OPINION
A4
APRIL 15, 2014
Afghanistan: a victory for the US, women
The recent presidential election in the Middle East may be a sign that the region is making increased progress Tré Goins-Phillips dgoinsphillips@liberty.edu
I saw the headlines, and it was as if I was reading a fantasy, something that could not be true—under any circumstances. As I have Googled information about the Afghani election, I have been met with headlines calling the day at the polls a “victory,” “success,” “shock” and, the most surprising of all, “relatively peaceful.” The presidential election, held April 5, was a grandiose display of patriotism. This second national vote displayed an unequivocal desire to see the nation’s seemingly innumerable woes resolved. Among all of the victories, the United States and Afghani women were big winners. The power and presence of the Taliban seem to have diminished, a topic many speculate for different reasons. According to Michael Kugelman of the Huffington Post, it is because the Taliban is worried about its image and wants to have a better standing with the coming administration as a political entity. Others have said it is because of the United States’ “War on Terror” that has weakened the power of the Taliban. In either case, this is a time of great opportunity for the West and for women. America’s engagement in Afghanistan has produced great
successes. According to the U.S. embassy in Kabul, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), in collaboration with the Afghan government, has built more than 680 schools since 2002, enrolling nearly 7 million students. Of those students, 37 percent of them are female. This stands in stark contrast to 2001 when the Taliban still ruled the nation, and less than one million students were in school—and not a single one of them was a girl. For women, this was a major shift from the heavily patriarchal Afghanistan. In an era where the rules of the Taliban seem to be dwindling, three women threw their name in for vice president. “Of course, to be in politics as a woman is a risky task,” Dr. Habiba Sarabi, first female governor in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province and vice presidential candidate, said in The Independent, a British news source. “But we have to take the risk, otherwise we cannot achieve our goal. We cannot expect everything can be soft or everything can be clear on our way.” Ashraf Ghani, the frontrunner for president, has broken an age-old tradition by including his wife, Rula Ghani, in his campaign. Rula Ghani claims to be a Lebanese Christian and has been called the “most Westernized woman among the Kabuli elite,” by several Afghani news sources.
Google Images
DEVELOPMENT — An Afghanistani voter shows his inked finger to show that he has voted. Educated in the United States, Ashraf Ghani is the former finance minister of Afghanistan and the former chancellor of Kabul University. He is known as a scholar of political science and anthropology, and he worked at World Bank on international development assistance. Ashraf Ghani has agreed to sign President Barack Obama’s agreement to keep foreign troops in the country after their scheduled withdrawal date at the end of 2014. The United States’ continued presence is critical for the continued advancement of freedom.
Afghanistan’s women know that, and they took their civic duty seriously. According to the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan, 35 percent of the 16 million voters were women. With the coming of a new regime, Afghanistan and the U.S.—along with the rest of the Western leaders—have the opportunity to forge strong relationships and continue moving into greater freedom. The final results of the election are not expected for a couple weeks, and there are bound to be many bumps along the way. The
Taliban is not gone, and radical Islam is still around. However, there has been great progress. All in all, I am proud of our armed forces, hopeful for the Afghani people and optimistic that long-term efforts to build strong alliances in the Middle East will be launched in this great window of opportunity. GOINS-PHILLIPS is an opinion writer.
Supreme Court drops donation limits The Supreme Court decides to no longer limit the amount of money one can donate to a political campaign Tyler Beaston tbeaston@liberty.edu
In a 5-4 decision Wednesday, April 2, the U.S. Supreme Court removed the limit on political campaign donations from individuals to federal candidates, according to a Washington Post article by Robert Barnes. The justices of the Supreme Court ruled to remove the cap because it conflicts with a person’s First Amendment right to free speech. Obviously, the issue hardly relates to speaking, but more generally to freely supporting candidates. I side with Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr. and the other four justices who opposed the limit on donations, solely because I believe people should be allowed to do with their money whatever they like, short of illegal dealings. The Washington Post article quotes Roberts, who said, “There is no right more basic in our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders.” In a time marked by a significant growth of government regulation in the economy and high taxes, this recent decision up-
by Greg Leasure It has been 39 days since Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 disappeared. In that amount of time, relatives of the 239 people on board have been waiting to be told what became of their loved ones, whether or not they will ever see them LEASURE again.
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Could it not be that each Supreme Court justice voted not based on their political persuasions but on their convictions?
holds individuals’ rights to use their property at their own discretion — a refreshing change of policy in my opinion. The opposing justices and their supporters see the removal of the donation cap as an opportunity for some of the country’s wealthiest people to unfairly contribute to candidates. Opponents of the decision fear that people giving money will find loopholes to give even more funds, according to a CNN article by Bill Mears and Tom Cohen. Additionally, a relationship between money givers and receivers could appear to be based on favors. For example, someone might give money to a candidate in return for a political benefit. The concern is legitimate enough, and these under-the-table transactions cannot
The search for Flight 370 has been relentless, and multiple countries, including the United States, have joined in the search. But as time passes, bringing more questions than answers, hope has continued to dwindle. Initially, the search covered a massive area, spanning much of the Eastern Hemisphere. Next, there were reports of debris floating in the ocean, but still, nothing was found. Eventually, the search strategy shifted to efforts to track pings from the missing plane’s black box that might lead to its location before its 30-day
— TYLER BEASTON be condoned. But what opponents must recognize is that devious dealings will always transpire and loopholes will always be exploited — it is in human nature to do so. The existence of a donation cap could never change a person’s unethical inclinations. There is still a limit on the amount that donors can give to individual candidates, so dissenters have little reason to complain. Donors can give no more than $5,200 to one candidate within a two-year election cycle, Mears and Cohen wrote. In keeping with governmental precedents, this court case has been politicized like everything else that comes out of D.C. It has become positively tiresome, the talk of partisanship that supposedly influenced the justices’ decision. Of course,
battery life failed. Now, according to CNN, Australian Chief Search Coordinator Angus Houston announced Monday they will abandon the search for pings and begin using a Bluefin-21 unmanned, underwater vehicle equipped with side-scan sonar technology to search the bottom of the ocean for the lost plane. The situation is enough to make anyone wonder — how can something as big and normally so welltracked as an airplane be lost? The search, now that it has shifted to the ocean floor, is almost reminiscent of the search for the Titanic.
it was the Republicans or Conservatives who supported the limit’s removal. And of course, the Democrats and Liberals stood for its continuation. “It again reveals a court deeply divided between Liberals trying to preserve campaign finance restrictions they say are essential to ensuring democracy is not distorted by the wealth of the powerful, and Conservatives who think the First Amendment trumps efforts by the government to control who pays for elections and how much they spend,” Barnes wrote. Could it not be that each Supreme Court justice voted based not on their political persuasions but on their convictions? I disagree with limiting individual donations in spite of my conservative tendencies, not because of them. Any mention of political parties in relation to this case is really quite irrelevant. BEASTON is an opinion writer.
“This will be a slow and painstaking process,” Houston said of the Bluefin-21’s mission. After all, the vehicle is only capable of searching approximately 15 square miles every 24 hours. Despite the slow pace, the search must continue, not only for the sake of the people who are waiting to find answers about what happened to their loved ones, but also to find any information about how to prevent something like this from happening again.