Miniskirts have apparently helped convince Donald Trump to send more US troops into Afghanistan.
Trump has always been a pretty protectionist leader. No no, he doesn’t want to protect the US’s interests, or its citizens (just the ones who voted for him, and now his approval rating is tanking, the ones who still like him). Protectionist, in political-speak, means he doesn’t want to go to war.
In fact, according to his Twitter, on 14th January 2013, ahead of his candidacy he condemned the war, demanding that troops be brought back to the US.
This has, so far, been reflected by his tenure as president. Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, encouraged him to use privately-paid troops rather than actual members of the US navy. But now that Bannon has been sacked - or, as White House officials put it, set to work on Breitbart, his flagging far-right media empire - things are changing.
National security adviser HR McMaster, a general who has served in Afghanistan, warned Trump that withdrawing from Afghanistan would be a huge problem.
According to The Washington Post, McMaster wooed Trump over to the war side by showing him a black and white photo of Afghan women in miniskirts walking through Kabul in 1972. The idea was, ‘to show him that Western norms had existed there before and could return.’
As Trump put it in his speech on Monday: ‘My original instinct was to pull out, and historically I like following my instinct’
‘So I studied Afghanistan in great detail and from every conceivable angle. After many meetings, over many months, we held our final meeting last Friday at Camp David, with my cabinet and generals, to complete our strategy.’
The thing is, while it’s fantastic that Afghan women - who have been forced, by law, to live inhibited lives ever since the 1978 Revolution - could be liberated, is it really for Trump to do that? There are endless debates to be had about the necessity of western intervention. But even if you think it’s a great idea for the west to stride into other countries, even on the basis that the US should clear up the mess it’s been making in Afghanistan for 16 years now, will Trump’s western values look like a positive alternative to the status quo?
Trump might not have signed into law any diktat on what women should or should not wear, but he has actively stopped women having rights over their own bodies, bragged about grabbing at women’s genitals with no reproach due to his fame and power, called women pigs, and questioned the professionalism of women on the basis they could be on their periods. We could continue but we won't, the list is too long and depressing.
Doubtless, Afghanistan needs some patching up, and women need to be afforded equal rights. But if Trump needs to lead by example he should try setting a better one, otherwise the liberation he'll be importing will be just as toxic as that chlorine chicken the US has been flogging.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.