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Behind the Headlines
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com
January 25, 2002
PC IMPERIALISM
Martha McSally should find another job
The Martha McSally case combines the two absolute worst aspects of
American political culture � rampant political correctness and
foreign policy triumphalism � in one outrageous package. McSally, the
highest-ranking female combat pilot in the U.S. Air Force, is suing
the Pentagon: she objects to US military regulations that, in
deference to local customs, require all female military personnel
stationed in Saudi Arabia to wear the abaya while off base, claiming
a violation of her First and Fifth Amendment rights. The significance
of this case was aptly stated by her lawyer, Thomas Neuberger:
"What's happening in Afghanistan, with women and burqas, helps point out the
contradiction, of our freeing Afghan women from wearing these but, at the same time,
making our own service women wear them."
A FEMINIST FOREIGN POLICY
Having "freed" the women of Afghanistan, Ms. McSally and her legal team want to extend
the gains of the feminist revolution to Saudi Arabia � and to anywhere else US troops
are stationed, on six continents in 141 nations?
Even as George W. Bush and his Secretary of State try to reassure our Arab allies that
this is not a war against Islam but against terrorism, McSally's lawsuit (and its
sympathetic treatment not only by the US media, but
by the military) tell the real story. The Americans won't be satisfied until Saudi
women are dressing like Madonna and Mecca is the name of a record label. The idea that
Western customs and mores are being exported at gun
point by American Amazons piloting jet fighters is an image that might have been
conjured by Osama himself.
Aside from having to wear the abaya off base, female military personnel stationed in
Saudi Arabia must also have a male escort and are forbidden from driving beyond the
perimeter of their compound. McSally has been fighti
ng this regulation ever since she was first stationed there as part of the team
patrolling Iraq's "no fly zone." For 13 months, writes military columnist Tom Philpott,
"McSally, a devout Christian, has declined to leave base, except on official business,
to avoid having to wear a robe of the Muslim faith, called an 'abaya,' and behave
subservient to men, which, she contends, harms milit
ary discipline and morale."
THE McSALLY PRINCIPLE
The McSally Principle, applied consistently and universally, means the US must be
willing to break with its allies and even risk war, lest any American woman stationed
anywhere feel "subservient." Now there's the perfect
feminist foreign policy: US imperialism conceived as a gigantic feat of social
engineering.
STRANGE BEDFELLOW
Certainly the National Organization for Women has been backing this case, yet it isn't
just leftie- feminists who have jumped on the McSally bandwagon, but, curiously, some
of their biggest enemies on the Christian Right.
As The Age astutely put it:
"Her cause has been taken up by strange bedfellows. She has the ear of the National
Coalition of Women's Organisations and is being financed by the Rutherford Institute,
a right-wing advocacy group. The colonel insists, h
owever, that she is no feminist. She has said 'the last thing I ever wanted to do was
make a big deal out of being a woman,' demonstrating perhaps the extent to which she
has imbibed feminist values."
UNITED WE STAND
And not only her, but her ostensibly conservative defenders at the Rutherford
Institute, the main legal arm of the Christian Right, who are willing to overlook
their bitter opposition to feminist initiatives in the intere
st of making McSally into the anti-Saudi, anti-Muslim poster girl. The pro-war Left
joins the pro-war Right in a deliberate provocation aimed at our principal allies in
the Middle East: this unusual alliance gives new mea
ning to the slogan "United We Stand." Finally a project the feminists and the
neoconservatives can get together on: a campaign to export American culture at
gunpoint and turn the whole world into an American suburb.
REMEMBER MICHAEL NEW
What's really amazing is that McSally wasn't discharged the moment she even hinted at
a lawsuit. Michael New was court-martialed for refusing to wear the blue beret of the
UN in Macedonia, but McSally gets away with not o
nly flouting orders but whipping up a legal and political movement to get those orders
changed. That's the kind of "gender discrimination" we're not supposed to talk about.
YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTHIN' YET
In a rational world, McSally would not even be in the military, which is no place for
women � as her lawsuit makes all too clear. How many more lawsuits will it take before
the Pentagon becomes so entangled that military
readiness is undermined? Oh boy, I can't wait until the victimology lobby pushes
through gays in the military � that'll really rile the Saudis, eh?
What a set-up for a blow-up: GI Joe and GI Bruce are walking hand-in-hand down a Saudi
street, when suddenly they are set upon by the Mutawah, the religious police. I can
see the headlines now: SAUDI GAY-BASHING SPARKS CR
ISIS! SAUDIS NAB SAUCY SODOMITES, PRESIDENT DENOUNCES 'ACT OF WAR'! The New York Times
would solemnly compare them to Matthew Sheppard. Andrew Sullivan would have a hissy
fit and demand that we commence bombing Riyadh. Ba
rney Frank would get up on the floor of Congress and call for a declaration of war.
