Bedtime stories of... violence against women

If some people argue about the comparative costs, material and human, of the US fighting on in Afghanistan or of its getting out, others prefer not to face the fact that the latter option may have some severe costs. They turn up regularly just where you'd most expect them to, on the Guardian's Comment is Free site, and here is one of the star performers in this style of miserable evasion. She is Priyamvada Gopal. 'Misogynist violence is unacceptable,' she does allow. From there, however, it's a very short space following her comma, until the inevitable 'but' which introduces all that follows. And what follows includes being 'concerned by the continued insistence that the complexities of war, occupation and reality itself can be reduced to bedtime stories' (like the story of the woman with the mutilated face), the fact that there are civilian deaths caused by US military action (as if that might undo the situation of Afghan women under Taliban rule), and a fair bit more. The whole of it, which you can read if you have the stomach, is a simple effort not to have to acknowledge that the destiny of Afghan women, to say nothing of anyone else, will not be rosy if and where the Taliban prevails. This is not a cost which certain 'progressive'-minded people - aka the verkrappt left - appear capable of talking about.