It used to be a mission to give a future to little girls. Now the government is scrambling to explain why Canadian troops are fighting for an Afghanistan that legalizes rape within marriage.
The new Afghan law, apparently approved by President Hamid Karzai, led Western diplomats in Kabul to call an emergency meeting and hammer out a concerted response, pressuring the Karzai administration to back down.
Canadian officials insisted that Mr. Karzai still has some "wiggle room" before the law is implemented, and waited impatiently for the President's first public comments on the law.
The Conservative government expressed outrage, and opposition politicians said Canadian soldiers did not fight and die for an Afghanistan that would pass such a law.
Anyone else remember all the right wingers in this country bragging about how our troops were "over there liberating people"?
But that isn't the hypocrisy at all. Only the completely clueless would believe that little lie.
No. The hypocrisy is in the actions of the Harper government themselves. Think back to 2006. Remember the spending cuts they did back then? Kind of focused on Women's and minority programs, didn't they? Then there is Harper's personal support for Bill C-484, which would essentially strip a woman of the right to control her reproductive destiny and Bill C-537, the so-called "medical practitioner's conscience" act - another piece of moralizing garbage legislation which fundamentally affects women disproportionately.
In this light, the government's "outrage" over Afghanistan's law suddenly seems just a trifle contrived.
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