How Iraqi women could stop the civil war
The sectarian violence continues unabated in Iraq and, at present, the new government still can't agree on the key posts of Interior and Defense ministries.
Perhaps the only saving from civil war would be for the women to take action to get everyone to lay down their arms and get back to being productive. How radical it might seem if women just decided they were going to go out in public with no clothes on until the fighting stopped? The Lysistrata idea of withholding sex wouldn't work as that is private, but to make a mass public demonstration of such commitment may likely be the only thing that could stop the sectarian violence. It's obvious that the competing immans have the power, even if they had the will. There would be some initial negative repercussions on those who started it, but a groundswell could make such demonstrations impossible to stop.
I don't pretend to understand Moslem culture and its apparent lack of respect for human life over proported religious pronouncements. There is obviously lots of history here. Do Moslem women even want to stop the violence more than the men? I don't know.
I do believe that the "Coalition" forces are becoming more and more irrelevant. From hearing stories from folks outside the Green Zone such as from freelance journalist Nir Rosen on Fareed Zakaria's Foreign Exchange, most of the fighting is between the Sunnis and Shiites, with the Kurds just continuing to try doing their own thing up in the north. The Americans and British are just on the sidelines, getting shot by anyone whenever they go outside the safe zone.
What arrogance our country has shown in overthrowing a government, bad as it might have been, and leaving it in a state of civil war and calling it democracy? We have a pretty active history of overthrowing governments with less than stellar results, but that may be a subject for another time.
So what about having the Iraqi women save their country?
Perhaps the only saving from civil war would be for the women to take action to get everyone to lay down their arms and get back to being productive. How radical it might seem if women just decided they were going to go out in public with no clothes on until the fighting stopped? The Lysistrata idea of withholding sex wouldn't work as that is private, but to make a mass public demonstration of such commitment may likely be the only thing that could stop the sectarian violence. It's obvious that the competing immans have the power, even if they had the will. There would be some initial negative repercussions on those who started it, but a groundswell could make such demonstrations impossible to stop.
I don't pretend to understand Moslem culture and its apparent lack of respect for human life over proported religious pronouncements. There is obviously lots of history here. Do Moslem women even want to stop the violence more than the men? I don't know.
I do believe that the "Coalition" forces are becoming more and more irrelevant. From hearing stories from folks outside the Green Zone such as from freelance journalist Nir Rosen on Fareed Zakaria's Foreign Exchange, most of the fighting is between the Sunnis and Shiites, with the Kurds just continuing to try doing their own thing up in the north. The Americans and British are just on the sidelines, getting shot by anyone whenever they go outside the safe zone.
What arrogance our country has shown in overthrowing a government, bad as it might have been, and leaving it in a state of civil war and calling it democracy? We have a pretty active history of overthrowing governments with less than stellar results, but that may be a subject for another time.
So what about having the Iraqi women save their country?
posted by Common Sense at 1:17 PM
1 Comments:
Carla Helfferich suggested something like this for the conflict between Palestine and Israel: no clothes, way fewer suicide bombers. But it's not exactly practical in terms of modesty...still, there's always the Ghandi tactic. Worked in India.
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