Why Can’t Feminists Figure Out That War Isn’t the Answer?

The Feminist Majority Foundation is at it again:

Why Is a Leading Feminist Organization Lending Its Name to Support Escalation in Afghanistan? | Reproductive Justice and Gender | AlterNet

I realize that blog titles like “Frau Hitler” are inflammatory, but I just can’t say strongly enough how incredibly disgusted I am with the way Western feminists uncritically lent support to the warmonger Hillary Clinton and then to the only slightly less bellicose Barack Obama, who has since proven that he was no peace candidate.

Anyway, from the article:

Here are the facts: After the invasion, Americans received reports that newly liberated women had cast off their burquas and gone back to work. Those reports were mythmaking and propaganda. Aside from a small number of women in Kabul, life for Afghan women since the fall of the Taliban has remained the same or become much worse.

Under the Taliban, women were confined to their homes. They were not allowed to work or attend school. They were poor and without rights. They had no access to clean water or medical care, and they were forced into marriages, often as children.

Today, women in the vast majority of Afghanistan live in precisely the same conditions, with one notable difference: they are surrounded by war. The conflict outside their doorsteps endangers their lives and those of their families. It does not bring them rights in the household or in public, and it confines them even further to the prison of their own homes. Military escalation is just going to bring more tragedy to the women of Afghanistan.

…[W]e are told that the U.S. cannot leave Afghanistan because of what will happen to women if they go. Let us be clear: Women are being gang raped, brutalized and killed in Afghanistan. Forced marriages continue, and more women than ever are being forced into prostitution — often to meet the demand of foreign troops.

The U.S. presence in Afghanistan is doing nothing to protect Afghan women. The level of self-immolation among women was never as high as it is now. When there is no justice for women, they find no other way out but suicide.

I have said before that the only principled feminist stance is an antiwar one.  This has nothing to do with the cultural stereotyping of women as meek, passive creatures and everything to do with the disproportionate impact that aggressive interventions abroad have on women.