Well I really can’t blame anyone who is not all that optimistic about a democracy flourishing in Iraq. The news from the area certainly doesn’t me into a “yay, they’ll have democracy, justice, human rights, and social equality soon!” mood. First up, there has been a delay in the presentation of the draft of the Iraqi Constitution. You know, the document that will–hopefully-ensure justice and liberty for all, and human rights for the Iraqi people (which should also include women by the way).
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 15 – Still deadlocked after days of negotiations, Iraq’s leaders decided today to give themselves another week to agree on a new constitution and resolve a series of fundamental disagreements over the future and identity of this fractious land.
After meeting for several hours inside the protected Green Zone here, a group of senior Iraqi leaders told the National Assembly that they were unable to resolve a number of critical issues, including the role of Islam, the rights of women, the sharing of the country’s vast oil wealth and whether to grant the majority Shiites their own semi-independent region in the south.
Minutes before midnight, the leaders of the assembly agreed to amend the country’s interim constitution and give themselves until next Monday to strike a deal. There were proclamations of brotherhood and pledges to work together, but the leaders said that ultimately their differences were too vast to bridge today, the previous deadline.
“They need time,” Prime Minister Irbahim Jafaari said after the assembly vote. “I think next week will be enough.”[…]
Wonderful. And will they be able to settle issues such as the role of Islam, women’s rights, and ‘who gets control over the oil’ in a week? Will any of these issues be disparaged and marginalized for the sake of another? And gee, if so, which one of these issues will be most likely marginalized? Do you need a hint? And yes, lest we forget about sweet, delicious, non-renewable oil–with its slick ebony goodness, which has become the root of all–for lack of a better word–evil, when it comes to international political wrangling.
[…]The issue of Shiite autonomy is especially significant because the richest oil fields are situated in the extreme south of the country.
Indeed, some Sunni leaders say the Shiite demand for self-rule is largely a cover for hoarding the bulk of Iraq’s oil revenue. On Sunday, an agreement on sharing oil revenues between the central and regional governments fell apart, with the Shiites demanding more control.[…]
Oh oil. Damn your ability to instigate conflicts and even all-out wars over you, and you’re not even renewable–effin’ succubus. As if Sunni and Shiite muslims need another “reason” to be at each other’s throats. And no, things aren’t looking up for the women of Iraq. With debate over the role of Islam in the Iraqi Constitution, there is, and reasonably so, a strong concern that extremist-Islamic clerics could use it as a means to legislate the subjugation of women and girls in the country. (via Salon.com)
Women’s rights groups in the Middle East fear that Iraqi women will be the biggest losers in the country’s new Constitution.
[…] But the religious and ethnic power grab that, in the wake of Saddam, has fractured the country into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish mini-states, does not bode well for women. Since the fall of the Baath regime to the Americans, practitioners of political Islam in both the Shiite and Sunni communities have risen to power, with Iran looming large in the background. Should their fundamentalist tenets dominate the constitution, say women’s rights activists in Iraq and the Middle East, individual rights for women may be nowhere in sight in the new Iraq.
Women, who make up 60 percent of Iraqi society, are underrepresented in the burgeoning government. During Iraq’s election in January 2005, 275 representatives were voted into a new National Assembly, 33 percent of whom were women. The 55-member Constitutional Committee, primary architects of the new constitution, is only 17 percent women.
Yes, but as history as shown us, when it comes to forming a democratic nation, you need hypocrisy. Do it by socially and legally disenfranchizing groups of people, no matter how much they out-number the ruling group, and no matter how realistically, it goes against everything you preach. Duh. Look at the beginnings of our nation’s democracy and even France’s. Their’s and our democracies were “one-sided” and hypocritical. Only specific group of people were allowed to enjoy all the freedoms and liberties. Do it for democracy and following the natural flow of history, Iraq, and give in to the pressures of the extremist-clerics, and that should aid the process. (rolls eyes) My head hurts. And because you need another downer about the situation in Iraq, especially the in regards to the women and girls of the country, FGM appears to be more widespread in the region than previously known.
