As I noted in a recent column, perhaps no two sets of images better contrast Western decline than the U.S. Embassy in Kabul’s tweet celebrating “LGBTI Month” with the Pride flag and the photos of terrified Afghans swarming the Kabul airport fleeing the Taliban. The West exports a form of freedom that many non-Western countries have no desire for: total sexual liberation; the right to kill children; the obliteration of traditional marriage. Cultural colonialism is a key component of foreign policy for most Western nations.
The real war, for the woke, is not about the vicious persecution of Afghan Christians by the Taliban. Reports indicate that the Taliban is executing people for having Bible apps on their phones, kidnapping children, and forcing women and girls into sex slavery. But for progressives, the Taliban and their Christian victims are fundamentally birds of a feather—one may be more dangerous than the other, but the difference is one of degree rather than kind.
In took mere hours for leftists to start comparing Republicans to the Taliban, perhaps in an attempt to distract from the catastrophic failure of President Joe Biden, who has been working hard to deliver every item on the progressive agenda. At MSNBC, for example, Dean Obeidallah mocked the GOP leadership for expressing concern for the rights of women in Afghanistan. It is all well and good to oppose women being forced into slavery by religious extremists, Obeidallah wrote—but the real radicals are clearly pro-lifers seeking to pass legal protections for human beings developing in the womb.
While everyone “must be alarmed about what the future may hold for the women of Afghanistan,” he writes, things are nearly as bad in Arkansas, where religious extremist Governor Asa Hutchinson passed a law reflecting his “sincere and long-held pro-life convictions.” Obeidallah assures his readers that “nobody is saying the GOP and the Taliban are equally bad,” but both are trying “to impose their religious beliefs on all others.” Obeidallah is either ignoring, or is unaware of, the fact that pro-life laws are in fact based on the scientific evidence of when life begins, a fact agreed upon by 96% of biologists.
Facts, however, mean nothing. Obeidallah takes aim at a legal brief signed by 228 Congressional Republicans calling on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade:
The ability of women to control their own bodies should be a guaranteed human right, yet most of the GOP seems desperate to withhold it from them. These Republicans know that if Roe is overturned, states could make their own laws about abortion access. As a practical matter, that means nearly half the states would be very likely to enact abortion bans like the repressive Arkansas law passed in March. Women’s rights can’t be a state issue.
If the GOP wants to show that it is sincerely concerned with the rights of the women in Afghanistan, it can start by first championing the human rights of women in the U.S. But instead, it is doing all it can to prevent gender equality while oppressing women based on its members’ extreme religious beliefs. Sound familiar?
Again, he’s lying about the pro-life position for political reasons, but two can play at this game. I’m old enough to remember when genital mutilation was considered a barbaric practice that liberals rushed to condemn. That, of course, was when this practice was primarily perpetrated by Islamists using grotesque religious justifications. Now, genital mutilation in the West is referred to as “transgender healthcare” or “gender affirmation surgery”—but it is, by definition, genital mutilation nonetheless. When sane people condemn that, of course, they’re damned as bigots by the elites, who have adopted transgender ideology as dogma and on faith.
The same is true for decapitation and dismemberment, which progressives like Obeidallah oppose when perpetrated by Taliban barbarians but support when it is committed against babies in the womb. (If you think I’m exaggerating, watch this former abortionist describe the abortion procedure.) This may seem like an unfair point to make, but I am merely responding what Obeidallah is accusing pro-lifers of here. He supports the brutal destruction of innocent children in the womb, and progressives support genital mutilation as long as it is referred to by the appropriate euphemisms. That sounds harsh. But as they say, he started it, and his disgusting accusations deserve a response.
There is something very revealing about the fact that so many progressives see the plight of Afghans as an opportunity to condemn their political opponents. For progressives, “freedom” means aborting 65 million babies, the eradication of sexual morals, and facilitating sex changes for minors. For persecuted Christians in Afghanistan, freedom means something quite different. Obeidallah’s column is a good example of where progressive sympathies actually lie.
