Afghanistan

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Tomorrow, TIME Magazine will treat newsstand customers everywhere to one of the most rank propaganda plays of the Afghanistan War. The cover features a woman, Aisha, whose face was mutilated by the Taliban, next to the headline, "What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan." Far more people will see this image and have their emotions manipulated by it than will read the article within (which itself seems to be a journalistic travesty, if the web version is any indication), so TIME should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for such a dishonest snow job on their customers. Readers deserve better.

Let's clarify something right off the top when it comes to this cover: Aisha, the poor woman depicted in the photograph, was attacked last year, with tens of thousands of U.S. troops tramping all over the country at the time. This isn't the picture of some as-yet-unrealized nighmarish future for Afghan women. It's the picture of the present.

With TIME Magazine's horrendously misleading cover distorting the public debate on Afghanistan, it's important we let our friends and family know the truth about women's rights in Afghanistan. Please share this video with your friends. It's critical we push back against TIME's misrepresentation.

Almost a decade has passed since Laura Bush declared that "because of our recent military gains, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes" in Afghanistan. For almost a decade, that claim has been a lie.

The truth is that American military escalation will not liberate the women of Afghanistan. Instead, the hardships of war take a disproportionate toll on women and their families.

As the reader can tell, the issue is far more complex than the farcical "stay or leave" choice framed up on TIME's shameful propaganda cover art. The U.S.'s massive troop presence and the escalating instability is strengthening the hand of the political forces that want to roll back women's political equality, so the longer we stay, the worse off women will be as they attempt to navigate the eventual political settlement of the conflict. Yet, U.S. inattention to (or outright malignant influence on) the factors shaping the field for that political struggle are affirmatively hurting the struggle for women's political equality. We will leave the combat field, and we have to do it soon, and while we leave, we have to do our best to help shape a political field supportive of the Afghan women's struggle to liberate themselves.

Pulling this off will require a deft hand, and it's not clear whether the Kabul government or our own government, given the atrophied nature of the State Department, is up to the task. Given the vested interests who have a stake in the existence of the Amnesty Law, repealing it will be enormously difficult in Afghanistan's political arena (and no one should let the U.S. off the hook for helping to shape this political environment through support for known warlords and war criminals). But what is clear is that using the rights of women as a justification for extending our massive U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan is a recipe for failure on this issue and for the betrayal and heartbreak of those who care about the fate of Afghan women.

Shorter version: TIME Magazine' cover art is rank propaganda, and the current U.S. policy is failing women, badly.