This Morning 9/13/12 Religious Violence, States, and Anarchy on the Internet

In the last few days U.S. consulates and embassies in Egypt, Libya and Yemen have been attacked, and murders committed, by angry Islamist extremists over a 14-minute movie on YouTube depicting the prophet Mohammed as a salacious individual.  The film is junk - bad acting, bad script, something you'd expect a junior-high kid to do - but it was created and posted on the internet by an American, therefore, all Americans have come under fire.

Where is the sense in this?  How can you make all people responsible for the actions of one?  This is bigoted enmity!

Freedom of speech has a high cost.

The absolute despicable nature of such a film, intended to denigrate a legitimate religion and its symbol has no place in world theological discourse.  Nevertheless, it does have a right to exist according to the laws of the United States.  Of course, it is meant as an affront to Muslims and as entertainment for Muslim-haters, but for the price of human lives, families, and the welfare of any American, it is simply irresponsible vitriol despite its legality.

There is no international governing body for this kind of situation.  There is no One-World government. There are nation States coexisting under an international anarchic structure - no internationally accepted hierarchical body of governance.  Unfortunately, the Internet also exists, without the safety net of borders, within this sphere.  Therefore the laws of one State become commingled with another's because it is a World Wide Web.

We assume the spread of Democracy (Liberalism) as being the best political system.  We assume Free Speech a right because it is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.  However, not every culture shares these values because either they have never known them or they have grown accustomed to another way.  They, also, have the right to exist as States in their political forms as long as they do not impose upon another State's right to their political form.

People are reactive by nature.  Some people have filters which delay or allay their reactions.  Some are just looking for an opportunity to react.

The killings and attacks this week were instigated by reactive extremist individuals in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen imposing their violent responses upon another State.

The U.S. is sending two battleships to the Mediterranean Sea to station off the coast of Libya.  This overreaction and show of force will not change extremists' reactive natures nor will it quell the sense of righteousness felt on the part of pro-First Amendment defenders or opponents of anti-religious Free Speech.  In fact, it will just increase Obama's public approval ratings in time for the election as U.S. hegemony is advanced, once again, on the backs individuals - just as it has always been.

As Plato once said:  "It is only the dead who have seen the end of war."

This Morning 9/11/12 9-11

On this day, eleven years ago, I was picking vegetables at a local organic farm and the news came of the planes hitting the World Trade Center.   I smelled the fear and its stench was sickening and destructive.  I understood the implications and sequestered myself for twenty minutes to a remote location on the farm.

There, I prayed for understanding and patience, for love and light to surround the nation and the People.

Perhaps it worked.  Perhaps not.  But it helped me personally.

There are many people who live in this fear constantly in war-ravaged countries.  I don't think I could help myself very well if I were one of those people.

I've grown accustomed to my security.  The Bush Doctrine be damned!  But I have grown accustomed to it.

This Morning 9/10/12 Militarism via Feminism

Here is a second draft of a 1100-word paper I'm writing entitled, What We Serve: Looking at Militarism via Global Feminism. (copyright 2012 Saja Maka Publishing)

INTRODUCTION

            The shortage of women in political and military arenas is evidenced in world government chambers, written theoretical discourse, and battlefields.   Until the third wave of Feminism, sometimes called the “lost wave,” began in the 1990’s, women were necessarily making great strides as a movement, claiming the personal as political and spearheading groundbreaking workplace, health and marriage legislation in the 1970’s.  This aspect of social Feminism has now taken a back seat, though, to a more self-saturated vision that takes ownership of femaleness for the sake of individualization.  However diluted the appearance of Feminism has become, the practical nature of this newer third wave orientation brings to light an actualized vision of women as committed and consistent makers of a broader, globalized feminist model. 

WOMEN AND WAR

            In Carol Cohn and Sara Ruddick’s paper, “A Feminist Ethical Perspective on Weapons of Mass Destruction,” they outline a detailed tradition of “antiwar feminism.” While they explore issues of economic and Imperialistic concerns relating to women, this model has a specific trajectory of disarmament, and is aligned most prestigiously with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the oldest women’s world peace organization and an international non-governmental organization with consultative status to several U.N. councils.   

            Decidedly in opposition to “war making as a practice,” Cohn and Ruddick are careful to point out that while war and peace are not “women’s issues” per se, and some feminists fight for their right to participate in war, most feminists “do not divorce feminism from national, ethnic, religious, class or other identities and politics…” (Cohn/Ruddick).  In fact, the social construct of war as a purely masculine norm exploits the emphasis on gender specificity that works for, but mostly against, women.  Cohn and Ruddick neither masculinize nor feminize war, but rather demonize it for it’s own sake as an exercise by questioning why “military necessity should… be prioritized over…human necessities.”

