Barbara Ehrenreich writes:

I've been reading Bin Ladin--Carmen, that is, not her brother-in-law Osama (she spells the last name with an "i")--and I'd like to present a brand-new approach to terrorism, one that turns out to be more consistent with traditional American values. First, let's stop calling the enemy "terrorism," which is like saying we're fighting "bombings." Terrorism is only a method; the enemy is an extremist Islamic insurgency whose appeal lies in its claim to represent the Muslim masses against a bullying superpower.

But as Carmen Bin Ladin urgently reminds us in her book Inside the Kingdom, one glaring moral flaw of this insurgency, quite apart from its methods, is that it aims to push one-half of those masses down to a status only slightly above that of domestic animals. While Osama was getting pumped up for jihad, Carmen was getting up her nerve to walk across the street in a residential neighborhood in Jeddah--fully-veiled but unescorted by a male, something that is an illegal act for a woman in Saudi Arabia. Eventually she left the kingdom and got a divorce because she didn't want her daughters to grow up in a place where women are kept "locked in and breeding."

So here in one word is my new counterterrorism strategy: feminism. Or, if that's too incendiary, try the phrase "human rights for women."

Now one might think that sentiments like these would garner praise from the radical right, what with their flag-waving imperialistic fervor and sudden wont to rule the world. But of course, that would be pollyanna thinking.

You see, even though we as a nation oppose the theocracies of the Middle East, the wingnuts want to establish a theocratic authoritarian state here at home. They call it "freedom of religion," but really what they're saying is "freedom of religion, as long as it's the approved religion." And that means their peculiar brand of hate evangelism that uses the name of Jesus and the teachings of Christ to justify mass murder, discrimination, torture, pollution, invasion of privacy, assassination ... oh yeah, and the subjugation of women with crazy policies and laws like preventing girls from getting any sort of sex education that goes beyond "just don't do it," prohibiting girls under 18 from receiving birth control, and allowing pharmacists to play doctor and refuse to fill prescriptions for contraception.

And you certainly don't have to work hard to find the fearful, hate-filled diatribes against women and women's rights from the paranoid minds of Falwell, Dobson, Robertson and others who get rich by playing good citizens against each other while thumping the Bible.

Then you get the hateful people like the freepers who practically "danced in the streets" when Marla Ruznick died. They and their ilk are quite proud of their murderous hate -- and hate of women in particular.

Ehrenreich observes:

If this country were to embrace a feminist strategy against the insurgency, we'd have to start by addressing our own dismal record on women's rights. We'd be pushing for the immediate ratification of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which has been ratified by 169 countries but remains stalled in the U.S. Senate. We'd be threatening to break off relations with Saudi Arabia until it acknowledged the humanity of women. And we'd be thundering about the shortage of women in the U.S. Senate and House, an internationally embarrassing 14 percent.

I wonder if anything can penetrate the wingnuts' misogyny. I wonder if anything can satisfy their hate. Miserable wretches.

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