In rural areas of Iraq, female genital mutilation (FGM) may be far more widespread than previously thought. WADI, a German NGO, conducted a study of over 1,500 women in a Kurdish region known as Germian, and found that 60 percent of these women reported having undergone FGM. In the absence of statistics, estimates had ranged between 10 and 40 percent of women in the Kurdish region, reports IRIN News.
Many people, especially in rural areas, continue to believe that female circumcision is required by Islamic law. Senior Kurdish clerics issued a fatwa against the custom in 2002, according to the Christian Science Monitor, but information is slow to reach remote villages, where women who have not undergone FGM are considered promiscuous and unclean. Collecting data on FGM in Iraq has been difficult, as the practice is not openly acknowledged, as in parts of Africa. WADI credits its established relationships with the people of the region for allowing this study to occur. Suheila Hidayat Qadir, a WADI mobile team doctor, told IRIN that “You can’t just go into a village and ask women if they’ve been circumcised… This is a practice that goes on in secret. Nobody talks openly about it.”
And with the extremist-clerics clamoring for more influence in drafting the Iraqi Constitution, I wonder what will become of this situation should the clerics get what they want. Yes, with all that is happening in Iraq as of this moment, as you can tell, I’m walking on sunshine about it. But then again, I never was to begin with–certainly not when Saddam was in control. Sigh.
Sad, but true reality, P-A. The truth is ambition in Iraq has been blind to all but one man’s dark vision.
More on this plus a ton of links at http://theheretik.typepad.com/the_heretik/2005/08/vampire_policy.html
Yes, but 33% of elected reps at the national level are women. Where else in the Middle-East (apart from Israel) would you find such a process and such a result, let alone an open election?
The country’s citizens will work out their form of self-governance, one step at a time, like any other democracy. They now have room to hold serious negotiations about the framework. The more thoroughly they discuss the issues, no matter the specific outcomes, the more committed they are bound to become to making their agreement stick. They know the balance is going to require convincing the electorate and even greater diligence long after the ratification of the Constitution by the electorate.
Given the education level and demonstrated political resourcefulness of Iraqi women, and their numbers as voters in all areas of the country, there is more reason to hope for strengthening of liberty than to pre-ordain defeat of democracy in Iraq. Americans might consider taking advantage of this opening to help Iraqi women push forward, rather than criticize their efforts.
The threat from Iran is notable in terms of violence, as well as ideology, and yet Iraqis, not Iranians, will vote on the Iraqi Constitution. And the Iraqis are central players in the Coalition that has given democracy a huge boost in the region.
This progress has been made possible by the removal of Saddam and with the continued presence of the Coalition, and not by the violence committed by the relatively few armed attackers who want to intimidate and terrorize the People and their representatives. As with any other country in the Middle East, to develop democracy and to reject dictatorships, Iraqis must face down the violent opposition, in the form of al-Qaida. And that oppositions has already shown its policy toward women and toward political dissent.
Here’s some background that might put the democratic and political developments in Iraq into broader perspective:
“What al-Qaida Really Wants,” by Yassin Musharbash
The Seven Phases of The Base
To whoever’s responsible for the problems (i.e. the proposed Sharia exemption for women’s rights): You lived with women having rights under Saddam, you can live with them now.
Regarding the FGM thing: Much as I hate to admit it, banning it would have no more effect (less, in fact) than banning abortion. Instead, I recommend a) require informed consent (therefore requiring the girls in question at least be old enough to give consent), b) offer protection and asylum for girls who don’t want it but are pressured to have it, c) make it legally possible for any woman at any age to bring charges against people who pressured/forced her to undergo it at any time in the past, on the basis of the informed consent either absent or given under pressure or duress, and d) attempt some sort of information campaign so that more people understand that it isn’t required.
Someone once told me that the Qu’ran says sexual pleasure is a gift from Allah, to be enjoyed by married couples. Not sure if they were exaggerating, but it seems like that part, if it’s there, is the equivalent of Song of Songs/Song of Solomon in the Bible: the thouroughly ignored part that nobody ever mentions.
