Setbacks And FlashBacks

Juan Cole has a good observation on the condition of women in Iraq right now:

"Amnesty International reports that the women of Iraq have suffered substantial setbacks in their rights since the US invasion, and live in a condition of dire insecurity.
The suggestion by some that the guarantee of 1/3 of seats in the Iraqi parliament to women might make up for the situation described by Amnesty is of course absurd. Iraq is not the first country to have such a quota. It was put into effect in Pakistan by Gen. Pervez Musharraf. The move was meant to weaken Muslim fundamentalists, on the theory that women members of parliament would object to extreme patriarchy on the Khomeini or Taliban model. In fact, the Jama'at-i Islami, the main fundamentalist party in Pakistan, was perfectly capable of finding women to represent it in parliament. (US readers should remember Phyllis Schlafly!) Moreover, the 1/3 of MPs who are women can fairly easily be outvoted by the men.
If the Republican Party in the US is so proud of putting in such a quota for Iraq, they should think seriously about applying it in the United States Congress.

' . . . there are larger disparities between the Congress and the general citizenry in term of sex and race. In the House, there are currently 372 men and 63 women. In the Senate, there are 14 women and 86 men. '

Might not the US be a better country if there were 33 women senators and more like 120 congresswomen? If your answer is that it wouldn't matter, then you cannot very well insist that it does matter in Iraq. If you think it would be important, then if you support it in Iraq you should support it in the United States. "

They could have seen this coming a long way off if they hadn't applied the same blinders to the issue that they used so successfully when "planning" the invasion itself. But the sad truth is that the religious fundie base that supports Bush and his policies in Iraq not only doesn't care about the women there, but has an actual agenda to be furthered by the ramped-up oppression of women that will continue to grow as the Islamists increase power in the Bush-vetted and -approved government.

But, hey, change takes time. Don't forget what a great job we did of liberating the Afghani women. And those Kuwaitis whose freedom we fought for the first time around the Iraqi invasion cash cow, and how well that's worked out for women there. That was definitely a mission of mercy.