From the “Everything I needed to know I learned from Star Trek” department:

“The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank.” — LCDR Montgomery Scott, “A Taste of Armageddon.”

The United Nations have been on a very much politically liberal path for decades now, hating Israel’s right to defend herself, and really everything for which Westen civilization calls, but always with faux Western justifications to bamboozle mentally weal Westerners. The hoitiest and the toitiest continue to infest Turtle Bay in Manhattan, on expense accounts to party as they please, but nevertheless ignore New York City’s vehicle regulations. But now the Taliban faction ‘governing’ Afghanistan have exposed the UN’s hypocrisy:

Shutting Afghan women out of key UN conference to appease Taliban ‘a betrayal’

Group allegedly demanding Afghan participation in Doha meeting this month be limited to men and that women’s rights be excluded from the agenda

by Tom Levitt, Annie Kelly, and Zahra Joya | Friday, June 21, 2024 | 11:27 AM EDT

Excluding Afghan women from an upcoming UN conference on Afghanistan would be a “betrayal” of women and girls in the country, say human rights groups and former politicians.

The Taliban are reportedly demanding that no Afghan women be allowed to participate in the UN meeting in Doha starting 30 June, set up to discuss the international community’s approach to Afghanistan, and that women’s rights are not on the agenda.

Since taking power in Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban have restricted women’s access to education, employment and public spaces. In March, it was reported that they would reintroduce the public flogging and stoning of women for adultery.

The Taliban did not participate in UN talks earlier this year, with the UN chief António Guterres saying at the time that the group presented a set of conditions for its participation that “denied us the right to talk to other representatives of the Afghan society” and were “not acceptable”.

Ahhh, it seems that what Secretary-General Guterres found to be “not acceptable” four months ago has now become acceptable.

Tirana Hassan, executive director at Human Rights Watch, said: “Excluding women risks legitimising the Taliban’s abuses and triggering irreparable harm to the UN’s credibility as an advocate for women’s rights and women’s meaningful participation.”

In trying to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table now, the UN was giving in to their demands to exclude women’s rights, said the former Afghan minister of women’s affairs Sima Samar.

“This situation is an indirect submission to the will of the Taliban. Law, democracy and sustainable peace are not possible without including half of the population of the society who are women. I don’t think we have learned anything from past mistakes.

No nation officially recognizes the Taliban as Afghanistan’s government, and “the U.N. has said that recognition is almost impossible while bans on female education and employment remain in place.”

Really? Isn’t inviting the Taliban to a conference a de facto recognition?

As the United States was preparing for withdrawal in 2021, a withdrawal mostly negotiated under President Trump but finalized under President Biden, Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said, “We are going to allow women to work and study…women are going to be very active, but within the framework of Islam.” That turned out to be just another one of the Taliban’s lies, which everyone should have known at the time. From the Vietnamese Communists, to the Soviet Union, to the Taliban, and to Hamas, hostile nations negotiating with Western nations have shown absolutely no compunctions about telling the lies that they believe will be accepted by Western diplomats eager to reach an accommodation.

Mr Scott was right, of course: diplomacy without the willingness to use force is mostly useless: the UN can ‘negotiate’ with the Taliban, but those Islamist fanatics have proven time and time and time again that they will do whatever they damned well please for as far as they can get away with it . . . and no one is willing to go back into Afghanistan to enforce any sort of Western civilization will.