Missing
In Action
By Lucinda Marshall
22 March,2007
Countercurrents.org
On
March 17 I joined the wonderful surge of patriotic Americans who braved
horrendous weather to march from Constitution Gardens to the Pentagon
in opposition to the Iraq war. One of the dominant themes of the day
in signage, t-shirts and speeches was to “Bring the Troops Home
Now.” But honoring the lives of those in the military and bringing
the troops home now is only part of what is necessary. By focusing on
this mantra that was framed by the Neocon “Support the Troops”
drumbeat, issues such as the violence against women that occur as a
result of militarism become all but invisible at events such as the
March on the Pentagon.
True, there were women on the podium, including Cindy Sheehan and Cynthia
McKinney. But their speeches did not acknowledge the terrible toll that
war has on women’s lives. McKinney spoke of the torture of men.
Yet as a recent report by the human rights organization Madre made clear,
women have been tortured, raped, falsely imprisoned and assaulted with
impunity since the beginning of the war by both Americans and Iraqis.
Is their torture not every bit as much a violation of human rights as
the torture of men? And what about the rapes and sexual assault within
our own military ranks that were recently reported in both the New York
Times http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/magazine/
18cover.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=
1174306763-jER2clyTRFVzjA9PrWZd9gand Salon http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/03/07/
women_in_military/index.html?source=rss, is this not torture too?
Yet the anti-war movement
continues in complicit silence to ignore the human rights abuses against
women that arise as a result of war. In September of 2002, when the
invasion of Iraq began to look certain, members of the Feminist Peace
Network (FPN) authored the “Statement of Conscience: A Feminist
Vision for Peace” http://www.feministpeacenetwork.org/statement-of-conscience-a-feminist-vision-for-peace/.
The Statement was written partially in response to the original Not
in Our Name (NION) statement http://www.nion.us/NSOC/original.htm, from
which conspicuously, all mention of war’s impact on women was
missing. In the cover letter to the Statement, we wrote,
“FPN believes that,
in order to effectively address the problems with the current U.S. military
policy and the globalization of the so-called war against terror, the
global pandemic of violence against women and children must be stopped.
It is FPN’s contention that, if we are to truly create peace,
we must first recognize the horrific violence endured by the women of
this planet every day. And, most importantly, we must vow that ending
violence — by definition — includes ending violence that
specifically endangers women and children. Until we do that, there will
not truly be peace.”
Sadly, the years since the
Statement was written have affirmed our concerns. Despite the oxymoronic,
self-serving and misogynist rhetoric of the Bush regime about “liberating”
women, the situation for women in Iraq has deteriorated markedly and
in Afghanistan as well, the human rights of women continue to be under
siege.
But as the NION statement
did in 2002, the anti-war movement continues to discount the lives of
women. It cannot be said enough, until ending war also includes ending
the attendant violence against women that results because of militarism,
there will be no justice and there will be no peace. If we truly want
peace, if we truly want to end the war, then those of us who support
the anti-war movement, particularly the women who speak in its name
such as Sheehan and McKinney, must insist that ending the war on women
is a necessary part of the peace agenda.
Postscript: Not only must
the peace movement clearly acknowledge that ending the war involves
much more than bringing the troops home, we must begin to articulate
a clear vision of what is necessary for lasting peace. In the Statement
of Conscience we offered this starting point:
“We defy those who
would limit our experience of life to the maintenance of a caste system
that supports the pursuit of profit and personal aggrandizement at the
expense of meeting basic human needs. We challenge world leaders to
put an end to the terrorism of hunger, thirst, sexual servitude, racism,
patriarchy, nationalism, joblessness, homelessness, ableism, homophobia,
ignorance, child molestation and elder neglect that many of the Earth’s
citizens face daily. When every child of this world is adequately nourished,
clothed, educated and healthy; when every adult who wishes to work has
life-sustaining employment; when women and children are free from abuse
then human life on earth will have become so highly valued that terroristic
activity will lose its attraction.”
You can read the entire Statement
on the Feminist Peace Network website http://www.feministpeacenetwork.org/
statement-of-conscience-a-feminist-vision-for-peace/. We offer this
as a beginning articulation of a full and inclusive agenda for peacemaking.
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