Here’s a link to a site that’s working to promote women’s rights in Iraq:
http://speakup.oxygen.com/campaigns/womensrights/
(Thanks to Autumn at my comments section for the link.)
Also, please support Women for Women:
http://www.womenforwomen.org/exsum.html
Some of the best sources for Iraqi news are the Iraqi blogs:
http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/
http://messopotamian.blogspot.com/
http://hammorabi.blogspot.com/
I have several thoughts on FGM as practiced in Iraq. First, this is strange. I did not know it was done in Mesopotamia at all. It is mostly as far as I know an African thing and is practically unheard of in the Gulf (though not totally – and given the fact that so many living in the Gulf are from somewhere else it is probably increasing there). I note that the data is exclusively from a Kurdish rural area. Why? Is there data on urban or rural women who are Arab Sunni or Arab Shia? If it is a Kurdish tribal issue only, and not an issue in other groups, then it should be handled in that context.
In Egypt it is still widespread in spite of government and religious establishment statements against it. I agree iwth the person who says banning it would not solve anything as it is already not practiced publicly.
I also am shocked that I have been reading in the past several days (on a variety of sites, but I don’t think it was mentioned on this one) that there is apparently a doctor in CA who does something similar to FGM as a type of cosmetic surgery that women are actually asking for (called labiaplasty or something like this?). What is that all about, and why is it not even pointed out that this is, well, sort of like FGM? Because a lot of what FGM is about is not so much making women not feel (in fact, many people will try to tell you it does not have that effect) but being “cleaner” or more aesthetically pleasing, so that seems to me to be a lot like what some Western women are apparently doing.
I am strongly against FGM as are many grassroots organizations in the Middle East. But the FGM issue, as it is usually presented by Western organizations, is not presented with a lot of helpful suggestions as to how to make it happen less – it seems they are more into deploring the overall foreign culture they see it as a symbol of, much like how Westerners often react to women wearing the scarf on the head.
Shouldn’t it be a bit more honest and less culturally condescending to create a mass “by women – for women movement” against the idea that our natural parts should be redesigned by doctors to please others, than constantly examining Middle Eastern / African practices from a Western perspective and saying that they are bad and should be somehow gotten rid of?
I am going to sort of go out on a limb here and tell you all something you may not know. Because of this type of approach, it just looks to people of the ME (including women) that Westerners use FGM as a hook to disparage their overall culture (and/or religion) but don’t really care about the underlying misogyny that prompts things like or analogous to FGM in all cultures including their own.
(As an example, when CNN did that broadcast of a FGM procedure in Egypt, it had absolutley no good impact on Egypt per se as to discouraging the practice – it just made Egyptians that much more angry at CNN and Westerners in general for making Egypt look bad and it was totally counterproductive as a tactic, if we assume the goal was to make FGM less practiced in Egypt or anywhere else.)
The whole issue about Western feminist movements and their way of addressing women’s issues in Third World countries is really problematic, by the way. The Feminist Majority’s tactics with Afghanistan and other probably well-intentioned but disastrous campaigns start out with their own conception of other women’s problems. They need to listen to other women first. Women in Afghanistan, Egypt, etc. should be leading their own movements – and actually they already are, but western organizations tend to have this “white knight” attitude towards third world women, that is really condescending and ends up being counterproductive in the long run.
I hope you don’t think I am attacking western feminists in general, (I am one after all) but there is a privilege issue here that they just need to see. I’ll shut up now.
I don’t have much to add to the overall topic, because I don’t have much more than a surface knowledge of the facts around practice of FGM. But I did think that this was a really good point right here. The ‘white knight’ attitude seems to pervade a lot of American international movements. It’s a huge issue in the environmental world, where our large NGOs overshadow the groups they’re ostensibly trying to help, and it’s a problem in the ID world as well. Overall, Americans just need to learn a certain amount of humility. Iraq would probably be in much better shape if we did.
