The anti-war group Code Pink, which rose to prominence with high-profile protests against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars over the past seven years, is softening its stance against the war in Afghanistan over concerns that a troop withdrawal could harm women's rights in the country.

"We would leave with the same parameters of an exit strategy but we might perhaps be more flexible about a timeline," Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin told the Christian Science Monitor. "That's where we have opened ourselves ... to some other possibilities. We have been feeling a sense of fear of the people of the return of the Taliban. So many people are saying that, 'If the US troops left the country, would collapse. We'd go into civil war.' A palpable sense of fear that is making us start to reconsider that."

The apparent shift in policy comes in the wake of a week-long trip to Afghanistan by Code Pink members, where activists were surprised to find a lot of support among women's rights activists for maintaining the US and NATO presence in the country.

The first being if this was a man, we wouldn't probably even know about it.  Even worse, this happens all day long in Africa by the ruling classes, but no outrage, why do you suppose that is ?  Nothing to do with us fighting the Taliban at all.

But that brings me another point, violence against women is despicable, but so is violence against a man.  And to be honest, if we actually started with the root cause of violence, men, and spent our money eliminating it, rather then propagating it, women everywhere would be a whole lot safer.

We preach freedom, democracy, and humanity and all that jazz that sounds great, but our country is exactly like your average family values republican politician.  It's fairly hard to take them seriously when they are caught with their pants down.  Which is what I suspect the rest of world thinks of us when we roll in with tanks, jets, and bombs waving the peace flag.

The difference of course is that war machinery  costs a whole lot of treasure, treasure we could use to clean our own act up.  The world might take us a bit more serious when we don't have a the sanctimonious gun pointed at them while talking peace.

I would imagine someone in the Taliban would be far more likely to beat their wife after fighting the US military and losing family and friends in that fight, than if he were doing whatever his job might had been before we decided to declare war on him.

Great, my pregnant daughter was beaten and killed legally/illegally ?  What a conundrum for my sorrow.

I suspect the lifespan of a Taliban judge is shorter than some maniac on death row, and that's if they are caught.  Great, justice is served.

My point being that an innocent life take is a murder, no matter where you live.  And before you start, I would bet my last dollar that the State, as in United States, has executed more than one innocent person.  And old sparky is hardly any more humane than flogging followed by a couple of bullets.

Add in the innocent people or people in for pure non-sense who are killed inside prison and you have a whole lot of injustice.

I'm not against your fight.  But your fight does not nullify mine.