Hear Them Roar...Not!
You may remember Christina Hoff Sommers's powerful indictment of the feminist establishment that was featured on our cover last May, "The Subjection of Islamic Women and the Fecklessness of American Feminism." Her stirring conclusion: "The women who constitute the American feminist establishment today are destined to play little role in the battle for Muslim women's rights. Preoccupied with their own imagined oppression, they can be of little help to others--especially family-centered Islamic feminists. The Katha Pollitts and Eve Enslers, the vagina warriors and university gender theorists--these are women who cannot distinguish between free and unfree societies, between the Taliban and the Promise Keepers, between being forced to wear a veil and being socially pressured to be slender and fit. Their moral obtuseness leads many of them to regard helping Muslim women as 'colonialist' or as part of a 'hegemonic' 'civilizing mission.' It disqualifies them as participants in this moral fight."
Well, Katha Pollitt certainly remembers the piece. She has been organizing a response for lo these many months--an "Open Letter from American Feminists" that begins: "Columnists and opinion writers from the Weekly Standard to the Washington Post to Slate have recently accused American feminists of focusing obsessively on minor or even nonexistent injustices in the United States while ignoring atrocities against women in other countries, especially the Muslim world. . . ."
We won't bore you with the rest. What's amusing is the email Pollitt, a columnist for the Nation, is circulating, trolling for signatures: "In only four days, over 650 people have signed the letter! Including Gloria Steinem, Lily Tomlin, Ursula leGuin, a sous-chef, a sergeant in Iraq, former gov. of Vt Madeline Kunin and lots and lots of writers, activists, public-health experts, representatives of feminist organizations, and 'just plain feminists.' I am hoping to get at least 1000 signatures."
We have to confess that the goal of "at least 1,000 signatures"--for an open letter circulated on the Internet--sounds underwhelming. But maybe that's a good turnout for the feminist movement these days. We were reminded, though, of the moment in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery when international arch-villain Dr. Evil, having been frozen for 30 years, announces his fearsome plan to "hold the world ransom for . . . ONE MILLION DOLLARS!"
Also amusing is the class-consciousness of the feminist elite. Writes Pollitt: "If you'd like to sign, send me your name and how you would like to be identified. for example: writer, curator, Prof (with dept and U), activist, movie star." Hey, what about the "just plain feminists"?
"Doubling Down in Iraq"
Elsewhere in this issue Fred Barnes reports in captivating detail on George W. Bush's decision a year ago to change the U.S. strategy in Iraq to the counterinsurgency doctrine of Gen. David Petraeus. It would be hard to overstate how radically this course veered from the Washington establishment's expectations of a U.S. withdrawal in the aftermath of the debacle for Bush's party in the 2006 elections.
But, if we can toot our own horn just this once, one person who quickly grasped the logic of the surge was William J. Stuntz, the distinguished criminal procedure expert at Harvard Law School. His prescient short essay arguing for a surge appeared in the first issue we published after the midterm elections. It was called "Doubling Down in Iraq" (www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/933jaydy.asp). Here was the heart of his argument:
Willingness to raise the stakes often wins the game. Why do insurgent gangs, who have vastly smaller resources and manpower than the American soldiers they fight, continue to try to kill those soldiers? The answer is, because they believe they only have to kill a few more, and the soldiers will leave. They need not inflict a military defeat (which would be impossible, given the strength of the American military)--all they need to do is survive until American voters decide to throw in the towel, which might happen at any moment. The proper response to that calculation is to make emphatically clear that the fight will not end until one side or the other wins, decisively. That kind of battle can only have one ending, as Abraham Lincoln understood. In a speech delivered a month after his reelection, Lincoln carefully surveyed the North's resources and manpower and concluded that the nation's wealth was "unexhausted and, as we believe, inexhaustible." Southern soldiers began to desert in droves. Through the long, bloody summer and fall of 1864, the South had hung on only because of the belief that the North might tire of the conflict. But Lincoln did not tire. Instead, he doubled the bet--and won the war. . . . Send just enough soldiers and guns and tanks to do the job, and you may soon find you have sent too few. . . . On the other hand, send vastly more soldiers and materiel than required to the battlefield, and the enemy soon decides that the fight is hopeless.
Bush: An Oliver Stone Film
First there was JFK. Then came Nixon. Now comes, you guessed it, George W. Bush: The Motion Picture, directed by Oliver Stone. At least that is what the crackpot filmmaker hopes to do and have ready sometime after the election. But before we get carried away at what could be an unbelievably bad hit job against the president, the director tells Daily Variety that "I'm a dramatist who is interested in people, and I have empathy for Bush as a human being, much the same as I did for Castro, Nixon, Jim Morrison, Jim Garrison and Alexander the Great."
As for his current thoughts on Bush, said Stone, "I can't give you that, because the filmmaker has to hide in the work. Here, I'm the referee, and I want a fair, true portrait of the man. How did Bush go from an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world? It's like Frank Capra territory on one hand, but I'll also cover the demons in his private life, his bouts with his dad and his conversion to Christianity, which explains a lot of where he is coming from. It includes his belief that God personally chose him to be president of the United States, and his coming into his own with the stunning, preemptive attack on Iraq. It will contain surprises for Bush supporters and his detractors."
We can only imagine.
The Blessing of Abortion
The Albany Times Union reports on a unique ceremony marking the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The Planned Parenthood chapter in Schenectady invited several local members of the clergy to bless its new 18,000 square-foot "clinic." According to the Times Union, the blessings included one from "Rev. Larry Phillips of Schenectady's Emmanuel-Friedens Church [who] declared the ground 'sacred and holy . . . where women's voices and stories are welcomed, valued and affirmed; sacred ground where women are treated with dignity, supported in their role as moral decision-makers . . . sacred ground where the violent voices of hatred and oppression are quelled.' "
No, we're not making this up.
Over at the First Things blog, Anth-ony Sacramone pondered the question of "who or what" the clergypersons would be blessing, and "decided to help them out, in the event they were at a loss for words." We found Sacramone's version decidedly more, um, inspired. A sample:
O Ba'al, God of Thunder: We beseech Ye in the name of science In the name of self-actualization and personal autonomy That the procedures and terminations wrought on this choice piece of real estate Permit no hope Silence all screams And leave no child behind.