MSNBC - Iraq's Hidden War: "There are a lot of women in Iraq who are looking forward to the freedom that Iraq's experiment with democracy promises them. And there are hard-liners who would kill them for it." [--snip--]
The terrorists are a minority, yet they are not the only worry for secular-minded Iraqis. As elected officials enter a third week of wrangling over forming a new government, leading Iraqi women are concerned that they'll lose out. On the face of it, they should be pleased. Nearly a third of the newly elected legislators are women, which is unprecedented in the region. (In neighboring Saudi Arabia, for instance, women can't even vote.) And Iraq's politicians have agreed to a transitional law that encourages equal rights for women in the new Constitution. But the National Assembly's makeup was the result of a quota imposed by the former American administrator, L. Paul Bremer III. Only his veto kept an earlier Iraqi government, the appointed Governing Council, from imposing Islamic Sharia on family matters. And Americans don't have such veto power any longer.
When women are driven back into the 8th century in Il Ducetto's Iraq, be assured we will be advised by ill-informed pundits like Mr. Goldberg that we need to respect the cultural values and sensitivies of Iraqis (if only because the sexist, anti-modern, patriarchal pigs Mr. Goldberg will be referring to share so many "Red" values).
