By President Bush wants me to be excited about the recent elections in Iraq while the news shows lines of Iraqi voters, segregated by sex. I’m supposed to be thrilled, elated, waving an ink-stained finger around a pasty version of E.T., while the ballots specifically asked the voter to disclose his or her sex. Smug American politicians repeat the word “freedom” like a broken record, while already on the streets of Baghdad women are harassed for wearing pants.
It funny, for all the current saber-rattling going on about Iran at the moment, Bush seems completely ignorant of the fact that he himself has just helped create a new Iran: a battered, bitter post-Saddam Iraq at the risk of succumbing to fascism in the guise of moral authority. Oh sweet irony.
What’s wrong with having a religiously conservative Iraq? Well, nothing really, as long as women aren’t being stoned to death for making personal decisions regarding their sexuality, as long as representatives of other religions don’t get prosecuted, as long as dissenting bloggers aren’t being thrown in jail, and controversial writers aren’t being threatened with fatwas. The scary thing for all of us living in America is the notion that if all those things really do start taking place in Iraq, the American government will ignore them stoically, attempting to save face. Nobody is going to want to admit that atrocities are happening, if only to avoid shouldering the responsibility since, hey, we did invade them first. Oops.
If Iraq is going to be the new Iran I will hang my head in despair, not out of some presumed Western superiority complex with regards to Islam, but because the government of Iran has little to do with Islam, and a lot to do with modern day fascism. Expressions of faith and spirituality do not have to go hand-in-hand with oppression and bigotry, but tell that to the Ayatollah, who recently chose to continue persecuting Salman Rushdie. Is this the future of the new Iraq?
When I see pictures of the wives of new Iraqi politicians, tiptoeing behind their husbands with their faces primly covered, I have to admit that I could care less what these women are wearing. But I do care about the fact that there are plenty of women in Iraq who aren’t interested in the burkha, or marriage to powerful men. Are they going to be allowed to make their own choices? Or does President Bush’s beloved “freedom” apply only to those members of Iraqi society in possession of male gonads and fundamentalist beliefs?
Here’s hoping I’ll be proven wrong.
P.S. River at Baghdad Burning confirmed my worst fears. Let’s hope that in the future, she won’t.
