This diary digs into the how did it happen of Stu Piddy’s CODE PINK TURNS PRO WAR. Basically, the ever-so-susceptible Code Pink bosses got played by the war PR machine. First of all, they never left Kabul:

Medea Benjamin:

We didn’t get out to the countryside, we didn’t talk to people who had been the targets of U.S. bombing, we didn’t talk to people who lived under Taliban control. We, in a week, got to talk to an amazing variety of people, but they were all working inside Kabul, many of them coming from outside Kabul.

Secondly, they were exceptionally naive, considering the ostensibly very serious nature of the organization’s fact-finding tour.

Dilettante number 1:

Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin in Kabul: We also wrote up a letter to President Obama saying no more troops, and asked the women to sign. The organizer of the conference must get US government money [so] she freaked out and wouldn’t let us circulate the letter! Instead, we talked to some of the women during the breaks, and many of them signed. (In the evening, Jodie got the wife of Karzai’s brother to sign on!)

Since we are returning tomorrow, we took time to do some shopping along Chicken Street—buying jewelry, shawls, dresses, bedspreads, purses… The shopping break was a nice diversion from all the sitting and talking. . . .

Tonight we had a terrific meal at the home of Karzai’s businessman brother, Mahmoud Karzai, and his wife. The guests included businessmen who had security companies, the president’s first deputy chief of staff (a woman), the president’s economic advisor, journalists, a UN rep and more. We all had great conversations and realized how lucky we were to have, once again, such great access to so many different opinions (at the dinner, someone from our group remarked that back home, it would be like having dinner at the home of Jeb Bush!).

Dilettante number 2:

Code Pink’s Jodie Evans in Kabul: I left the states with a judgment about some of the women who were members of the Parliament: So many are sisters and wives of warlords or tribal leaders chosen merely to fill the required quota of women. But Member of Parliament Shinkai Karokhal, a radical feminist from Kabul, reminded me that just their existence, that they constitute 25 percent of the body, is inspiring to women throughout the country. I told her she was right, it is a big step.

And then there was Medea Benjamin, back in the U.S. interviewed by Scott Horton, where she defends the Democratic Party line (we’d love to leave but we can’t until they stop fighting (us)) and tries unsuccessfully to deal with Code Pink’s new, militarist look (emphasis added):

And we certainly did hear some people [in Kabul] say that they felt if the U.S. pulled out right now there would be a collapse and the Taliban might take over, there might be a civil war. But we also heard a lot of people say they didn’t want more troops to be sent in and they wanted the U.S. to have a responsible exit strategy that included the training of Afghan troops, included being part of promoting a real reconciliation process and included economic development; that the United States shouldn’t be allowed to just walk away from the problem. So that’s really our position.

So Code Pink _was_ reported accurately in today’s Christian Science Monitor:

During their weeklong visit here [in Afghanistan], in which they met with government officials, politicians, ministers, women activists, and civil society groups, the small team of Code Pink members had hoped to gather evidence to bolster their call for US troop withdrawal within two years, and capitalize on growing anxiety back home about the war.

While the group hasn’t dropped its call for a pullout, the visit convinced them that setting a deadline isn’t in Afghanistan’s interests, say Ms. Benjamin and fellow cofounder Jodie Evans.

"We would leave with the same parameters of an exit strategy but we might perhaps be more flexible about a timeline," says Benjamin. "That’s where we have opened ourselves, being here, to some other possibilities. We have been feeling a sense of fear of the people of the return of the Taliban. So many people are saying that, ‘If the US troops left the country, would collapse. We’d go into civil war.’ A palpable sense of fear that is making us start to reconsider that."

Code Pink says it will continue to oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan – a move facing heated debate in Washington – and advocate for more funding for aid and humanitarian projects instead.

So now it’s Code Pink, pro-war nation builder.

For a contrasting point of view meet Afghan native Zoya, 28, who is now on a speaking tour of the U.S.. Zoya (a pseudonym) "grew up during the wars that ravaged Afghanistan and at the age of fourteen, was robbed of her mother and father when they were murdered by fundamentalist warlords. Devastated by so much death and destruction, she fled Kabul with her grandmother and started a new life in exile in Pakistan. After attending a school funded by RAWA, she joined the underground women’s organization and continues their work resisting fundamentalism and war today." Here’s a recent article about her:

October 1, 2009
Afghan Women’s Rights Activist Calls for an End to US Occupation

Los Angeles: President Obama’s anticipated deployment of additional troops to Afghanistan is being justified in part by the Taliban threat to Afghan women. To mark the 8th anniversary of the start of Operation Enduring Freedom, a member of a prominent Afghan women’s rights group will tour the United States this month, with a different message to Obama and Congress: “liberation can only come from within -– end the US occupation.” . . .

For most Afghan women like Zoya, the past eight years of US occupation have legitimized criminal warlords and a corrupt government, resulted in thousands of bombing deaths of civilians, and consequently strengthened the Taliban. While women gained some rights on paper in the nation’s new constitution, in practice more women are being imprisoned, committing suicide, suffering rapes, and other abuses than ever before. This summer’s embarrassingly fraudulent presidential election was seen by a vast majority of Afghans as a debacle of democracy. Education, employment and health indicators all point to a nation whose women are possibly worse off than under Taliban rule.

According to Zoya, "The message of RAWA to freedom-loving people is to support the democratic organizations of Afghanistan. Freedom, democracy and justice cannot be enforced at gunpoint by a foreign country; they are the values that can be achieved only by our people and democracy-loving forces through a hard, decisive and long struggle." . . .

