Pentagon Enlists Feminists for War Aims

Over a decade ago a young woman approached me on the California Senate floor with a petition against the Taliban. Women are being repressed, tortured and killed by religious fundamentalists, she said. I signed on. The Taliban seemed like a Ku Klux Klan aimed at women. I was disgusted that the State Department and oil companies would negotiate with them over pipelines, with cursory regard for women's rights. I still feel that way.

But I had no idea then that I was joining The Feminist Majority in a coalition with the Pentagon to invade and occupy Afghanistan. Given the respect I have for Ellie Smeal and Kathy Spillar, among others, it's still hard to believe that they think Afghan women can be liberated by an invading, bombing, imprisoning American army. It's hard to believe that Predators, drones, Special Forces, detention camps and foreign occupiers are solutions to Taliban fundamentalism. Even the US-supported Kabul government showed its real character this year by passing a law requiring women to obey their husbands in sexual matters, in violation of the country's own constitution and international norms.

A top United Nations official this month told a Kabul audience "that violence against women is not being challenged or condemned." This was eight years following the Bonn Agreement which included human rights at its core. In northern areas under Western occupation, the UN report found that in 39 percent of rapes "that perpetrators were directly linked to power brokers who are, effectively, above the law and enjoy immunity from arrest as well as immunity from social condemnation."

It's safe to say the Kabul government will not be recognizing any NOW chapters among its local non-governmental organizations in the foreseeable future.

The Feminist Majority echoes Democratic Party hawks in claiming that the liberation of Afghanistan was well underway until the Bush Administration wandered off into Iraq. But Afghanistan was among the poorest countries in the world before and after the Bush years, and will continue to be left impoverished by a Pentagon budget that expends 90 percent of funds for military occupation. According to the United Nations, Afghanistan is 174th of 178 countries in its human development index. One in every four children dies at birth, the fourth highest child mortality rate in the world. Half of Afghan children is malnourished, and an estimated 40 per cent of children die from diarrhoea and acute respiratory infections. Thirteen per cent of the population have access to safe drinking water and 12 per cent have access to adequate sanitation. In both Afghanistan and Pakistan, children are growing up traumatized, malnourished, stunted and extremely stunted [the categories the United Nations uses]. Life expectancy for women in "peacetime" is 44, twenty percent below the global mean.

The Feminist Majority chooses to be uncharacteristically obscure in advocating more American troops as the solution. Its website speaks of more "peacekeeping forces" rather than an escalation of the occupation. They write that "virtually everyone knows that a military solution alone won't work. Yet, we cannot ignore that security and the Taliban are among Afghans' top concerns", whatever that means. They quote an Afghan human rights activist, Sima Simar, who obliquely says "security must be re-established until the Afghan army and police can take over." But they fail to note that the current Pentagon plan for establishing an Afghan security force will take at least ten more years. Meanwhile, the war continues under the direction of an American general, Stanley McChrystal, whose career in Iraq was in clandestine Special Ops, including the supervision of many extra-judicial killings [according to Bob Woodward's most recent book]. The real effect of the Pentagon's game plan is to kill Al Qaeda and Taliban suspects, round up and hold thousands more in detention camps with no due process, lock Afghanistan into the Western alliance, and obtain American military bases and pipeline projects in the region. Women's rights always will be secondary to military objectives. "Protecting the population", which the Feminist Majority supports, is counterinsurgency phrasing for keeping the population surrounded by barbed wire, floodlights, blast walls and subject to check points and retinal scanners while, a short distance away, the killing goes on.

As for women's rights, perhaps Condoleeza Rice could be named US ambassador to Kabul; after all, she's been on Chevron's board and already has an oil tanker named after her.

Seriously then, what to do about the fate of Afghan women? Ending a military occupation through a negotiated settlement among countries in the region, and parties in Afghanistan, is the only way out of this latest adventure in The Long War. Making any future economic or diplomatic assistance contingent upon women's rights to health care, child care, education and dignity should be among the terms for a US and NATO withdrawal. In all seriousness, top US officials in a future Kabul embassy could be feminists linked to Afghan women's groups. Hillary Clinton knows how to be relentless if she chooses. The struggle will be long and bitter, won in civil society, not on battlefields. Even if all the Taliban are killed, Afghanistan will be a deeply patriarchal Muslim country where change will emerge from outside and inside pressures.

These progressive initiatives could be advanced today by the Obama administration and Congress as civilian ones, not as cover to solicit support for deeper military occupation.

The Feminist Majority is being used by the Pentagon to advance its war aims. Perhaps they believe they are using the Pentagon, though they don't say it. One result is division and confusion within the peace movement. In soliciting support from genuine peace groups for Afghanistan, for example, The Feminist Majority is less than candid that the funds are linked to the escalation of the war.

The solution is more transparent and thorough discussion at the base of the peace movement, where the possibility of a feminist coalition with the Special Forces should be hard to defend.

Comments

[calbears]

The Feminist Majority reflects what's wrong with a feminist perspective that sees gender as basically separate from its contexts and which has no analysis of its intersections with race, colonialism and other axes of power.

[HelloFunnyWorld]

Interesting read. Thank you for this article. With Canadian forces there as well, we like to hear all sides of the War in Afghanistan, all perspectives, both linked to and unlinked from this war, though the general observations and understanding seem to be that once again, it's all about strategies & tactics used by western governments and corporations vis-a-vis Oil, Money and Power....

And if all true - some day the collective conscience of all decent people is going to be a huge pain in the neck.

