Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | What good friends left behind

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | What good friends left behind: "Today, Samar lives in constant fear for her life. She has two fearsome bodyguards with automatic weapons. One is at her office door, the other at her gate. She travels in a blacked-out van. 'For the past 23 years, I was not safe,' she told me, 'but I was never in hiding or travelling with gunmen, which I must do now... There is no more official law to stop women from going to school and work; there is no law about dress code. But the reality is that even under the Taliban there was not the pressure on women in the rural areas there is now.' "

so, there are a lot of things I could bring up that would point to our massive failure in Afghanistan...but this is the one I ran across today. We've really screwed up.
It's obvious to anyone who's paying attention. Afghanistan is not a "free" country. It is not a "democracy". It is hell, and maybe it was hell before, but now it's hell and our responsibility...