Time editor Richard Stengel on the magazine’s most recent cover:

“First, I wanted to make sure of Aisha’s safety and that she understood what it would mean to be on the cover. She knows that she will become a symbol of the price Afghan women have had to pay for the repressive ideology of the Taliban. We also confirmed that she is in a secret location in Kabul protected by armed guards and sponsored by the NGO Women for Afghan Women. Aisha will head to the U.S. for reconstructive surgery sponsored by the Grossman Burn Foundation, a humanitarian organization in California. We are supporting that effort.

But bad things do happen to people, and it is part of our job to confront and explain them. In the end, I felt that the image is a window into the reality of what is happening — and what can happen — in a war that affects and involves all of us. I would rather confront readers with the Taliban’s treatment of women than ignore it. I would rather people know that reality as they make up their minds about what the U.S. and its allies should do in Afghanistan.”

The image is necessary, because it forces otherwise unaware readers to visually confront the appalling violence to which women in Afghanistan are consistently subject. Visually, it reminds me of this Time cover of another Afghan girl, because of the beauty and severity they are each holding in their eyes. I take issue with the headline, which seems to claim that our efforts to stop the Taliban in Afghanistan have been made because we are searching for a political solution to stop them from killing and abusing women, and trying to frame this war as a human rights issue is, simply put, too little too late. Nor is it the most effective way to combat the issues we claim to be attempting to solve, like providing access to education, as Nicholas Kristof outlined this morning in the New York Times.