Is Laura happy?

2010-10-10-WP-Laura-Bush-condemns-Taliban

Afghanistan must embrace women's rights
By Laura W. Bush
Washington Post Op-Ed, 2010-10-10

[A response from the author of this blog.

Ms. Bush, I know you want to appear strong and “on the right side of history”
so you can win the approval of your feminist friends
and appear “a modern woman.”
But I think you need to recognize, which I am not sure that you do,
what the inevitable consequences are
of trying to effect social change on foreign societies by the American military
are going to be.

Or maybe I am wrong.
Do you, in fact, acknowledge that
the horrible consequences of the U.S. war in Afghanistan
are due, not to the military, for in war such errors are inevitable,
but to the advocacy of you and your compatriots?

Do you remember the familiar chant from your college years,
“Hey hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today”?

Now, in the 2000s, how many kids have been killed due to your wars?
How many veterans have suffered horribly, both physically and mentally,
due to your wars?

It would be nice if you had as much consideration for American men
as you do for Afghan women.
Obviously you now do not.

Oh, and by the way:
If you think this is just another partisan attack,
I voted for your husband in 2000
(but not in 2004, after his launching of an unnecessary war in Iraq),
as I did for every Republican presidential candidate
from Richard Nixon in 1968 to your husband in 2000.
I expected your husband to follow the policies of his father
and his father's trusted adviser, James A. Baker (a man who knew how to place
America’s interest over that of the Zionists and feminists).
Unfortunately, in foreign policy at least, he did not.]

2011-02-13-NYT-Veterans-of-combat-being-drugged

For Some Troops, Powerful Drug Cocktails Have Deadly Results
By JAMES DAO, BENEDICT CAREY and DAN FROSCH
New York Times, 2011-02-13

...

After a decade of treating thousands of wounded troops,
the military’s medical system is awash in prescription drugs —
and the results have sometimes been deadly.

By some estimates,
well over 300,000 troops have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan
with P.T.S.D., depression, traumatic brain injury
or some combination of those.
The Pentagon has looked to pharmacology to treat those complex problems,
following the lead of civilian medicine.
As a result,
psychiatric drugs have been used more widely across the military
than in any previous war.

But those medications, along with narcotic painkillers,
are being increasingly linked to a rising tide of other problems,
among them drug dependency, suicide and fatal accidents —
sometimes from the interaction of the drugs themselves.
An Army report on suicide released last year documented the problem,
saying one-third of the force was on at least one prescription medication.

“Prescription drug use is on the rise,” the report said,
noting that medications were involved in
one-third of the record 162 suicides by active-duty soldiers in 2009.
An additional 101 soldiers died accidentally
from the toxic mixing of prescription drugs from 2006 to 2009.

...

2011-03-03-NYT-Nine-Afghan-boys-killed-by-NATO-helicopters

Petraeus Apologizes for Deaths of 9 Afghan Boys
By ALISSA J. RUBIN and SANGAR RAHIMI
New York Times, 2011-03-03

KABUL, Afghanistan —

Nine boys collecting firewood to heat their homes in the eastern Afghanistan mountains
were killed by NATO helicopter gunners
who mistook them for insurgents,
according to a statement on Wednesday by NATO,
which apologized for the mistake.

The boys, who were 9 to 15 years old,
were attacked on Tuesday in what amounted to
one of the war’s worst cases of mistaken killings by foreign-led forces.
The victims included two sets of brothers. A 10th boy survived.

...

2012-05-19-WP-Laura-Bush-nato-should-not-abandon-afghanistans-women

Don’t abandon Afghan women
By Laura Bush
Washington Post Op-Ed, 2012-05-19

[A sexist observation about women is that
women make demands without any regard to
the costs of satisfying the demands.
Women set the goals; it is up to men to figure out how to satisfy them.
Is that not exactly what Laura Bush is doing?]