Bush's War on Women Continues

The Washington Post reported on December 26, 2008, that the CIA is handing out Viagra, yes, Viagra, to cooperative older Afghani chieftains in exchange for information about the Taliban. The little blue pill is now ten years old, and is being celebrated by becoming a tool in the "war on terror."

Having just finished reading "A Thousand Splendid Suns," the second novel by Khaled Hosseini, who also wrote "The Kite Runner," the use of Viagra is yet another notch in the belt of the Bush administration's war on women. Hosseini is an Afghani emigre to the United States, trained as a doctor, who brought to us in 2003 the wondrous novel "The Kite Runner," giving a face, flesh, and body to the turmoil in Afghanistan. In 2007, he published "A Thousand Splendid Suns," because he wanted to focus on the plight of women in tribal and Taliban Afghanistan.

Illiterate young women, many still girls, in tribal areas, are regularly wed to older men. That's bad enough. Now with access to Viagra, these practices take on such cruel and horrifying aspects that they should be added to the list of war crimes mounting against the Bush administration. It's rape, it's often a form of genocide.