It’s the classic argument for colonialism — the “white man’s burden.”
Actually, I’ve read a number of articles on feminist boards and blogs –including here, just recently– regarding the nastiness of labiaplasty. Can’t recall whether any of them made the FGM connection, though it’s worth noting that “theraputic” removal of the clitoris was not exactly unknown in the “civilized” West. I believe the practice hit its stride in the late 19th Century and was still being employed occasionally as late as the 1950s.
Oh, and I’ve heard more than one woman draw parallels between the wearing of the veil/headscarf and the “I-Can’t-Be-Seen-Outside-Without-Full-Makeup routine. I’m sorry if I seem to be trivializing the issues of women in the Mid-East and elsewhere, or trying to play more-oppressed-than-thou. That’s not my intent, but it’s worth noting that the West isn’t as evolved as its pitchmen (and occasional pitchwomen) like to think. The obsession with cosmetics and cosmetic surgery is a mainstay of partiarchal thought: It exists to tell women that they’re simply of no use if their bodies are left undoctored. It’s a secular, rather than religion-based message, but it’s still oppressive.
Anna in Cairo, thanks for making some good points. I share your perceptions about Western media and activists often using the barbarity of FGM for sensational effect, without offering any avenues for constructive activism. (With all due respect, I would suggest that Pseudo-Adrienne’s post might fall into that category.)
All I can do right now is make another plug for Women For Women
http://www.womenforwomen.org/aohist.html
which I’ve supported for more than a year. They do very good work. Their founder, Zainab Salbi, is a native of Baghdad, Iraq, and has a lot of first-hand experience with oppressed women in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. If you’re reading this, and you want to do something to help Iraqi women, a donation to W4W would be a great place to start.
I am optimistic for the prospect of democracy in Iraq. I am not optimistic that the general population will end up being able to exercise the rights that we all enjoy in America – I think that religious freedom and the rights of women will be less than we have. But I am optimistic that they will have more rights than perhaps any people in the Middle East (with the exception of Isreal), and that given time they’ll approach what we have a lot quicker than any other country there.
I’m also optimistic that they’ll catalyze the development of democracy in other Middle East countries. I’m pessimistic in that I imagine that this development will involve bloodshed. But then, it involved bloodshed here in the U.S.A. as well, and we started out with governmental structures a lot closer to our democratic republic than they have.
Ron –
I also hope that democracy prospers, that all the factions get along without a civil war, and that women will retain their freedom. However, I doubt that this will occur within my lifetime.
With 2 of the 3 factions recommending Shariah Law to be drafted into the constitution, some sort of theocracy will probably arise. It will be worse for these women, because they HAD a great deal of rights before the invasion. To have something taken away feels worse than not having them in the first place.
I still smell a civil war in the near future. That is if they ever iron out their differences with the constitution. The insurgents are not going away, and one of the 3 factions is likely to be dissatisfied with lack of the governmental power it will ultimately receive.
So are you talking about these good things happening in the near future? I don’t see it. At least until after many more innocent people die. For me, this whole thing was a big mistake. (I am omitting my utter disdain for the lies and blatant miscalculations of the current administration.) For your sake, I hope the final death count is acceptable to you.
The difference between FGM andlabioplasty (or whatever) is merely the difference between women being commodities – to be bought and traded and occasionally be branded lest they be stolen by the rustlers – or women being pandas – not quite human but protected by harm by law and appreciated as long as they’re cute.
er . . . protected from harm that should be. And the sad thing is that I’m only half kidding.
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Natural:
Given the group and mass graves that keep getting uncovered, it seems the death count was clicking along quite merrily before Saddam was overthrown. Of course, Saddam killed his 10,000’s and 100,000’s well out of the view of media coverage, but perhaps those deaths don’t mean as much as the 17oo Americans who gave their lives and the 20,000 Iraqis who have died as a result of the effort to stop him.
