I'll keep counting the weeks every Sunday
An update on my previous diaries:
This week's Iraq piece
Juan Cole of
Informed Comment on what is the link between war-mongering and being "pro-life?"
It turns out that anti-abortionism is not about life at all. It is about social control... Likewise, the Schiavo case was in part about the religious Right dictating to Michael Schiavo how he must lead his private life..
And that is why the Iraq war is the perfect symbol for the anti-abortionists. Colonial conquest is always a kind of rape, but now the conquered country must bear the fetus of Bush-imposed "liberty" to term. The hierarchy is thus established. Washington is superior to Baghdad, and Iraq is feminized and deprived of certain kinds of choices
It is about hierarchy, power and control. It is not about life.
Juan Cole of
Informed Comment has a great article. I'll post my favorite part here but you should really read the whole thing...
Because intelligence work is hard and secret?
Bush .. pitifully segues [his pandering to the right wing on Schiavo] into the sharply critical report on US intelligence failures, which pointed out that the administration was absolutely and completely wrong about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction.
Bush's response?
The work of our intelligence community is extremely difficult work... And the work intelligence men and women do is, by nature, secret, which is why the American people never hear about many of their successes. I'm proud of the efforts of our intelligence workers...
It is like a parody of himself. He stresses that intelligence work is a) hard and b) secret.
That is supposed to make it all right that we sent a high-tech army into a poor, weak country and turned it into a failed state, killing 40,000 innocent Iraqis and suffering over 1500 coalition troops dead and over 10,000 US troops wounded, many maimed for life, and spending $300 billion on it? For no reason? When the poor weak state did not in fact have the weapons of mass destruction that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz insisted it had? When they bullied anyone who questioned their evidence for all this, and got their billionnaire buddies who own the media to have their anchors and editorialists also bully any dissidents?
What is the link between war-mongering and being "pro-life?"
How does Bush square all the violence he has unleashed in the world with his praise of "life?" What is the link between war-mongering and being "pro-life?"
It turns out that anti-abortionism is not about life at all. It is about social control. It helps establish a hierarchical society in which men are at the pinnacle and women kept barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. Likewise, the Schiavo case was in part about the religious Right dictating to Michael Schiavo how he must lead his private life.
This campaign is not really about life at all, as the examples of the raped woman or the woman whose pregnancy puts her life in danger demonstrate. It is about control, and the imposition of a minority's values on others.
And that is why the Iraq war is the perfect symbol for the anti-abortionists. Colonial conquest is always a kind of rape, but now the conquered country must bear the fetus of Bush-imposed "liberty" to term. The hierarchy is thus established. Washington is superior to Baghdad, and Iraq is feminized and deprived of certain kinds of choices.
And that is also how the Schiavo case makes sense in the end, because the religious Right feminized Michael Schiavo, made him into the pregnant woman seeking an "abortion," and wished to therefore deprive him of choice in the matter. If hierarchy is gendered, then the persons over which control is sought are always in some sense imagined as powerless women. Powerful non-fundamentalist men and uppity Third World countries that won't do as they are told are ultimately no different from feminist women seeking an abortion. All must be subdued, in the view of the Christian Right.
It is about hierarchy, power and control. It is not about life.