Let the insidious creep of education do that work, and in the course of a generation or two, you will see real change there.

I don’t want to be paying for their misogyny for the next 40 years. If they insist on being noble savages then I don’t want to pay for bringing them into the 19th Century, let alone the 21st Century, like we’re having to do in rebuilding Iraq from the ground up.

I understand what you’re saying about the message being lost but, really, why is it always America (and America’s women) that’re expected to be flexible, caring and understanding, while noble savages can skip blithely along beating their donkeys and their wives, and claiming exemption from the most basic of human values because of “social mores”?

At the very least we should be laying guilt trips on the Afghan elders, the Afghan police and the Afghan soldiers, letting them KNOW that we think they’re barbarians and not quite up to snuff humanity-wise. And that people who beat other people haven’t earned the right to carry the really good guns so they’ll just have to make do with slingshots until they can ramp up their manners a little bit.

Assuming, of course, that you Old Blue *do* agree they’re barbarians for their antiquated misogyny (among other things).