Joan Chittister-Is this what they told us we were going there to do?

[realFedUp]

Is this what they told us we were going there to do?
(or how much worse Iraq is for women and children)

Joan Chittister
http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/fwis/

snip

The expression of their agony, their frustration, lingers in my mind more a wail than a cry: “We are a civilization of 7,000 years,” said a delegate to the U.S.-Iraqi Women’s Conference sponsored by the Global Peace Initiative of Women, March 29-31 in New York. “You are a country of 200 years.” She drifted off into the unsaid. But the message was plain: You are a young country. What have you ever lost? Who are you to tell us how to live?

The lament came out of a well of agony. While the West struggles with its uncertainty about the implications of veils and burqas for the full development of women in Islamic cultures, these women, some in hijab or head scarves, some in trim pant suits, some in abayas, are struggling with what it means to stay alive, to rebuild an entire country, to keep their families safe, to be safe themselves.

There are now, the women told us, 1.5 million widows in Iraq and the numbers are rising daily as men disappear.

“Before the war, women constituted almost half of the college population in Iraq,” one woman pointed out. But after the invasion women had no chances for either the jobs an education could bring or the independence it promises.

“After the overthrow of the tyrant,” a doctor said, “shortages of fuel, medicine, and food got even worse than before.”

continued

[northofdenali]

1. And we can't rebuild the infrastructure we ruined -

but we can build a humongous permanent embassy for several billion.......

[realFedUp]

4. exactly...looks like Vatican City of the Middle East.

Opus Daze anyone?

[EC]

2. Well, there's part of the problem

“We are a civilization of 7,000 years,” said a delegate to the U.S.-Iraqi Women’s Conference sponsored by the Global Peace Initiative of Women, March 29-31 in New York. “You are a country of 200 years.”

** and his followers only believe the world has been here 6000years.



This is developing to the same problem that Germany had, all widows and children with no support...made it ripe for the government to get the kids via Hitler's Youth programs....just watch, there will be children's groups run like military - how about China's little red books? I really think part of the plan was to eliminate all males between the ages of 16 and 40.

[realFedUp]

3. yes, just more fodder for the fundie schools.