|
Home
No US Media Coverage Of
Iraqi Women And Torture
by Evan Augustine Peterson III, J.D., August 7 2004
Are the Iraqi women really better off after the Anglo-American "liberation"
of Iraq? Women everywhere should make it a point of solidarity to learn
the answer. To do so, they must learn to separate intentions from consequences,
for in matters of foreign policy, good intentions do not necessarily result
in good outcomes. Especially when democratic governance is being forcibly
imposed on a conquered people at gunpoint.
So what's actually happening to Iraq's women? American journalist Lila
Rajiva's 7-27-04 OW essay reports that the USA's government-media complex
has been steadfastly refusing to investigate beyond the tip of the evidentiary
iceberg, or it would have discovered these two barely-submerged facts:
(1) that the rape and abduction of Iraqi women has, in fact, skyrocketed
in "postwar" Iraq; and (2) that Iraqi women prisoners are, in
fact, being raped, abused, and tortured inside the USA's military prisons.
But is this merely a one-sided hatchet-job to further discredit the USA's
occupation?
No, it's not. Ms. Rajiva's two-part essay is first-rate journalism, insofar
as she offers facts, a carefully-nuanced examination of the relevant evidence,
and a thoughtful analysis of its cultural implications from both the American
and the Iraqi perspective. The full picture emerges only when one has
read both parts of her essay in it's entirety.
The Bottom Line: (A) Do the American people really care to know the truth
about what's been happening to women inside Iraq in their name, and why?;
(B) If not, could it be because Americans are so unconsciously ethnocentric
that we do NOT regard the Iraqis as a coequal people who actually possess
universal human rights which we must respect?; and (C) If the US military
is too ethnocentric to respect the Iraqis' cultural mores, and if it's
too provincial to safeguard the human rights of Iraq's women, then isn't
it too ethnocentric and provincial to provide security for Iraq's interim
government?
Read Parts 1 and 2 of Ms. Rajiva's outstanding OW essay now: (1)
Iraqi Women and Torture, Part One (in
which she makes a compelling argument that "where there's so much
smoke billowing forth, there's got to be a fire"); and (2) Iraqi
Women and Torture, Part Two (beginning about one-third of the
way down, she provides a factual timeline of specific incidents wherein
Iraqi women were abused, raped, and/or tortured inside US military prisons).
And
Now Iraqi Women and Torture, Part Three
Also see Lila Rajiva's excellent 6-17-04 DV
essay:
"Putting
Conservatives On The Couch: Transactional Analysis And The Torture Apologists"
Author: Evan Augustine Peterson III, J.D.,
is the Executive Director of the
American Center for International Law ("ACIL").
©2004EAPIII
|
