Hillary Clinton (left) made an unusual break with Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, who, along with the national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, and the counterterrorism chief, John O. Brennan, had urged caution. Libya was not vital to American national security interests, the men argued, and Mr. Brennan worried that the Libyan rebels remained largely unknown to American officials, and could have ties to al-Qaeda. The administration's shift also became possible only after the United States won not just the support of Arab countries but their active participation in military operations … "Hillary and Susan Rice were key parts of this story because Hillary got the Arab buy-in and Susan worked the U.N. to get a 10-to-5 vote, which is no easy thing," said Brian Katulis, a national security expert with the Center for American Progress, a liberal group with close ties to the administration. This "puts the United States in a much stronger position because they've got the international support that makes this more like the 1991 gulf war than the 2003 Iraq war." – New York Times
Dominant Social Theme: Women are better at war, too – especially Hillary.
Free-Market Analysis: A fundamental dominant social theme of the Anglo-American power elite so far as we can tell has to do with the innate superiority of the female sex. This is a touchy subject for both men and women, but it seems to be true – and we have written about the issue in the past. We last addressed it when we discussed the Women's Liberation Movement which is not so overtly prominent these days but which had considerable impact on Western culture in the 20th century.
In the above article excerpt, we can see that the New York Times is now beginning to make the case that women are just as good at starting wars as men, and maybe even better. The caution of the Robert Gates is contrasted unfavorably with the militant activism of Ms. Hillary Clinton (the 2009 keynote speaker at the AYM summit in Mexico) and her colleague Susan Rice as well.
The promotion actually has been ongoing for over a century. It resulted in women getting the vote and eventually entering the work force en masse. But the question can surely be raised whether women of child-bearing years have benefited from social pressure to raise children while working or whether in a sense they have been pushed into a grinding employment trap where they must perform as a heroic "Super Mom."
The foundational underpinnings of Women's Lib are essentially socialist and even Marxist. From the power-elite standpoint this is also a net-positive as it conflates sexual liberation with the state itself as the patron of gender freedom. This is not just a hypothetical point. Many of the leaders of the Women's Lib movement were actually socialists in their political orientation. (Betty Friedan comes to mind.)
We've also floated the hypothesis that Women's Lib had more to do with financial issues than gender ones. An argument can be made (by conspiratorial historians anyway) that the power elite in the latter half of the 20th century was well aware that taxes and central banking monetary inflation was making it impossible for a single parent – the father – to generate enough income by himself to raise a family. Thus, Western culture had to be maneuvered into endorsing the idea that women could – and should – work too. (This wasn't actually so difficult given that women had made up a large part of the work force during World War II.)
This had another benefit from the power elite standpoint in that it further weakened the family compact. If women could work and if society accepted their full participation in the work force then the state would have additional entree into the family unit. Exhausted parents would have less time for children; day care and other sorts of non-familial family care would become a bigger part of family life. The intention, always, from our point of view, is to attack the role of the family while expanding the role of the "nurturing" state.
Women's rights seem to be a kind of wedge issue that the elite uses whenever it can. We see it as well in Afghanistan where the rights of women are continually emphasized and the "liberation" of women from Muslim dress codes and circumcision is often put forth as a main reason why the West is fighting the antediluvian Taliban.
While many endorse this point of view and find it credible, we tend to believe that it is fairly exploitative. There is considerable evidence that the West has poisoned millions in Afghanistan and Iraq with depleted uranium, which is a deadly radioactive substance (no matter how the American military denies it). Birth disfigurements in both countries have exploded and women these days after giving birth are said not to inquire about the sex of the child but only whether it has some sort of gruesome disfigurement or not. This is in addition to the procession of seemingly endless casualties that the West is inflicting on civilians – including many women and children – via misguided bombings.