[serena1313]

Citizens, will tolerate being oppressed for only so long -- even the paralysis of fear cannot withstand the hunger for freedom. Knowing freedom cannot be won by outside forces or military might, people will demand, fight, even die, or do what ever it takes, to be free. For them freedom is not just a word; It's their future.

The freedom to choose is a fundamental tenet of the feminist movement.

So how does TFM reconcile waging war -- costing life, limb and hundreds of billions -- to secure women's rights (in a foreign country where we do not speak their language, know their history, mores, culture, muchless understand their way of life) while simultaneously denying those women the right to choose their own fate.

Furthermore those who subscribe to the belief that liberating women from violence by using violence is a viable option, ought to rethink that.

Freedom comes with a price. The process is ugly, messy and bloody. But it is their choice, their destiny and their future, not ours.

[David Campbell]

From The Progressive-June 2009-an Afghan man chatted with Paula Loyd, a 36 year old anthropologist, who was taking notes. When she finished and thanked him, he doused her with gasoline and set her on fire. She had burns over 60% of her body and died two months later. That is what we are dealing with in this part of the world. They've chosen the life they want and rejected our way of life altogether, except for our weapons. We may care and mourn for the women and children but they are terminally infected by their religion and ancient culture. In one place they cut out the clitoris of young girls, another stone women to death, another rape the sister of a boy who dated one of their tribe. Time to leave!

[messy]

Right, let's let the Taiiban back into power and then let THEM liberate the criminal women there. SUURE...

[OliverTwist]

Worry about women someplace else for a while. It is not hard to find places where women are treated badly.

Try not to make it a key aspect of your campaign to help women that you kill their fathers, husbands and sons.

[larry278]

Ollie, remember Bill Sykes in Dickens's "Oliver Twist"? Re-read the book or see a flick that dramatises "Oliver Twist".

[OliverTwist]

It is easy to doubt the sincerity of some people's expressed concerns about the wellbeing of women in other parts of the world when the women they seel most urgently to liberate are those whose fathers, husbands and sons we seek to coerce or kill for other political reasons.

[bismillah001]

If the only thing we did was establish primary and secondary school for all Afghan women, I think Afghanistan would be better off than if we stayed 100 years with a military presence. This was never about Afghan women; they were just convenient pawns.

'Feminists' (really just imperialists) ranting about Afghan women's rights when advocating war and occupation remind me of that lady on the Simpsons who is always yelling "Will SOMEbody PLEASE think of the CHILDRENNNN!!!!" It's just an empty slogan, with no bearing on what is really being discussed..

[Guitarsandmore]

Schools being built in Afghanistan:

Read all about it here:

http://www.greenvillageschools.org/main.htm

and here:

http://www.spiritofamerica.net/cgi-bin/soa/project.pl?rm=view_project&request_id=115

and here:

http://www.vpr.net/news_detail/85015/

and here:

http://www.mrds.org/Regions/centralasia/afghanistan/schoolprogram.htm

and here:

http://www.ungei.org/infobycountry/afghanistan_760.html

[LeeCalif]

This is disturbing. I hadn't realized The Feminist Majority had fallen for the Obama administration new old line that we must 'save the Afghani women'.

Just like 7 years ago, the Bush administration was touting the new line that we must
'save the Aghani women'. They even rolled out Karen Hughes.

I saw the latest Pentagon propaganda article run by the L.A. Times concerning the saving of the Afghani women. It was ridiculously transparent - at least to me.

[northstar11]

what values do the afghan women teach their sons ?

[punk]

The Pentagon is also using photos of female protesters in Iran to trigger a more militant Democratic Party. Before the 2008 election in the USA, I predicted that Iran will be Obama's war, not Bush's war. The "new Democrats" want to shake off their Jimmy Carter image. This will require massacring more people in Afghanistan and Iran. It will fail, as it did for LBJ.

[VirginiaJeff]

But didn't Obama and the Democratic leadership refuse to take the bait during the election protests?

[Indra]

The Pentagon! So thats where they all went. I was wondering what happened to them.

[chrisfrmchi]

sign women up for the selective service draft for equality.

[newyorkid]

Very good article, Hayden. Is there a way to know if Feminist Majority gets money from the Pentagon or the military industry?

[Ergon]

Well kid (if I may call you that) the Feminist Majority started out with Ms Magazine and Gloria Steinem, whose links with the CIA are well documented here:
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/8425/ST-CIA.HTM
When the Village Voice started to investigate it, Ms Steinem took out all sorts of action against it.
Here, a Muslim feminist co authors a paper highlighting how American feminists fail to acknowledge it was the US which supported Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan in the first place http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/1/777777190136/
I fail to see how the plight of women can be alleviated by invading a country; Iraqi women used to be th emost emanciated

[AnotherMcIntosh]

If Gloria Steinem and Ms Magazine were financed by the CIA, they weren't alone.

Check out
Operation Mockingbird

[newyorkid]

Indeed very interesting reading. And very alarming. Seems like MSM is under the control of the ClA.

[Ergon]

II: emancipated in the Arab world, now, they're not.

[bighat]

How about the govt payroll no matter the origin

[Tuckerndfw]

Congress gave them $800,000,000 in 1995 under the VAWA..

VAWA was renewed in 2005 and Congress gave them $3,900,000,000 (CBO estimate).

That can buy a lot of support and propaganda.

[QuidQuintessa]

It should be the preeminent right of women everywhere not to have their country invaded and occupied.

[Billy Hell]

Thank you Tom Hayden. After this article it's refreshing to see some clear thinking on this issue:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eleanor-smeal/why-is-the-fmf-refusing-t_b_234595.html