I say I’m optimistic, but there’s no question that civil war is definitely a possibility. And it would really get messy, too, because if the Kurds declare independence the Turks will probably invade with at least the tacit support of Russia, China and Iran, all of whom have Kurdish ethnic groups nearby and who don’t want to see Kurdistan created by carving out pieces of their territories.
But many things are still up in the air. There are factions that want sharia to be adopted, but whether they have the votes is another question. And if they do get it in the proposed Constitution, there’s a good chance that it will be voted down on that very basis by the electorate.
What’s going to be interesting here is that the Constitutional delegates may find that putting together a proposal that *they* want isn’t going to succeed; they need to put together a Constitution that the *electorate* wants, or it won’t get approved. This is a new concept for Middle Eastern leaders, and it may take them a couple passes for the idea to get though to them.
Because if this Constitution gets voted down, it won’t be a disaster. It’s a reset. The government of the country continues, a new set of delegates get voted up, this time with a much better idea of what the electorate will buy off on, and they try again. And meanwhile more police and armed forces get trained, more clinics and schools get built, more wells get dug, more oil gets pumped and sold to support the nation (they are up to 90% of pre-war capacity), more girls and boys got to school and learn something other than what Saddam taught them, and the country becomes more and more ready to take over it’s own governance and security. There’s a lot more going on in Iraq than car bombs, although you’d never know it from what you see on TV.
I do not doubt that there are positive things going on in Iraq, and it is nice that the US initiated them. However so, my point is that we should have had our eye on the ball (al Qaeda and Osama). We have now spent billions and many lives on a a glimmer of a hope that it will get better. Please. We could have used all that money and bought lottery tickets or sent everyone to Vegas.
Do not think that the positive things elsewhere in the Middle East have even a remote link to our invasion. Israel is where it is today because Arafat got sick and died. Syria is where it is today because someone made the mistake of killing Hariri. However, I attribute Iran’s insistence to continue its nuclear program a direct consequence of our little war. We will think twice about invading one of the Axes of Evil that actually may have nukes.
Oh, BTW – we apparently are not fighting all the terrorists “over there” because London was bombed. It seems someone may have either been upset about the invasion or wanted to use that excuse to terrorize the Brits. We have done well to harden our targets here at home, but we needn’t have gone to Iraq to do so.
I am merely saying that we should have left everything there alone. I come to this conclusion due to the money, the deaths, the increased instability in the region, and the free recruitment for new al Qaeda operatives. Saddam was evil, but there are many more in this world. You mention the mass graves. Did you know that some of people were killed after the invasion? The more things change, the more things stay the same.
We should not be so quick to pass judgment on leaders who do things that the people do not like nor on theocratic tendencies. Our own leaders are doing things that many people do not like, and one can look to the Ten Commandments cases to see our theocracy budding. Mother Condi is travelling all over the world telling Saudis they should respect women’s rights, but here our leaders are allowing pharmacists to not dispense BC pills and hoping the next Supreme Court Justice dismantles Roe vs Wade. People in glass houses should not drop bombs. Sometimes I wish some other country would take pity and overthrow our government.
The thought of shariah and FGM in Iraq is a blaring example that true freedom for the Iraqi people is not as simple as removing a tyrant. If we are not to be perceived as hypocrites and liars for declaring the wish to free Iraq, we can only sit idly by and watch this nightmare unfold. It is their country, and if they want to oppress their own people, they can, right? But does this mean that if it gets too bad we will go in again and replace the government? We need to consider some of these questions while we are patting ourselves on the back for a job well done.
“However so, my point is that we should have had our eye on the ball (al Qaeda and Osama).”
No argument there. One of the reasons there are so many messes world wide is because we’ve made some of them.
“Do not think that the positive things elsewhere in the Middle East have even a remote link to our invasion.”
I was limiting myself to Iraq, with the exception of Israel, whose democratic structures were inherited from the influx of Europeans. But part of the changes in Syria are likely from them worrying about the American army next door, that just might decide to grab a few miles of Syrian territory to simplify interdiction of terrorists (at least they think …).
