Afghanistan: Backward march for Women's rights, Obama moving 'Forward'?

President Obama has been touted [in the Liberal mainstream media and among his loyal devotees] as a so-called defender of women's rights. Indeed, the President has also championed himself as the ultimate, staunch and fearless protector of women.

On the campaign stump, Obama proclaimed, with regards to women's rights and other issues: "The choice between going backward or moving forward has never been so clear."

"We've come too far to turn back now," he asserted, despite the fact that, during his tenure in office, hundreds of thousands of women in America have lost their jobs, and poverty among women in the U.S. is highest in nearly two decades.

For accuracy's sake, rather than say, "We've come too far to turn back now", Obama should have correctly stated: "I've pulled all of us into too deep of a rut to turn back now."

Likewise, in Afghanistan, where women had seen a vast improvement in their everyday lives, after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the situation is sharply deteriorating as a result of Obama's policies, specifically his "exit strategy".

CNN - [On December 10], an unknown gunman shot and killed Najia Sediqi, acting head of the Afghan government’s Department of Women's Affairs in the eastern province of Laghman, as she traveled to work that morning. Sediqi’s murder is appalling, but not surprising.

Sediqi had held her post only a few months following the murder of her predecessor, Hanifa Safi. Safi was killed on July 13, when an improvised explosive device attached to her car was remotely detonated. Safi’s husband and daughter and six other civilians were wounded...There have been no arrests in either case.

The murders of Sediqi and Safi are more than just a measure of Afghanistan’s ongoing slide toward lawlessness and violence that is likely to accelerate as the international community draws down its support in concert with the departure of international combat troops by the end of 2014. They are also highly symbolic attacks on the tentative progress toward women’s rights, embodied by the Department of Women’s Affairs offices, since the U.S. invasion toppled the repressive Taliban regime in 2001...

4,000 cases of violence against women occurred in April through October of this year...

Foreign support for women’s rights in Afghanistan is... on the wane. International engagement in Afghanistan is declining sharply... The reality is sinking in that guarding the slow-but-important gains in women’s rights in Afghanistan will only get harder in the years ahead.

"The choice between going backward or moving forward has never been so clear. We've come too far to turn back now!"

Yep, "we've come too far", and we have fallen into too deep of a rut "to turn back now!"

Forward March!