Within this context, we wonder if Anglo-American elites that stand in the shadows behind these wars really have the best interests of women in mind. We could argue, once again, that Women's Liberation is simply being used as a justification for a larger goal –the subjugation of the tribal Pashtuns in this case to ease the path toward a more comprehensive one-world government, one that penetrates near Asia. If Western powers that be are serious about helping Islamic women, why have so many women and children been poisoned with depleted uranium, which has a half-life of thousands of years?
It is difficult to make generalizations about women – or men. Certainly women can be just as courageous as men, even from a sociopolitical and military standpoint. There is the example of Joan of Arc, for instance, who mustered French resistance in the face of British oppression. And yet this sort of quasi-anomalous behavior is increasingly being promoted as the norm. The New York Times article, in its glowing portrait of how the women of the Obama administration pushed the West into opening yet a third front against the Middle East is one more example of support for this theme. Here's some more from the article:
Within hours, Mrs. Clinton and the aides had convinced Mr. Obama that the United States had to act, and the president ordered up military plans, which Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hand-delivered to the White House the next day. On Thursday, during an hour-and-a -half meeting, Mr. Obama signed off on allowing American pilots to join Europeans and Arabs in military strikes against the Libyan government. … The change became possible, though, only after Mrs. Clinton joined Samantha Power, a senior aide at the National Security Council, and Susan Rice, Mr. Obama's ambassador to the United Nations, who had been pressing the case for military action, according to senior administration officials speaking only on condition of anonymity. Ms. Power is a former journalist and human rights advocate; Ms. Rice was an Africa adviser to President Clinton when the United States failed to intervene to stop the Rwanda genocide, which Mr. Clinton has called his biggest regret.
Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, one of the early advocates for military action in Libya, described the debate within the administration as "healthy." He said that "the memory of Rwanda, alongside Iraq in '91, made it clear" that the United States needed to act but needed international support. The pivotal decision for Mr. Obama came on Tuesday though, after Mrs. Clinton had called from Paris with news that the Arab governments were willing to participate in military action. That would solve one of Mr. Gates's concerns, that the United States not be viewed on the Arab street as going to war against another Muslim country. Mrs. Clinton "had the proof," one senior administration official said, "that not only was the Arab League in favor, but that the Emirates were serious about participating."
This seems to us a slightly new twist on the elite promotion of women as the "stronger sex." Not only are women generally as competent or more competent than men, they are also better at standing up to Islamic bullies and more decisive when it comes to combating life's unfairness. For those who were worried that women were weaker than men when it came to waging war and killing bad guys, the New York Times article wants us to understand that women can be every bit as decisive and merciless as men.
Let us not forget to mention a new, well received book by media maven Dan Abrams, entitled "Man Down: Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt That Women Are Better Cops, Drivers, Gamblers, Spies, World Leaders, Beer Tasters, Hedge Fund Managers, and Just About Everything Else." This book perfectly captures the Zeitgeist of modern times in our view. One can find the book at Amazon.com.
Is there really a superior sex? It is certainly indisputable that women have been repressed and exploited the world over, certainly in the past (and yet in the present). But generally speaking, men have been oppressed as well by the larger society, certainly in the West, currently, as taxes, regulations and inflation pile up, making make it more and more difficult for men to pursue traditional gender roles. No one has it "easy" these days.
The endless urge to make women just as efficiently truculent as men from a formal, military standpoint seems counterproductive in our view. It seems to have little to do with the reality of personal and professional liberation. In fact, women soldiers are committing suicide at an alarming rate in the US military and rape is said to be a fact of military life, with most women scared to come forward to expose the abuse.
The abuse of women in the US military is surely predictable and one would expect that it would cause a major retrenchment in the way the military – and society at large – looks at gender roles as regards to war. In fact, the reverse is true; for some reason the Pentagon has apparently floated the idea recently that women ought to be fighting on the front lines!
No matter the ludicrousness of advancing "women's rights" by treating them just like men in the name of equality, the power elite promotion rolls on. Perhaps in fact it is not supporting women, but exploiting them. Is it "liberating" to have the opportunity to participate more fully in wars of aggression, or even to promote them, with all their violence and murder?