“I attribute Iran’s insistence to continue its nuclear program a direct consequence of our little war.”
Go ahead if you want, but I think that the 10-year war with Iraq had a lot to do with it.
“Oh, BTW – we apparently are not fighting all the terrorists “over there” because London was bombed.”
I never said they did. But we’re fighting the vast majority of them over there, it seems. I have no doubt that there will be another spectacular attack on American soil sometime in the future, but by harrying them in their homelands we pin a lot of their forces down over there as much as ours are.
“It seems someone may have either been upset about the invasion or wanted to use that excuse to terrorize the Brits.”
There were Islamic terrorists creating cells in Britian well before the Iraq War. Saddam’s (and other ME tyrants’) intolerance for these guys drove them overseas for fear of their lives, and Britian made the mistake of giving them asylum. That’s where most of the crazy Imams and their followers came from. We have done well to harden our targets here at home, but we needn’t have gone to Iraq to do so.
“I am merely saying that we should have left everything there alone.”
Maybe. But I don’t think they were going to leave us alone. They were coming for us. In fact, on 9/11/2001 they did come for us, well before the Iraq War or even the Afghan one.
“Saddam was evil, but there are many more in this world.”
Just because we can’t do everything doesn’t mean we should do nothing.
” You mention the mass graves. Did you know that some of people were killed after the invasion? The more things change, the more things stay the same.”
Not nearly as many as were killed before the war. And there were no gassings, where a tyrant used human insecticide to lay waste to thousands and leave men and women and children as rotting corpses in the streets.
“We should not be so quick to pass judgment on leaders who do things that the people do not like nor on theocratic tendencies. Our own leaders are doing things that many people do not like, and one can look to the Ten Commandments cases to see our theocracy budding. Mother Condi is travelling all over the world telling Saudis they should respect women’s rights, but here our leaders are allowing pharmacists to not dispense BC pills and hoping the next Supreme Court Justice dismantles Roe vs Wade. People in glass houses should not drop bombs. Sometimes I wish some other country would take pity and overthrow our government.”
The things you mention pale before the gassings, or Saddam’s sons throwing women they’ve raped into wood chippers after they’re done, or Saddam’s punishment of the Marsh Arabs by damming up the river feeding their marshs, both a human and an ecological disaster. If you don’t like the things our government does, you can protest. You can try to vote the bastards out. Saddam’s opponents would die, in many cases horribly, if they had tried that.
“The thought of shariah and FGM in Iraq is a blaring example that true freedom for the Iraqi people is not as simple as removing a tyrant.”
10-4 on that. We can help the Iraqi people, but in the end we can’t give them freedom, we can only help them take it.
“But does this mean that if it gets too bad we will go in again and replace the government?”
Depends on what you think “too bad” is. A rising incidence of FGM is horrible, but is it cause to invade? No. I kind of doubt that you’ll end up with the mass murders again. Now, if the Sunni triangle becomes independent and starts inviting in whoever to build terrorist training bases, you may see some action.
“We need to consider some of these questions while we are patting ourselves on the back for a job well done. ”
We needed to consider a lot of these questions, and others, *before* we invaded. A piss-poor job of planning “what next” was done, and we and the Iraqis are paying the price for it. But it was never going to be clean or bloodless. I thought we’d lose 10,000 American lives on the march to Baghdad alone.
I am soooo sick of this snickering type of comment. The thousands that Saddam killed he did do in full view of the world, and the United States told him to go on ahead. The United States gave him gas for goodness sake. There were people talking about it before, humanitarian groups who tried to bring attention to the atrocities, just as there are humanitarian groups who try to bring attention to atrocities everywhere, and they were roundly dismissed.
And as for the argument that we shouldn’t do whatever we can, there are atrocities everywhere, and the reason we don’t invade and replace every single country is because we don’t have the power, in boots on the ground or in equipment, to invade every country with an evil leader, replace him or her (probably him) with someone who will fix up the country, and leave people there to stabilize the situation. There was horrible planning and everyone is paying for it now. Including those 20,000 Iraqis you mentioned who “died as a result of the effort” to overthrow Saddam, and their families.
