Afghanistan Aff

Impact – War on Drugs

In addition to Davis‘s analysis, the concept of and potential for inherent and state-supported violence can also be evidenced through the prison system and through the “war on drugs” as part of a continuing culture of violence and perpetual “war.” Chris Cuomo argues that war can not be viewed as an incident that is separate or independent from society, but rather that it is essential to recognize the militaristic and violent structures and systems that shape everyday life as contributors to and forms of war. Cuomo suggests that a feminist analysis of war is particularly effective and necessary in seeing war as an ingrained and interwoven aspect of twenty-first century life, as ”part of an enmeshed continua or spectra of state-sponsored and other systemic patriarchal and racist violence” (69). The increasing growth of and reliance on the “prison-industrial complex” in the United States, and the use of a strengthened drug policy to disproportionately affect women of color are examples of a system that utilizes violence and punishment as a means of social control. Militarism in everyday life, especially when its practices and enforcement are aimed specifically toward minorities, undoubtedly impacts conceptions of race, gender and gendered relationships. The increasing reliance on and growth of the prison system in the “war on drugs” as a tool of punishment, fear and control over women and minorities most definitely qualifies as the type of “state-sponsored violence” to which Cuomo refers. The vision of war as a continuous cycle impeding upon the lives and minds of the American public will, as Cuomo suggests, make it likely that citizens will become accustomed to dualisms such as “war and peace,” “good and bad” and “right and wrong.” These black-and-white terms and ways of thinking leave little room for the gray areas of race, class and sex that are often undeniable forces in social conflicts such as the “war on drugs,” and the racist and patriarchal violence that is present in every day social institutions. Our country continues to favor legislation that is unsympathetic to the specific needs of women and mothers, and it continues to cut expenditures on social programs such as welfare while the “prison-industrial complex” engulfs the poor. In this way, the prison system is a means of violence that serves to oppress and punish an ever-increasing number of African American women, and the “war on drugs” remains a war on the black community, family and the female body.

Impact – Imperialism

U.S presence furthers imperialism which oppresses women.
Kasama 9 (Kasama, communist project for the forcible overthrow and transformation of all existing social conditions, [http://kasamaproject.org/2009/03/07/iran-call-to-oppose-womens-oppression/] AD: 6/28/10)

Women’s oppression under U.S. occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq is equally ugly and bestial. In Afghanistan, honor killing, stoning to death and forced marriage are rampant in areas under the rule of the U.S.’s Islamic Republic, as well as in areas under the Taliban. Afghanistan is run by pro-U.S. tribal chieftains, warlords and drug lords. Women cannot even show their face while walking outdoors. Since occupation of Iraq by the U.S., medieval rules of Sharia have come back to hound women, and at the same time thousands of schoolgirls have been thrown into the prostitution market in the Gulf countries, encouraged by globalization and U.S. occupation. This is how the U.S. war has “liberated” women of the Middle East. Many people in the U.S. and around the world harbor false hopes about Obama. They argue that he has promised to be “different” than the Bush regime. But in fact he has promised to pursue U.S. wars in the Middle East. Of course he takes care to call his wars “good wars.” All right! During his campaign he wasted no time encouraging Israeli attacks against Palestinians in Gaza (which came on December 27, 2008) and dubbed it “self defense.” He even used imagery of his two daughters to justify such a crime, which should be called a holocaust. Unfortunately, soon we will find out that the greedy and war-hungry Imperialist system requires and can only produce bloody and ruthless leaders. Let us be clear: We who have been in a kind of civil war with the Islamic Republic of Iran for the last 30 years are not fighting to trade one oppressor for another one. We are not fighting to liberate ourselves from the clutches of one outmoded social, ideological, political system like the IRI in order to let another outmoded system like U.S. imperialism replace it. The very workings of this system perpetuate misogyny and woman-hating religious fundamentalism in the U.S. and around the world. Nothing is a more deadly trap for the oppressed than to prefer one set of oppressors to another set of oppressors. There are no “good oppressors” vs. “bad oppressors.” We did not need GW Bush to “liberate us.” And we do not need the Obama-Hillary kiss of death! But we do need and want the support of the people living in the U.S.!

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