns up at the Borderfree Afghan Street Kids School every Friday to teach the child breadwinners, now numbering 100 in morning and afternoon classes, she lays aside her doubts.
I can see her apply her inner compassion which rises way above the war that is still raging in Afghanistan.
Two Fridays ago, I had the pleasure of being on the Ron Paul Liberty Report, along with Dr. Paul and Daniel McAdams, the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Executive Director. We chatted about my Antiwar piece “Who Is Listening to Dick Cheney?”, about the lack of consequences for warmongering (or any government outrage, in fact!), and had time to sneak in a brief drug war chat at the end.
In The Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam quotes US president Lyndon Baines Johnson on his desired qualities in an assistant: “I want loyalty! I want him to kiss my a– in Macy’s window at high noon and tell me it smells like roses.”
Nearly every “major party” presidential candidate this year and in past election cycles seems to have taken that advice to heart, but in an odd way. They come off less as applicants for the presidency of the United States than for the position of personal aide to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The second Republican presidential primary debate looked a lot like Macy’s window at high noon:
Jeb Bush: “[T]he first thing that we need to do is to establish our commitment to Israel …”
Carly Fiorina: “On day one in the Oval Office, I will make two phone calls, the first to my good friend to Bibi Netanyahu to reassure him we will stand with the state of Israel.”
Lordie I never expected that “debate” to last more than 3 hours. I almost ran out of beer. I didn’t start tweeting until the second hour but here’s my two cents – On Twitter @jimbovard & www.jimbovard.com
Gov. Kasich last night quoted saying, "If you've saved one life, you’ve changed the world." What about lives snuffed by US drones & bombs?
Why is the US government bringing back old, discredited claims like “Assad gassed his own people”? And why are its representatives like US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power trying to propagandize the American people with cooked up tales of Russian military action in Syria? Ron Paul’s Liberty Report takes a look at the possible shifting sands of US policy in Syria:
