Here’s an issue for all women

Kathleen Parker’s column regarding the empowerment and protection of women as an essential part of our foreign policy should be mandatory reading for every American woman. Nowhere is this more essential than in Afghanistan, the country in which we supposedly are fighting for the rights of women.

Here, the Taliban for five years prohibited female education, and still would not let a woman to leave her house without her full face burqa and an male relative escort.

Parker correctly states, “Without exception every nation that oppresses women is a failed and, therefore, a dangerous state.” She cites Afghanistan as “a country where men feel free to throw acid in the faces of little girls trying to attend school.” Having spent some time in Afghanistan myself, I heard these stories but did not believe them till Nicholos Kristoff of The New York Times came home with pictures of women with disfigured, scared faces from acid having been thrown on them. Recently Time magazine had a cover showing a woman with her nose cut off.

Where are the privileged women of the United States who will stand up to condemn this barbaric treatment of our sisters? Sad to say, it seems too many advocates of women’s rights are only concerned about funding such programs as Planned Parenthood and abortion rights.

Priscilla Weese

Wheaton