Last month the NY Times reported that the Defense Department fed talking points to former generals who appeared on cable news. Now the DoD has released a lot of those talking points to the public. Alyssa Rosenberg went through the documents, and found that a number of them instruct the generals to trumpet all the awesome stuff the U.S. military is doing for women in Iraq and Afghanistan -- painting people like Donald Rumsfeld as some sort of savior for downtrodden women all over the world, and conveniently downplaying things like sexual assault by U.S. soldiers.
The talking points actually included this awful story:
Except for this one, from September 23, 2004: "Sally's children were taken away from her more than six months ago. Her husband beat her. Her brother threatened her life while holding a gun to her head. Her own father contracted her deal with a $5,000 reward. Sally, an Iraqi translator, lost everything by working to help Americans rebuild Iraq. Still, she feels her service with Americans is the right thing for her country. ‘I lost everything I have, but I have gained so much,' Sally said. ‘If I had to do it over again I would. I help the Americans help my people.'"
Rosenberg writes,
The anecdote is meant to be an illustration of how much Iraqis love their American liberators; but given how Iraqi translators have been abandoned by the Americans they helped, it's a grotesquely ironic PR ploy.Almost five years after the Defense Department promoted Sally's story, domestic violence in Iraq is skyrocketing, female illiteracy rates are 10 times higher than they were in the 1980s, and in the past few months more than 40 women--and in two cases their children--have been murdered for defying dress codes. I wonder if Sally still feels like working for Americans was worth it.
After it became clear there were no WMD in Iraq, the Bush administration began using things like women's rights as a reason for its violent occupation of another country. And now that this war has dragged on for five years -- and women's rights in Iraq and Afghanistan have clearly deteriorated, not improved -- it's all the more infuriating to look back and see how military spokespeople (even though they weren't identified as such) used women to justify the war.
For more on the state of women's rights in Iraq -- not filtered through DoD talking points -- check out Women for Women's 2008 Iraq report (PDF). (via)
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: The military's disingenuous talking points on women's rights.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/7444
Weekly Feministing Newsletter
Feministing RSS Feed
Thanks for posting on this, Ann, although it is one of the saddest thing I'll read all day. We need to be aware of how our actions are impacting the lives of everyday people.
While I don't doubt that the DoD will be able to find some women who genuinely have benefited from something the troops have done, this administration's refusal to look into allegations of abuse and rape show that their real concern for the women of these countries is limited to the PR campaign.
this is why i am skeptical about news reports on how "great" the army are and how they are helping women in these countries. i have been to screenings of independant reporters with unedited footage showing what happens to these women and children who are raped. i do believe there are soldiers that have honest intentions, but they, unfortunatly, don't speak for all soldiers.
thanks for mentioning the times article--it hasn't gotten nearly enough media attention i think, and it's a really, really big deal.
as for using women to justify this war, totally disgusting. i remember when a bunch of my hawkish friends tried to convince me that the war would be worth it because of all the good 'murkins were doing for womens' rights in iraq and afghanistan. it was quite frustrating and all i could do was reply "does it not strike you as odd that the people running this war never gave a shit about the rights of middle eastern women before? what about saudi arabia where women can't drive--why are they still our bff?"
Reaction 1: the US military is crappy
Reaction 2: why aren't the men hurting these women in their families being charged and arrested?
Reaction 3: The US military is REALLY crappy.
This makes me SICK.
Say what you want about him, Saddam kept the religious wackos under control. His ruthless rule was the reason Iraq was the most socially progressive "Muslim" nation in the middle east. I put Muslim in scare quotes because his government itself was secular.
Here is some video testimony of military members talking about this topic. It mostly focuses on Gender and Sexuality IN the US Military but it touches on and overall explains how this ideology plays out in the military.
Also you can see by this testimony that its often policy that allows these types of things to happen. This is important to acknowledge so its not seen as "bad men" in the military that allow it to happen, its higher up and its enshrined in policy.
http://ivaw.org/wintersoldier/testimony/Divide+To+Conquer%3A+Gender+and+Sexuality+in+the+Military