            While clearly working from an Idealist platform, there is nothing soft about Cohn and Ruddick’s approach to the reality of war and antiwar feminism.  Addressing deterrence theory, they ask, “Isn’t is too risky to assume there are “rational actors” on all sides of this equation?”  The issue of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) proliferation with its “techno-strategic,“ abstract video game-like relationship to killing directs the mind toward the explosive nature of such a weapon, but doesn’t consider the aftermath of its destruction, nor the possibility that one might become the casualty of such a weapon, not the perpetrator of its carnage.  Cohn and Ruddick refuse to see war myopically.  They “take into consideration the political social, economic, psychological, and moral consequences.”   Cohn and Ruddick argue that women’s lives are physically, socially and economically shattered in times of war.  Whether by direct contact by combatants as in cases of rape or by the culture of acceptability of militarization and violence that contributes to a future deficient in resources (food, shelter, healthcare, jobs), families in war-ravaged and war-ravaging countries are usually headed by women and they suffer the most.   The nature of war, in its hyped-up “Go Team” fatigues, ready to conquer the enemy, rarely asks the right questions, presented here by Cohn and Ruddick as matter-of-fact considerations of how war effects a valuable facet of our population - women.

            Their conclusion of how avoid “war making” sits somewhere in the “negotiation of treaties” corner, with a strong commitment to non-aggression; an unrealistic, but worthy moral and quite pragmatic, humane approach to militarism, considering the costs of having it otherwise.

                                               

BREAKING THE ROLE OF VICTIM

            J. Ann Tickner’s “Man, the State, and War:  Gendered Perspectives on National Security” takes on Hobbes, Morganthau and the media in relation to their socialized constructions of women embodying primary wartime roles of servitude, banality and victimhood.  Tickner scathingly writes, “While men have been associated with defending the state and advancing its international interests as soldiers and diplomats, women have typically been engaged in the “ordering” and “comforting” roles…” (Tickner).  Ticker asserts that this devaluing of women and their general exclusion from the canon of historical political discourse or decision-making serves to promote the stereotype of women as “victims, rarely as agents” in times of war. 

            Tickner cites the contribution of the Cult of Domesticity to this “victim” construct. A post-Industrial, 19^th’ Century, middle class ideological social mechanism popularized through books, magazines and behaviors, it assigned and defined women exclusively by the following attributes:  piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity.    This view of women enhanced the Victorian and Imperialistic viewpoint of men as protectors of women, thereby justifying men’s continued military exploits and their view of women’s intellectual ineptitude.

            Tickner, dissimilar to Cohn and Ruddick, declares patriarchal presumptions as one of the root causes of war.  Citing writings by Hobbes and Morganthau, the masculine hegemonic factor pushes open the door toward a continuing gender gap.  If women are to be acknowledged for their true contribution and place in society, thereby potentially occupying the seats where decisions are squarely made regarding war and peace, they must vote their way into the discussion by creating a movement that shifts the view of women’s role in society “from sacrifice to responsibility” (Tickner). 

            In a weak, supporting point, Tickner characterizes the presence of Sakakawea (proper Mandan spelling) on the Lewis and Clark expedition as “security” for the explorers by virtue of the fact that her femaleness dissuaded tribal attacks by Indigenous nations along their trail.  Tickner, through her summary of this point, does little to create a view of women as necessary agents, equal to men, or essential to the expedition itself.  In fact, she negates that point by depicting Sakakawea as the “token” woman on the trail whom the “other Indians” didn’t want to harm.  This slip by Tickner constitutes a cultural bias couched as feminist primacy.

GLOBALIZED FEMINIST NETWORKS

            Contrasting both the intellectualizing of peace by Cohn and Ruddick, and the defensive posturing of Tickner, Valentine Moghadam’s “Female Labor, Regional Crisis and Feminist Responses,” tackles the issue of feminine subversion by supporting the establishment of worldwide networks of “working women and organizing women.”   The formation of globalized feminist networks constitutes the proliferation of women’s movements at a local level, around the globe, signaling particular empowerment trends across cultural and labor borders.

            Moghadam’s primary explanation of the advantages of economic and political globalization opening labor pathways for women draws attention, simultaneously, to the reality of demeaning and underpaid conditions contributing to women’s high unemployment rates and the feminization of poverty. 

CONCLUSION

            Discourse regarding the roles of women and feminist networks in a third wave globalized world sheds light on the still-existing problem of exclusion of the feminist perspective from patriarchal frameworks fueling military contexts.  Women can only advance a feminist agenda by continuing to dialogue across Third World/First World borders, living rooms, and board rooms, inspiring and building powerful, viable, and reasonable engagement of gender-wise actions.