If you are a member of the media and would like to schedule an interview with Zoya, please call 626-676-7884

Here’s another opinion to contrast with Code Pink’s, by another smart Afghan woman:

Sonali Kolhatkar, Co-Director of Afghan Women’s Mission:

. . . Howard Dean, former chair of the Democratic National Committee and one-time Presidential candidate on a liberal platform, in an interview on Democracy Now on Friday July 17th, pronounced his support for the US war in Afghanistan based on protecting women’s rights. In the interview, Dean repeated the logic that the US is waging war for Afghan women’s liberation. And on the flip side, according to Dean, "if we leave, women will experience the most extraordinary depredations of any population on the face of the earth." By this logic, Dean implies that the US has for the past 8 years been a bulwark against a the deterioration of women’s rights. But even cursory examination of the actual situation on the ground reveals that aside from theoretical changes embodied in the constitution, women’s rights have actually deteriorated as a direct consequence of deliberate US policy. This policy has included empowering anti-woman warlords who have committed rape and thrown out female members of parliament, appointing a fundamentalist judiciary that has imprisoned women for adultery and being victims of rape, etc. Additionally, the US war has fueled an misogynist insurgency that has only gotten stronger and worsened anti-woman sentiment.

I spoke very recently with independent candidate for president Ramazan Bashardost about his view of the US war. He put it bluntly: "This is not a war for women’s rights in Afghanistan. It is not a war for human rights in Afghanistan." He added, "the problem is that the analysis of the Afghan situation by the US is wrong."

Here’s more of Scott Horton vs. the CodePink nation builders:

Horton: So we need occupation, but without soldiers.

Benjamin: Where are you getting that from?

Horton: Well, I mean I’m just trying to understand. Because you’re saying we need to build up their court system and we need to do all these things to have a proper exit… a responsible exit strategy rather than just leaving and letting them call their own shots, work out their own problems. And I just wonder how these things all go together. We’re supposed to occupy the country, but without killing anybody. And we’re supposed to have soldiers to protect women’s rights, but not to, whatever it is that they’re actually doing there, which of course has nothing to do with women’s rights in the first place. You follow me?

Benjamin: Yeah. I don’t think the soldiers are protecting women’s rights. We did hear a lot of people say that they fear the Taliban coming back in. We spoke to a lot of women who lived under the Taliban times who couldn’t go to school, who couldn’t do their jobs, were stuck inside their homes. And I think we have to recognize that. But on the other hand there is supposedly only about 5 or 10% of the Taliban that are ideologically motivated. So my point is that we have been shoring up the Taliban with their policies of occupation, that as part of an exit strategy has to be peace talks, that women are at the table, and they have to figure out how people who have joined the Taliban out of economic desperation and joined the Taliban out of revenge because their loved ones have been killed by foreign forces, how they can be brought back into their villages and live productive lives.

Horton: Um, okay. Well, I guess, you know, I’m for that. You know, I’m an individualist and a libertarian and I believe in natural rights for all people no matter where they are. It’s just a question of, you know, who’s going to do the guaranteeing of them. And it just sort of seems far-fetched to me. Especially at this point that somehow there’s going to be a proper nation building exercise. . . . I mean do you really think it’s possible to use American government, military, or I guess you’re saying not military, I guess State Department power or something, to build up Afghan society and include the people who are now fighting on the side of the Taliban, include enough of them in the government that somehow this becomes some sort of pluralistic, federalistic type place where we can rest assured that a civil war isn’t going to break out when we leave or something like that. Is that basically what you’re saying?

Benjamin: I don’t think we can ever be sure of what’s going to happen in a place like Afghanistan because it’s such a complex culture. But I do think that we have thrown ourselves into this quagmire and we’ve got to extricate ourselves in a way that is as responsible as possible. And that part of that is trying to support those people within Afghanistan who want to see peace talks, who want to get the other nations in the region involved and who do feel that they need a police system, they need people inside their country that are going to somehow promote justice and communities, that they don’t want to be left in chaos. So I do think that there is something to be worked out in terms of an exit strategy. . . .

Horton: Yeah. Well, I certainly think that’s true. We saw the same thing in Iraq where the occupation is a perpetual motion machine. In fact I was just reading a little something about American occupations in Central America, I think in, I forget if it was in Nicaragua. Way back in the day, you know, 80 years ago or something, where of course the longer they stayed the more the people resisted and that was the excuse for staying, and we can’t just leave with Nicaragua in such a mess and all these people fighting each other and whatever, when of course the occupation is the basis of in the first place. And I think, wasn’t Code Pink’s argument about Iraq not "We have to leave responsibly but we’ve got to get the hell out of there because staying there is irresponsible"?

Benjamin: Yeah, in the case of Iraq I think it was a little bit different. It was absolutely clear our troops should never been there beginning and you didn’t have a Taliban like government…

Horton: Yeah, but I mean Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri escaped eight years ago. They haven’t been in Afghanistan for eight years.

Benjamin: But you do have the Taliban in Afghanistan and you have…

Horton: Yeah, but what did the Taliban ever do?

Benjamin: Well the Taliban…

Horton: To us.

Benjamin: Huh?

Horton: What did they ever do to the United States?

Benjamin: Well see, if your perspective is just from the United States. My perspective is also from what they did to the women of Afghanistan. But if your perspective is truly from the United States, what people say is that if we allow the Taliban to take over Afghanistan then that will be a safe haven for Al Qaeda.

Horton: Yeah, but that’s no different is it than the National Review saying, you know, Saddam Hussein was really bad to the people in Iraq. I think this is why all over Facebook today they’re saying, "Ha, ha, and again, for those tuning in late, she did say, it’s Medea Benjamin from Code Pink. She did say the Christian Science Monitor’s reporting was not altogether accurate here. But all over Facebook they’re saying, "Ha, ha, I guess she’ll have to apologize to Condoleezza Rice now. . . .