An interesting point, and one that should be addressed, was the call for the loss of the burqa and changes in Afghan society.

I submit that those changes will occur naturally as we go. The only thing that we are successfully insisting on is the building of girl’s schools in Afghanistan. The education of girls who will grow into women will have the same effect that it has had in the United States. It took time here as well; what makes us think that there will not be resistance to it in Afghanistan?

Pissing off the elders of a remote district in Afghanistan by standing on our principle of a female soldier wanding them is simply a waste of engagement and damages our ability to make further progress. When that elder walks back to his village in the evening and sits down to talk with his friends over chai, he will not talk about how the Americans are at the district center helping the local Police learn how to better provide security to their district; no, he will talk of the humiliation of an elder by being forced to be scanned (including over his genitals) by an instrument of unkown capability held by a female.

That is unnecessary humiliation and blocks the reception of our real message.

There are some things that need to be achieved in the short term and some things that are going to require long-term societal growth to take hold. Mysogyny is in the latter class.

Let the insidious creep of education do that work, and in the course of a generation or two, you will see real change there. In the meantime, to make that a central point due to our personal sensibilities is a huge error and shows a greater lack of concern for and sensitivity to their culture, which has worked for them for literally thousands of years.