But we don’t pin a lot of their forces down over there as much as ours are, because there are a finite number of terrorists. In fact, some people believe that the terrorists recruit people, and that certain actions might lead them to recruit more people. Meaning that we can be fighting several new terrorist groups in Iraq, while others are still free to do what they want. They are not having the recruiting crisis that we are.
It’s not putting together a Constitution acceptable to the majority of the electorate that’s causing the problems, so much, as putting together a Constitution acceptable to the highly armed and dangerous militias, a rather small portion of the electorate. And if the Constitution fails it really could be a disaster. Things are being built, yes, that’s great. But the insurgency is also growing, people are being killed, bombs are going off. It’s not safe to go to the new schools, and car bombs send people to the new clinics.
“I am merely saying that we should have left everything there alone.”
Maybe. But I don’t think they were going to leave us alone. They were coming for us. In fact, on 9/11/2001 they did come for us, well before the Iraq War or even the Afghan one.
RonF, this is ignorant at best and deceptive at worst. Neither Iraq, nor Saddam Hussein, nor any group supported by the former Iraqi regime “came for us.” It was our allies the Saudis, who “came for us,” if you want to put it into those terms.
I am sorry for all my previous rantings. This war is making me absolutely crazy. People are dying and being blown apart. All this evidence of the Downing Street memo and other ilk of the lies being told to the American people, and people still rehash all the same, tired excuses for supporting the war.
Ron, the 9-11 connection is so last year. Bush refuted this idea…but only after he repeatedly implied it enough so that people such as you will always argue like it is fact. As much as I hate this administration, this is a genius concept. Brainwashing always helps keep everyone in line.
When I mentioned that things may get bad enough for us to intervene again, I wasn’t referring to the FGM thing. Governments don’t really care about that. Instead, I was envisioning a future of a democratically elected official rising to power by intimidating and killing his enemies. Then he goes on to murder his own people, invade a country, and other vile acts. Oops – that already happened…with Saddam.
For me, who thinks invading a sovereign nation is not so hot of an idea, democracy can be a double-edged sword. The new government will be now free to choose how it will run (if it ever gets off the ground, of course). It may elect representatives hostile to women’s rights and to U.S. policies. This time, we won’t have some egomaniacal tyrant to blame (unless you can describe Bush as one).
The truth is that no one can predict the future of Iraq. The administration is painting a Pollyanna world where everyone will come together and sing Kumbaya. I see many years of turmoil. I take recent events and the history of the region into account. You can hope for Bush’s version. I am bracing for the second.
We should not be so quick to pass judgment on leaders who do things that the people do not like nor on theocratic tendencies. Our own leaders are doing things that many people do not like, and one can look to the Ten Commandments cases to see our theocracy budding.
Not that I am for American imperialism, but to compare putting a statue of the ten commandments in a courthouse to actually using Sharia as the basis for law is ludicrous.
Mother Condi is travelling all over the world telling Saudis they should respect women’s rights, but here our leaders are allowing pharmacists to not dispense BC pills and hoping the next Supreme Court Justice dismantles Roe vs Wade. People in glass houses should not drop bombs. Sometimes I wish some other country would take pity and overthrow our government.
If we banned all artificial contraception, we’d still be a feminist paradise in comparsion to Saudi Arabia. I think that to conflate American anti-feminism with Arab anti-feminism is a bit of a stretch.
On the other hand, RonF, the wood chipper story has been pretty much discredited.
I did not want to imply that not dispensing BC pills is the same as enacting shariah law. However, we go around the world pointing our fingers at every other country, saying that they should do better. Meanwhile, women’s rights are eroding under our noses here. Theocratic tendencies are also being slowly injected into our government. If the Bush administration is not encouraging these, it is not as forcefully DIScouraging them as a group. It is mildly ironic when women’s rights and freedom are the two main topics Bush, Cheney, and Condi lecture about here and abroad.
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