Women's Rights and the Invasion

Yesterday, still on "working vacation," the President hailed the "amazing progress" in Iraq and made note of women's rights in the version of the Iraqi Constitution.

James Wolcott builds a substantial arugment for the Right's political manipulation of the rights of women as a justification for the war on Terror. We all remember those calls: We're liberating the women of Afghanistan, we're liberating the women of Iraq and giving them the right to vote, rights of equality and representation:

Roger L. Simon, August 16: "Women's rights are the very center of the War on Terror. In fact I would argue Islamofascism at its core is more than anything else an expression of rage against women and that Islam itself is not much better on that score."

[snip]

"Those who think this war is not worth fighting chose to ignore the fate of hundreds of millions of Muslim women. Shame on them."

Reuel Marc Gerecht, discussing the forthcoming Iraqi constitution on Meet the Press, August 21: "Women's social rights are not critical to the evolution of democracy. We hope they're there, I think they will be there, but I think we need to keep this perspective."

So those who think this war isn't worth fighting are shameful because of their craven indifference to women's rights while one of the leading neocon architects of the very war that Simon champions--and not just any architect, but a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the Director of the Middle East Initiative for the Project for the New American Century--isn't that concerned that a new Iraq constitution might roll back and restrict women's freedoms, subjecting them to Islamic law.

His exact words to MTP guest host David Gregory were, "Actually, I'm not terribly worried about this."

Why am I reminded of George's boss Kruger on Seinfeld, who shrugged off every crisis with, "I'm not too worried about it"?

Simon has been conned by his new comrades, which is no excuse for conning his readers, whose gullibility could fill a pelican's pouch. Women's rights aren't at the center of the War on Terror, nowhere near the center. They're a flimsy, detachable rationale that neoconservatives won't hesitate to discard if inconvenient to their goals. If neocons have to choose between women's rights or permanent US military bases in Iraq, it'll be, "Burkas are a small price to pay for democracy. Besides, black is so fashionably slimming!"

Bush's comments yesterday underscore this political manipulation of the to justify what many see as a failing political process in Iraq:

I talked to Condi, and there is not -- as I understand it, the way the constitution is written is that women have got rights, inherent rights recognized in the constitution, and that the constitution talks about not "the religion," but "a religion." Twenty-five percent of the assembly is going to be women, which is a -- is embedded in the constitution.

Whereas the constitution itself is very contradictory when it comes to the acceptability of women's rights in Iraq. For one, it demands that women have equality and equal protections, and provides for their participation in government and the political process. It also has an overriding principle of Islamic law as the primary basis for decision, and states that no national law can contradict Islamic Law. Islamic Law, of course, has many legal protections against women, depending on how fundamentally it is practiced. So here, the constition has severe rifts within itself.

Hardly, as Bush understands it, the protection for the liberation of women's rights that he so politically is willing to use to further his agenda abroad.