RadioNation with Laura Flanders Saturday found Laura Flanders interviewing Iraqi feminist Yanar Mohammed (MADRE) about conditions in Iraq that get little attention and Carolyn Ho, mother of war resister Ehren Watada, about her son and about the war.
Yanar Mohammed addressed the issue of the killing of women on the streets of Iraq which, though you may not read about, has become quite common. All quotes are paraphrases (one or two words may be off in each -- we didn't take notes and C.I.'s got a killer headache -- we're all tired).
"Laura," Mohammed explained, "believe me that the Iraqis are also surprised that it's possible to take us back 1,000 years in time."
Because these honor killings weren't a part of pre-illegal war Iraq. Honor killings? Death of a Princess took place in Iran. But Iraq's not Iraq for many Iraqis. It's why those who could afford to, left the country early on in what's been dubbed the 'brain drain.' It's why each day, more become refugess in neighboring nations such as Iran, Syria and Jordan. What's left, for most Iraqis, doesn't feel like Iraq because Iraq was an advanced Middle East country with women's rights written into their constitution. Pre-US invasion, of course.
Speaking of life on the ground today, Mohammed noted, "You go to the areas that are controlled by Islamists" who were installed by the US government and "it turns out that public execution of women is a common thing to do in those areas." She cited one execution/assassination of a woman that occurred last month, November 19th, where a woman was "dragged out of her house" by fundamentalists (Iraq had a secular government before US intervention) who "beat her, they flooged her in the middle of the street. Then they brought a cable and wrapped it around her neck." Thinking she's getting hanged?
It didn't happen that quickly. First they "dragged her. They go to the nearest football field and they hanged her . . . They bring their machine guns and kill her."
The woman's brother attempted to intervene and they fundamentalists shot him dead. And the fundamentalists?
"They are the political groups who are ruling right now under the blessing of the US administration," Mohammed observed.
This wasn't the only incident last month or in that area and, with great sadness, Mohammed declared, "This is something that we did not believe ever to happen in Iraq. I have lived there most of my life and we have never heard anything like that. This is the situation that women are living in . . . right now."
'Liberation'. 'Democracy.' The sick jokes of the Bully Boy administration.
And the targets' religion of choice isn't the issue. It's not sectarian violence, it's the targeting of women. And as most now grasp, you can judge how free a society is by the rights women possess. For Iraqi women, the illegal war brought no march of progress, it just destroyed all the freedoms that were guaranteed.
Women could go to college. (Today, at least a third of the children do not to school, forget college, in Iraq due to the daily chaos and violence as well as displacement.) Wome made up 40% of the "of the public [work] force." They could (and did) run for public office. The clock's gone backward and degraded and destroyed "all our social status . . . for generations to come." And the aid money Bully Boy used to brag of, none of went to NGOs "and women's groups have seen nothing of it."
On the topic of the James Baker Circle Jerk, Laura Flanders noted that neither woman was included on the panel nor anyone with similar circumstances. Mohammed agreed, stating it "did not bring anything new" and refuting the idea of "sitting down with Iran" and noting the report was "idiotic" and did not offer "any solutions" that reflected life on the ground.
Her opinion is that US forces need to leave now. She charted out the reasoning for that belief:
"Well my answer to that is that the more the troops stay in there the more that we have fundamentalists, Islam terrorism pouring in from all over the globe. . . . All of these [people] come to Iraq in order to liberate their so-called home land from the occupiers. If the US troops are not there, why would these fundamentalists be heading to Iraq? The more the US troops stay the more terrorism we have in Iraq."
And the Shia-Sunni divide was created by the Americans, Mohammed said, explaining that in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, American officials would ask her a question that wasn't a pressing concern to Iraq then though it now is: ". . . whether I was a Sunni or a Shia."
Discussing her son's decision to become the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq, Carolyn Ho noted that she "implored my son not to do this" because she knew he would be "vilified for this by the press and the public. I was just so hurting for him" and he explained to her that the decision was in keeping with everything he had been raised by his parents to stand for. His standing up could make a difference and the troops serving below him were people he was accountable for: "He felt the best thing he could do for his men was to remain behind and speak the truth."
On the topic of Iraq, Ho noted that she hadn't been there "but there have been people who have said that we are contributing to the chaos . . . I just don't see that we are contributing much to stabillizing the area and that perhaps there's a lot of self-interest involved."
[Bob Watada, Ehren's father, is very public about his feelings that the illegal war is an empire building move and never had a thing to do with freedom.]
At one point, Ho stressed that "[t]he Constitution is the supreme law of the land" and explained how other things stem from and add to that. The reason the point was made is the contingent of Watada-bashers tend to screech that an oath to the military was taken. It was and if they knew what they were blowing out their ass they'd know that service members are compelled to refuse any order that they feel is illegal. But the Constitution, which everyone in the service swears to uphold, is the supreme law of the land and it trumps up every other national law or oath required for military service.
Carolyn Ho was in the studio in NYC and Flanders said she was now doing a speaking tour. The reason for that, Ho explained, was "to appeal to the new Congress" because her son committed no crime and "he stands on the fact that this war was entered into illegally -- it's an immoral war and, consequently, he refused to deploy."
The incoming Congress, supposedly, is going to examine the intel and other aspects of the war.
Carolyn Ho is asking that her son's court-martial (scheduled to begin February 5th) be deferred until Congress holds hearings.
"How can the judge [in the court-martial] make a judgement on whether or not the war is illegal," Laura Flanders wondered, if the Congress has yet to explore the issue.
Carolyn Ho noted the oversight duty of the Congress and stated it was their responsibility "to make sure that military justice meets out true justice."
So what she's asking for is for all groups and organizations, women's group, religious groups, everyone (United Methodist is publicly supporting Watada) contact their Senators and Representatives and press "them to make this clear" that a court-martial proceeding should not even start before Congress (finally -- our words, not her's) does the oversight job they've neglected for almost four years now and "that what you are saying is an extension of the vote which was a referendum on this war."
Ehren Watada is not someone off on some tangent that no one else sees. He is a part of resistance within the military to the illegal war. Others who have gone public include Kyle Snyder, Darrel Anderson, Joshua Key, Ivan Brobeck, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Camilo Meija, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Jeremy Hinzman, Corey Glass, Patrick Hart, Clifford Cornell, Agustin Aguayo, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, and Kevin Benderman.
Information on this movement of war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Appeal for Redress is collecting signatures of active duty service members calling on Congress to bring the troops home -- the petition will be delivered to Congress next month.
