BUSH’S HYPOCRISY ABOUT “LIBERATING” THE WOMEN OF AFGHANISTAN
By Jack A. Smith
There’s an unseemly hypocrisy in the Bush administration’s recent effort -- launched Nov. 17 with a radio address by Laura Bush and the publication of a State Department report -- to take credit for ending the subjugation of the women of Afghanistan and to communicate the illusion of compassion for the plight of women in general.
In her address, the First Lady said that “Afghan women know, through hard experience, what the rest of the world is discovering: the brutal oppression of women is a central goal of the terrorists.” The government report, stressing that “the Taliban’s war against women...is particularly appalling,” provided facts and figures about the lowly status to which women were forced to descend after the Taliban took power in Kabul in 1996. A few days earlier, at the administration’s request, Congress released some funds to benefit Afghan women and children.
Omitted from this touching scenario was the role of the United States in bringing about the precipitous downfall of women in Afghan society by financing, arming and directing the right-wing civil war against the left government that successfully elevated the status of women from 1978 to 1992, when it was overthrown. Also omitted was the scandalous repression of women by the forces of the Northern Alliance -- Washington’s proxy army in Afghanistan today -- between 1992 and the Taliban victory four years later.
The campaign to depict the U.S. and President Bush as the liberator of women, was conceived by senior presidential advisor Karen P. Hughes -- not only as one more justification for bombing Afghanistan but also to improve the GOP’s standing with women voters, a fairly large majority of whom vote Democratic. When asked if this might be the case, Hughes said that “If through this initiative women who might not have previously wanted to support the president can see him in a different light, then I hope they will see his compassion and his sincere concern for human dignity.”
Here are a few other facts that were omitted: The U.S. has been the protector of oil-rich Saudi Arabia for a half-century and hasn’t once complained about the degraded status of women in that country. Indeed, Washington enjoys close relations with a number of countries where women are demeaned, such as Kuwait, where they are denied the right to vote. Likewise unmentioned was the Bush administration’s decision to withdraw any financial aid to international health or family-planning organizations that even hint abortion may exist as an option for women.
The U.S. superpower, which has the resources to finance UN efforts to alleviate the degradation of women around the world, traditionally looks the other way when Secretary-General Kofi Annan pleads (as he did last July) for special measures to improve the lives of women who, “despite making up more than half the world's agricultural workforce, are often denied the right to learn, to own or inherit land, and to control their own fertility.” Washington’s ears go deaf when he declares that, "Enhancing women's opportunities enables them to make informed choices about family size--and to break the vicious cycle of poverty and environmental degradation."
Figures regarding the women of the world are bleak. According to the 2000 UN Population Fund report, the lack of reproductive choice or adequate healthcare for women results in some 80 million undesired pregnancies and about a half-million preventable deaths from pregnancy. The report indicates that half of all deliveries in the third world are not assisted by a trained attendant. Other findings: Well over a billion women and girls--or about a third of the world female population--will experience violence during their lifetimes, usually at the hands of a family member or an acquaintance. Each year, about 5,000 females are the victims of male “honor” killings. Large numbers of women die each year from HIV/AIDS because they are not allowed to control their own sexual activity. Of the nearly 900 million totally illiterate adults in the world, some 66% are female. With its extraordinary resources and power, the U.S. government has the ability to support UN efforts to transform these conditions into their opposite, were it not for Washington’s penchant for spending its money on militarism for wars and tax-breaks for the wealthy.
And what about at home? What’s the government doing to help the millions of mothers kicked off welfare? Or to really stop the terrible toll of violence and the rape of women in our society? What about exploited, minimum wage and sweatshop women workers? What’s the Bush administration doing to protect abortion clinics or to strengthen the right of women to choice? And what about daycare? Thirty years ago this year, President Richard Nixon vetoed a Congressional measure obliging the federal government to support daycare centers around the country. His rationalization was to preserve “family-centered traditions” and to oppose “communal approaches to childrearing,” a point of view still prevalent today in rightist and centrist circles and a quintessential element in the Bush administration’s ideology.
It's going to take a lot more than bombing Afghanistan for the women of the world to become impressed with Bush’s “compassion and his sincere concern for human dignity.”