www.newsandletters.org
|
|
NEWS & LETTERS, March 2003
Woman as ReasonWomen's militant anti-war stanceby Terry Moon Excerpted from a talk at the well-attended anti-war
demonstration Feb. 15 in Memphis (see page 11). When you take a poll, you always find that women are
much more opposed to this senseless war of Bush's against the people of Iraq
than men. This opposition is not some kind of biological determinism where women
are physically wired to be opposed to all wars. If that were the case you
wouldn't find women out front in every war of liberation--from Nicaragua to
Mozambique and from Algeria to East Timor and Acheh. Women's opposition to Bush's war is a demonstration of
Woman as Revolutionary Force and Reason. It is a thought-out, reasoned response
to a war that has nothing to do with liberating anyone, and everything to do
with Pax USA, U.S. über alles. WAR NEEDS TO BECOME UNTHINKABLE We know that women and children comprise 80% of the
refugees and populations displaced by wars; and that when you look at who dies,
the majority of those killed in wars are, again, women and children. When I look
at Bush talking macho to the troops, it is impossible to believe that he has any
compassion for all those who will die from his orders--including those troops.
Bombing Baghdad, or any city, should be unthinkable and should be punished as a
crime against humanity. What shows starkly that this war has nothing to do with
liberating the Iraqi people--much less Iraqi women--from the murderous dictator,
the brutal Saddam Hussein, is what is happening to the people of Afghanistan,
particularly the women. Remember how Stepford wife Laura Bush was shoved onto
the national podium to claim that the war on Afghanistan was a war to liberate
women from the brutal Taliban? After sweeping over Afghanistan and bombing
mountains, sheep, wedding parties, and a few al Qaeda activists, the U.S. did
succeed in driving al Qaeda further underground in that country, or at least
over the border into Pakistan. But instead of doing what they promised, helping
to democratize and rebuild the country, the U.S. turned it over to the bloody
Northern Alliance and the various warlords who continue their religious
fundamentalist oppression of women. It is only in Kabul where women feel safe walking the streets without the smothering burqa. Elsewhere girls' schools have been burned, the religious police are out in force beating women whose hair or ankle may show, refusing to let women work or learn. Remember, it was the brutality of those who now make up the Northern Alliance that made the Afghanistan population let the Taliban take control in the first place, thinking that they might be better than the fundamentalist fanatic warlords, and the Rabbani government. RAWA SHOWS WHAT WE ARE FOR The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) reveals the Reason of women in these difficult times. They speak directly to the lie that Bush's war on Iraq has anything at all to do with freedom for women or anyone else but do not stop with saying what they oppose. They insist, as they did at a demonstration in February, that "supporting the cause of democracy without secularism is incomplete." We need to take note of women like those in RAWA who are uncompromising. RAWA has refused to throw their lot in with those who support tyrants and religious fundamentalism of any form. They condemned the Taliban, the Northern Alliance and the U.S. government but not the U.S. people. They do not, like some in this country, align uncritically with anyone who opposes U.S. imperialism. As women, we oppose this war, but we will not compromise ourselves or our vision of the future, by aligning with those who support the murder of student dissidents in China, who support genocide against the people of Kosova and Bosnia, and who starve their population while building up their army and nuclear weapons of mass destruction. We oppose terrorism and the terrorism of war; we oppose Bush's lies and his insane, inhuman drive to war; we oppose all religious fundamentalisms--Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu--all of them, because any religious fundamentalism means death and oppression for women. Our vision of the future is for new human relations and a world where so-called "ethnic cleansing" would be unthinkable; where war would be unthinkable; where genocide would be unthinkable. And where the human project would not be turned to war, but to the self-development of the human being, what Marx called, "the absolute movement of becoming." |
|
Home l News & Letters Newspaper l Back issues l News and Letters Committees l Dialogues l Raya Dunayevskaya l Contact us l Search Published by News and Letters Committees |
