Calling all women...celebrating a victory

Not long ago, HBO aired "Iron Jawed Angels", a story about the fight that women took in the USA to get the right to vote. It wasn't an easy fight but now is something we don't think much about. Some to the degree that they don't even vote.
Voting...one more precious gift our country guarantees us, and one more thing a lot take for granted. In this country, quite unfortunately many are turned off by the politics of electioneering. But as I have said before...there is power in ONE. We all need to begin to stand in unison and allow our voices to be heard...to rise against the things we find offensive, to cherish our rights (and not use the I am entitled theory). We also should stand in unison and acknowledge when hard fought victories are made.
I was asked recently, "Where are all the women?". Why aren't they standing and applauding the recent vote in Afghanistan? I don't have the answer. Why wasn't the media flooding the airwaves with this most historic event? Afghanistan voting for their president!!!!!
People in Afghanistan turned out in droves to vote this past Saturday. The conditions were far from idyllic. There was the threat of being targetted by terrorists, the long long lines , the (according to our standards) unsophisticated methods of the polling places. And yet the people of this country were jubilant. Women in particular came out in great numbers. This was a major change in their lives. They have a voice now, and they responded by using it.
This was the first election for head of state in their 5,000-year history. Can you imagine?
Do we, who take our vote for granted, understand what a great accomplishment has been made here? The following is a good take on the event. http://www.techcentralstation.com/101204C.html
"Turnout was described as "massive." Men in turbans and baggy sharwals lined up in orderly fashion to cast their ballots, many of them with uncharacteristically chipper looks on their faces. One guy I saw at a mosque in central Kabul actually had mist in his eyes. Women voted beneath tents at one poll near a block of wretched Soviet-era apartment blocks, lifting their burqas even in the presence of foreign cameras. In Bamiyan, home of the giant Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban, they stood in line to vote in the first snow of the season."
It has led me to think about those women who fought for the right to vote in the USA. I now marvel that in some way, their sacrifices and determination is now touching and reaching women in another part of the world. Women who were, not so long ago, conceived as those who had no rights. This weekend those same women, some still in burqas, VOTED!
This is my applause, my shout for congratulations and best wishes. Please join me in spreading this great news and acknowledging this most precious of freedoms that has arrived in a part of our world that, once upon a time, this very wonderful undertaking would have been an "Impossible Dream". (roll the song in your head)
To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
And to run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
And to love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star
This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far
To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march, march into hell
For that heavenly cause
And I know
If I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart
Will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest
And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable,
The unreachable star
And I'll always dream
The impossible dream
Yes, and I'll reach
The unreachable star

...and so in Afghanistan...it is exactly what they did!
God bless us all.