Victoria Brownworth

it’s a chill, torrentially rainy day in philadelphia. an early nor’easter–but snowing only in the poconos. for now. i am, as ever, concerned about the cats outside. it was just pleasant, sunny autumn weather two days ago, so i have only begun to think about winter shelters.

of course as i contemplate caring for the dozens of abandoned cats i tend to every day as part of our shelter activities, it’s difficult not to think of all the women and girls in need of shelter that i can do nothing for except draw attention, continually, to their plight. what is the status of feminism that we still can’t get half the planet recognized?

being one of the “progressives”  who voted for barack obama, i am not supposed to comment on his being awarded the nobel peace prize in any negative way. after all, the DNC has already stipulated that to do so is to align one’s self with the terrorists. (where have i heard such rhetoric before? oh right–from the RNC, except that was for critiquing george bush.)

and yet today, reading jonathan turley’s column on who was passed over  for the award, i am back to feeling that barack obama continues to be more than just a disappointment to progressives. he’s undercutting progressivism in ways that george bush could not have imagined. because we never censored ourselves with regard to bush. but we censor ourselves over obama on a daily basis. one only need read think progress to see that. the references are always to the obama administration, as if this is somehow distinct from the president and as if obama himself were not at its head.

dr. sima samar hasn’t been on virtually every newscast for the past two years and ten months like obama has. she’s no camera-magnet. she’ has merely been working diligently for the rights of afghan women and girls in a nation where the very afghan president that the obama administration is shoring up has agreed with other religious extremists in the country that rape in marriage isn’t really a crime. and that’s one of the least offensive things being done to women in afghanistan where tossing acid in the faces of women who protest for their own rights has become ritualistic.

samar was on the short list for the peace prize. she should  have gotten it. she deserves it. she worked for it–she didn’t ask for it, but she worked for it. (see more here.) and i know, obama didn’t ask for it either. but nor did he say that there were likely more deserving candidates–people who weren’t orchestrating two wars, for example. he never suggested anyone else should receive it. he said it was humbling and a call to action. mr. president, when we elected you with a vote that didn’t require a three day or three month recount, that was a call to action. where have you been the past ten months?

in 2003, shirin ebadi was awarded the nobe peace prize. ebadi does similar work to save the lives of women in iran. iran–no matter what juan cole or other apologists for that dictatorship might argue–is one of the most repressive regimes in the world today, particularly with regard to women and queers. homosexuality is punishable by death in iran. that’s not extremism? perhaps not of you are a republican or an evangelical, but if you are a progressive, as juan cole purports to be, that is extremist. apologists for such a regime have to take a long hard look at their own poltical/intellectual credentials.

ebadi knows about extremism. after the 1979 islamic revolution in iran, ebadi, an attorney who was at that time a judge, was demoted to the secretarial pool. and that was merely the first injustice.  

we don’t hear much about women like ebadi and samar and their work here in the west. yet obviously the nobel committee heard about samar’s work, because she was on their list. so why is it that they chose obama instead? a man promoting war as opposed to a woman saving lives?

many of us pinned our hopes–some irrationally so–on obama back in november. even if he hadn’t been our first choice–and having worked on hillary clinton’s campaign night and day for close to a year, he surely was not mine—he seemed the only choice if one was even a little bit progressive or even a little bit tired of the bush regime. i was much more than tired of the bush/cheney years and much more than a little in need of a progressive agenda that might match even some of my own.

throughout the general election pundits kept hammering home how a vote for mccain would be a vote for a third bush term. i never actually believed this–mccain was quite different from bush on many issues, yet still not someone to vote for. and let’s face it, a republican is a republican and their most moderate members (please don’t laud olympia snowe any more, please) are no more moderates than iran is a a peaceful nation. republicans are extremists. let’s not delude ourselves with semantics on that score any longer. to be a republican is to be an extremist. deal with it. own it.

that said, since january, it’s become increasingly clear that the third bush term is obama’s first term. he has not brought a single soldier/sailor/marine/national guardsman home from iraq. he’s sent at least 20,000 more troops to afghanistan (no one from the pentagon to the white house wants to acknowledge exactly how many troops have been sent, but it’s at least 20,000–they acknowledge that many).

obama is perpetuating torture. rendition. unlimited detention. just today obama once again moved to keep photos of detainees secret from the public. it looks as if the u.s. supreme court might rule against obama on this. so a new end-run has been promulgated. obama is a constitutional scholar, which makes this nothing less than disgraceful and in light of obama’s recent nobel peace prize, shameful to all of us, not just the president.

as i wrote throughout the bush administration, if we were not objecting to torture, then we were party to it. if we continue to find excuses for obama for this execrable bush-lite like behavior, then we didn’t mean it when we said we loathed bush for what he was doing. obama is doing it now and many progressives/democrats aren’t batting an eyelash and far too many more are working double-time as apologists for our prize-winning prez. (see more on the story about the photos here.)

thus as it pours down rain and the winds howl and it looks increasingly like winter, women and girls on the other side of the world (not just in afghanistan and iran, but those are the countries i am thinking of right now) are being marginalized by gender to the point, often, of death.

a woman who could have and should have gotten the nobel peace prize for her work to save those lives was passed over for a man who is promoting two wars plus torture. in 2003 ebadi received the award–not george bush. that made sense. how does this make sense? it doesn’t. it’s an outrage. not a republican-manufactured outrage like the outcry over obama going to copenhagen to cheerlead for chicago with the olympic committee but a true outrage.  the nobel committee used appalling judgement with this award.

yet and still, this isn’t just about the small coterie of the nobel committee. it’s about the entire world. we ignore the plight of women and girls worldwide because women and girls simply do not matter. we are chattel, we are commodities, we are vessels, we are victims. we are sold into slavery and raped and murdered and no one cares. (speaking of the extremism of the republicans, 30 of them voted last week against women raped while working for halliburton in iraq. how is that different from the rulings in afghanistan and iran? it’s not.)

the rain is continuing here through monday. the yard is already sodden and water has ponded where the annuals have been killed off by the first frost the other night. in afghanistan, winter comes early. and the women and girls will be trapped inside for months on end. prisoners in their own homes, their own countries. meanwhile, the peace prize president is considering how many more troops to send to afghanistan. there should not even have been a contest. the award should have gone to samar. the award should have stood for the effort to  save the lives of women and girls in afghanistan. it should have called attention to the plight of women and girls. instead it has merely held up in bold relief  what obama has not done—made any effort at ending torture or the wars.

oscar wilde said the truth was never pure and ceetainly not simple. perhaps. but there are a few pure, simple truths out there. one is that the lives of women and girls matter. another is that  war isn’t peace. it never was, it never will be. obama should donate the $1.4 million in prize money to the women and girls of afghanistan, 70 percent of whom are illiterate. that would be one answer to the  call to action the president seems unable to respond to with any kind of certainty.—vab