It has now been eight years since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan with the promise of building a democratic state and liberating women. The invasion has failed on both counts.

Malalai Joya is one of Afghanistan’s leading democracy activists. Joya, the youngest person ever elected to its parliament, was suspended in 2007 for her denunciation of warlords and their cronies in government.

“Rather than democracy, what we have in Afghanistan are backroom deals among discredited warlords who are sworn enemies of democracy and justice,” she writes on her website.

Joya became an international figure in 2003 after she fearlessly confronted the Grand Council of tribal leaders in a constitutional assembly.

“Why would you allow criminals to be present at this Loya Jirga?” she said. “They are warlords responsible for our country’s situation. They oppress women and have ruined our country. They should be prosecuted.”

The Progressive had the opportunity to interview Joya for our radio show back in 2006. Her quiet resolve in the face of death threats touched us deeply.

We profiled her courage in a June 2007 article by Matt Pascarella, “The Bravest Woman in Afghanistan.”

Here’s an excerpt:

“Ironically, Joya’s mission to take on the warlords and the drug lords, to promote democracy and women’s rights, appears to echo the rhetoric of the Bush Administration. And yet, according to Joya, rather than live up to that rhetoric, the U.S. government is actively supporting high-ranking officials who have been accused of corruption, drug trafficking, and war crimes, including mass murders. Several of these are in the cabinet of Hamid Karzai.”

Joya let us publish an adaption of her speech she gave at the Global Forum on Freedom of Expression, held in Oslo, Norway, June 1-6, 2009.

She predicted that the Afghan elections, held in August, would be a joke.

“Afghanistan has a presidential election scheduled soon, but everyone knows that the election is a show that is throwing dust in the eyes of our people. The actual choice is with the White House to select its next puppet in Afghanistan and give him legitimacy through this show,” she said two months before the fraudulent elections.

“But we Afghans know that despite international condemnation by human rights organizations and protests by Afghan people, Karzai will be the next president with the two criminals as his vice presidents.”

President Barack Obama, who ran on an anti-Iraq War platform, needs to stop this war, too. He needs to listen to people such as Joya.

“It is due to the wrong and devastating policies of the U.S. government and NATO countries,” she said, “that unfortunately today Afghanistan is a mafia state and ranked at the top of the most unstable and corrupt countries in the world.”

This week the Senate Finance Committee voted to reinstate funding for abstinence-only education. The committee adopted an amendment put forward by Orrin Hatch to restore $50 million a year in funding for it.

Despite protests from committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT), the Senate Finance Committee voted 12-11 in favor of it. Two Democrats—Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas—joined all 10 committee Republicans in voting “yes” on the measure.

“Abstinence education works,” Hatch said in a statement.  But it doesn’t. Congress’s own research has proven doesn’t work.

“A 2007 study ordered by Congress found that middle school students who had received abstinence-only education were just as likely to have sex as teenagers as those who had not,” Jessica Valenti writes in her latest book, The Purity Myth. “The same report showed that teens who had taken abstinence classes were more likely to say that condoms were ineffective in protecting people against sexually transmitted infections.”

Moreover, girls who receive comprehensive sex education were 50 percent less likely to become pregnant than those who receive abstinence-only education, according to a 2007 a study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
Hatch’s amendment would still have to pass the full House and Senate. Obama redirected funding from abstinence-only education to broader teen pregnancy-reduction programs in his 2010 budget.

“An alternate measure offered by Baucus also passed. Baucus’ measure, which passed 14-9, would make money available for education on contraception and sexually transmitted diseases, among other things, in addition to abstinence,” reports AP. “Lawmakers will have to reconcile the two measures, both approved during debate on a sweeping health overhaul bill, as the legislation moves forward.”

This amendment was not the only one that Orrin Hatch put forward to the Senate Finance Committee. Hatch Amendment F-7 would add “transition relief for the excise tax on high-cost insurance plans for any state with a name that begins with the letter ‘U.’ ” Dana Millbank of The Washington Post writes, “There’s only one state that begins with the letter U, and that’s Utah, home state of the amendment’s sponsor, Sen. Orrin Hatch. He wanted to send a message that the Democrats were being ‘arbitrary.’ ”

Hatch can now go on Sesame Street and discuss the letter U—and the concept of pettiness.

President Barack Obama is traveling to Copenhagen to lobby for Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics. If the International Olympic Committee has any sense, it will resist his charms (and Oprah’s) and give the games to another city.

A Chicago police officer, left, scuffles with opponents of Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics who were trying to damage an Olympic symbol being put up in Daley Plaza in Chicago, on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2009.

The Olympics could be a financial disaster for the city. The range of taxpayer-linked costs runs in excess of $2.1 billion, reports the Chicago Tribune. The bid committee says much of the costs would be paid by federal tax dollars, but ultimately Chicago “taxpayers would be on the hook for any huge cost overruns.”

Huge cost overruns are a way of life for city projects. Just look at Millennium Park. The park, which is a hit locally and internationally, opened four years behind schedule. “Originally estimated to cost $150 million when plans were unveiled in 1998, the price tag ballooned to about $490 million by the time it opened in 2005,” the Tribune reported in March 2007. “Private donors covered roughly $220 million of the total, the city the remainder.”

Back then, the IOC was concerned about budgets gone wild. But now its members are going wild over Obama and Oprah in Copenhagen.

Then there’s the pesky matter of corruption, another way of life for the city. The Daley administration has been hounded by allegations of corruption for years. The Mayor has been able to rise above the fray, but some of his lieutenants are in prison. Federal investigators have found contracting irregularities and “massive fraud” in hiring practices.

Daley presides over a City Hall where people on the payroll have been accused of a dazzling displays of depravity–from nepotism to heroin dealing. All those juicy union contracts and land deals will be too much for some to resist.

Let’s hope the IOC is able to resist Obama’s overtures.