THE RETURN OF THE UGLY AMERICAN
Surely someone will spare us this ugly spectacle. Does the US really mean to impose
its sexual mores and cultural tics wherever its troops venture? Is US foreign policy
now to be a war to make the world safe for Gloria St
einem? Do we really want to wage a culture war internationally, violating norms and
traditions that were old before our nation was founded? The McSally case is almost a
parody of the worst left-wing anti-American caricatu
re: she exemplifies the arrogance bordering on hubris that characterizes our foreign
policy. She personifies the boorish stereotype of the Ugly American to a tee.
A DANGEROUS PROVOCATION
If applied consistently, the McSally Principle � "we're above it all" � would be a
disaster for the US, not only in the Arab world but on a global scale. No one could
seriously propose barging into a foreign country and m
aking a point of abrogating and openly mocking their deeply-ingrained religious and
cultural strictures. So when Gen. Tommy Franks, head of the US Central Command,
announced last week that US servicewoman will no longer b
e required to wear the abaya off base � although it "is strongly encouraged" � it
seemed like the sort of provocation designed to enrage Riyadh. But that's the idea,
you see: After all, you can't fight an endless war with
out a constant supply of fresh enemies, which brings us naturally to one of the most
interesting aspects of this curious case�.
A WEAK CASE
It's easy to see why the left-wing crowd would support McSally. But why is the
Rutherford Institute, the ACLU of the Christian Right, pushing this case? A very
interesting question, one only superficially answered by McSa
lly's claim that wearing the abaya forces her to practice a religion � Islam � and she
is a Christian. But Saudi law is Islamic law � so does this mean US soldiers are
similarly exempt from laws that prohibit alcohol on r
eligious grounds?
ENDLESS ENEMIES
It seems to me McSally and her lawyers are making a pretty weak argument, but there's
a lot more to this than a simple case of "discrimination": it is but the latest angle
in the anti-Saudi campaign being waged in the med
ia, which I discussed in my last column. We went through the Taliban in a few short
months, and let Osama slip through our fingers: we can't really take on Saddam without
using the Arabian peninsula as a launching pad, bu
t the Saudis won't allow it � and so they, too, have to go.
That is the program of the War Party: diametrically opposed, in many ways, to this
administration's announced war aims. Colin Powell's anti-terrorist coalition, the
President pointedly refusing to kowtow to crude anti-Ara
bist demagoguery on the home front, the relatively unexciting future targets so far
announced (Somalia, the Philippines, Yemen � yawn!) � none of this has endeared Bush
to the war hawks. The McSally case is yet more press
ure on the Bushies to bend with the wind, sideline the President's father and his
ally, Colin Powell, and get with the program: to not only abandon but actively
destabilize our former Saudi allies. Unlike Bush, the neocon
servatives and their Christian Right and feminist allies really do want a US war
against Islam.
THERE'S NO TRIALS LIKE SHOW TRIALS
It is a scenario that will employ legions of "experts" on the subject of
"Islamo-fascism," sell plenty of whiny new weapons, and inspire suckers left and right
to get behind World War III. Show trials are an essential par
t of war propaganda, but in this case it is necessary to have two: one to provoke our
enemies abroad, and another to intimidate the opposition at home. The McSally case
fits the bill in the first case, and the trial of Jo
hn Walker Lindh in the second � but I'll save the Tali-Boy for Monday's column.
HEY, CHECK THIS OUT
I want to welcome our new British columnist. Christopher Montgomery is an historian
who is currently writing a book on the historiography of the Suez crisis. He has also
recently taken some time out to run the Iain Duncan
Smith campaign office, and for a while was working in the private office of the
Leader of the Opposition. A young representative of the diehard tradition, he believes
that Enoch Powell was right on everything apart from
immigration. For a while, the pseudonymous "Emmanuel Goldstein," the originator of
"Airstrip One," had been telling me that he wanted to devote more time to the fight
the encroaching Euro-socialist super-state on British
sovereignty, but I kept trying to delay his departure: after all, who would want to
lose one of their best columnists? But he promised to get someone I would be really
pleased with � and that he certainly did. The first "
Airstrip One" by our newest columnist is simply magnificent: check it out.
I also want to draw your attention to the latest piece by Christopher Deliso on the
Macedonian front. Deliso is reporting from the front lines in Tetovo, where fanatic
Muslim terrorists have revived their insurgency again
st the elected government, and the story he has to tell isn't being told anywhere else
but on Antiwar.com � but that's why you come here, isn't it?
Please Support Antiwar.com
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Quagmire: The Case Against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans, a 60-page booklet packed
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End>}}}
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