Taliban Targeted Women in Bombing

Remember before we liberated Afghanistan--widows starved as they were not allowed to work, not even to bake bread for sale. They lived off the crumbs, and were at the mercy, of Taliban men. Girls were not allowed to go to school. Those who resisted were shot in a stadium, as public entertainment.

The Taliban operate freely along the Afghan/Pakistan border. Wednesday they bombed a market on the border, frequented by women and children.

At Lady Reading Hospital, wards were filled with badly wounded women, some with their injured children in the next beds.

"There was a massive blast, and then the roof of the fabric shop I was in fell on me," said Sameena, 18, who suffered a broken leg and broken hand. Like many Pashtun Pakistanis, she uses one name. "I saw shops burning, smoke and dead bodies everywhere, many of them women. These people are inhuman. They want to keep women inside homes. And they want to kill women."

It sounds like the British built that hospital, doesn't it.

Pakistan is engaging the Taliban, fighting for the future of their country. Afghanistan is poorer and depends on NATO forces and ours to secure the peace, as they work hand in hand with us to build up their forces. We need to hold up our end so that it doesn't become a haven for these brutal terrorists again. The terrorists who blew up the benign Buddhas, carved in the hillside, safe for centuries, then attacked America on 9/11.

Half-measures will only prolong the battle and loss of life--and risk failure:

The reality of this, if Afghanistan descends into civil war and the Americans and Europeans retreat into their welfare states, may not be pretty. "Who lost Afghanistan?" will define the transatlantic conversation. The last time we saw a cash-strapped self-centered isolationist Europe and a cash-strapped self-centered isolationist United States was the 1930s.

Der Spiegel.

Times of London.

The world waits for our president, the leader of the free world, to show resolve.

Because these horrific acts are "honor killings" writ large and bloody. Now they use car bombs to attack defenseless women and children. What next? Pakistan has nukes, Iran is developing them. Terrorists with nukes and dirty bombs, a few can wreak a holocaust.

Will we defend our freedom? We are at a pivotal point. Mr. President?

More. Congress needs to read McChrystal's report. Washington Examiner.

More. Support Vets for Freedom. Afghan vets going to see Congress on Nov. 5th.

More. Victor Davis Hanson, WSJ. It seems President Obama is following Carter's disastrous path, rather than Harry Truman's:

Truman's no-nonsense Secretary of State Dean Acheson summed up the president's doctrines: "Released from the acceptance of a dogma that builders and wreckers of a new world order could and should work happily and successfully together, he was free to combine our power and coordinate our action with those who did have a common purpose."

Ever since, most Democrats have embraced Truman's "common purpose." That means containing rival anti-Western ideologies, establishing alliances of similarly-minded democratic allies, and periodically standing up to regional thugs.

Jimmy Carter's presidency was a departure from this strategy.

More. Blackfive. Honoring the fallen or staged photo-op?