Informed Speculation

Maureen Dowd, whatever else her flaws, is not one to stand idly by while another New York Times columnist takes the title of ‘Worst Column of the Week’, so she mounts a strong challenge to Frank Rich’s floater.

Dowd’s subject this time is the supposed regression (yes, that’s right, facts mean nothing in DowdWorld) of Islamic women’s rights since President Bush liberated Afghanistan and Iraq:

The way to defeat our enemies’ “hateful ideology,” [President Bush] said, is to offer an ideology “that says to young girls, you can succeed in your society, and you should have a chance to do so.” He also said, “Hopefully, the drafters of the constitution understand our strong belief that women ought to be treated equally in the Iraqi society.”

Hopefully? Is that the best we can do for a country that we broke, own and are sacrificing young men and women every day to keep?

Americans like it when the president talks up women’s rights in Iraq and Afghanistan, so he does it often. It helped him sell the invasions of those two countries. But W. should stop listening to “My Sharona” on his iPod and start listening to their Sharia.

The fundamentalist Taliban is recrudescing in Afghanistan, young girls in Iraq are afraid to leave their homes because there are so many kidnappings and rapes, and women’s groups in Iraq are terrified that the new constitution will cut women’s rights to a Saudiesque level.

Some Shiite politicians are pushing to supplant the civil courts that have long governed marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance with religious courts that are based on Sharia, or Islamic law. The New York Times reported that one of the crucial articles in various drafts of the constitution is: “The followers of any sect or religion have the right to abide by their religion or sect in their personal affairs, and a law should organize this.”

That little provision could jeopardize any chance for women’s equality. Clerics running religious courts based on the Koran could legitimize polygamy, honor killings, stonings and public beheadings of women charged with adultery, and divorce by “talaq” – where all a husband has to do is declare, “I divorce thee,” three times.

Saddam repressed Islamic politics, so under him, Iraq was one of the most secular countries in the Middle East. It has become far more fundamentalist since the U.S. took over.

This is infuriatingly dishonest. Perhaps Iraq is more fundamentalist than it was under Saddam (after all, Saddam was the only God that was worshiped by the Bathists), but to pretend women’s rights have taken a step background? Folly…

Afghanistan first: ‘The fundamentalist Taliban is recrudescing in Afghanistan,’ says Dowd. Isn’t that an implicit admission that women have gained substantially since the Taliban was overthrown? Does Dowd believe for a minute (we know the answer) that Afghanistan’s women prefer the brutal rule they were under prior to liberation?

Next, Iraq…this disturbing picture of life for Iraqi women under the Butcher of Baghdad comes from the Office of International Women’s Issues at the State Department:

Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime had silenced the voices of Iraq’s women, along with its men, through violence and intimidation. In 1979, immediately upon coming to power, Saddam Hussein silenced all political opposition in Iraq and converted his one-party state into a cult of personality. The Iraqi people were systematically repressed, tortured, raped, and terrorized. The regime frequently imprisoned and executed people without any kind of trial. As a woman in Saddam’s Iraq, you could have faced:

Beheading. Under the pretext of fighting prostitution, units of “Fedayeen Saddam” (the paramilitary organization led by Uday Hussein, Saddam’s eldest son) beheaded in public more than 200 women, dumping their severed heads at their families’ doorsteps.

Rape. The regime used rape and sexual assault of women to:

* Extract information and forced confessions from detained family members;

* Intimidate members of the opposition by sending them videotapes of the rape of female family members; and

* Blackmail Iraqi men into future cooperation with the regime.

Torture. Saddam Hussein’s thugs routinely tortured and killed female dissidents and the female relatives of Iraqi oppositionists and defectors. Children were imprisoned if they or their parents were not viewed to be faithful supporters of the Saddam regime.

Murder. In 1990, Saddam Hussein introduced Article 111 into the Iraqi Penal Code. This law exempted men from any kind of punishment if they kill their female relatives in defense of their family’s honor.

The U.S. Government will help Iraqi women in a secure and liberated Iraq to pursue projects that they identify as the best way to achieve their goals. Administration officials have met and continue to meet with free Iraqi women, exchanging ideas about their path forward in a free and open Iraq. As Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky said after a meeting with Iraqi women:

“It is clear that the women of Iraq have a critical role to play in the future revival of their society. They bring skills and knowledge that will be vital to restoring Iraq to its rightful place in the region and in the world.”

Bad as conditions in areas of Baghdad may be, can they truly match these terrors? A word of advice, Ms. Dowd: under the rule of tyrants, you don’t have things like an adversarial press; thus, of course you hear more about atrocities in Iraq now. The flow of information is free, you see.

Usually, MoDo is amusingly wrong. This time, she’s just wrong…It’s enough to make one quite angry. Again, I am reminded of the recent Christopher Hitchens Slate piece:

How can so many people watch this as if they were spectators, handicapping and rating the successes and failures from some imagined position of neutrality? Do they suppose that a defeat in Iraq would be a defeat only for the Bush administration?

When a person becomes a Republican or Democrat before an American, and puts partisanship above the national interest, it’s a sad day. When that person is one of several New York Times columnists fitting that description, with a national (indeed, worldwide) platform, it’s worse than sad…it’s a moral crime.