What we have accomplished in Iraq.

[catsittingstill]

Here's an example.  For those who don't have time to follow the link, it's an article about a 17 year old Iraqi girl, murdered by her father and her brothers for talking--talking-- to a man who wasn't a member of her family.  This is a common practice in Iraq now; it's called "honor killing."

I will just note that, however I might despise Saddam Hussein, while he ruled Iraq, honor killing was prosecuted as murder.  After the regime change we brought about, the police now congratulate these murderers.

Oh, well done!

Comments

STOP HONORCIDE!

[(Anonymous)]

The STOP HONORCIDE! campaign was launched on Mother's Day 2008. The goal of the campaign is to prosecute honorcides to the fullest extent of the law. We want honorcide to be classified as a hate crime and we advocate for every existing hate crime legislation to be amended to include honorcide.

http://www.reformislam.org/honorcide/ (http://www.reformislam.org/honorcide/)

Re: STOP HONORCIDE!

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Um. Who are you?

It's not

[sffilk.livejournal.com]

just common in Iraq. It's common throughout the Moslem world.

it's common in human societies

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Happens here, too, though it's no longer common.

Re: It's not

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

That's quite true, and I didn't intend to suggest otherwise, or to suggest that it's only wrong in Iraq or anything like that.

I did intend to point out that our invasion and occupation of Iraq has made the problem considerably worse there, and thus made Iraqi women's lives(and therefore Iraqi *people's* lives, since slightly over half of all human beings are female) much harder.

Respectfully,

[sffilk.livejournal.com]

I'd have to disagree with you on that. It's just that it was not reported as much before. It would happen, and since sharia allows it, nothing would happen to the murderer.

Re: Respectfully,

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Well, my understanding is that under Saddam Hussein it was prosecuted as murder, and now it's (obviously) not.

Re: Respectfully,

[(Anonymous)]

If such is the case then I stand corrected.

Dishonor Killing

[(Anonymous)]

We didn't cause, this, Cat. . .it's been going on since pre-Islamic times. Our presence in Iraq is probably not helping anything, but these crimes are on the increase globally. And, too often, the perpetrators walk.

Ellen R. Sheeley, Author
"Reclaiming Honor in Jordan"

Re: Dishonor Killing

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I didn't intend to suggest that we created the custom of honor killing. Nor did I intend to suggest that it exists only in Iraq or even only in Muslim countries (though I do think it is most common among the more fundamentalist muslims).

What I was pointing out was that we *did* remove the restraints on honor killing that existed in Iraq prior to the invasion. Since the invasion (as I understand it) it is no longer prosecuted as murder and it has become much more common.

This is a small part of why I tend to come to a slow simmer, or sometimes a rolling boil, when people try to tell me that we've "liberated the Iraqi people." Women are people. Slightly over half of all people are female, so the average person is a woman (or a girl). Women in Iraq are much less free than they were under Saddam Hussein. Thus we've made the Iraqi people *less* free, not more.

And for this we spent thousands of American lives and tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of Iraqi lives.

I'm naturally a bit upset about this.

Re: Dishonor Killing

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

This will, I hope, be added to history textbooks as an example of "how do you know the one who replaces the tyrant won't be worse?"

Re: Dishonor Killing

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Yes.

Not that anybody is saying that Saddam Hussein was a good person who took good care of his country.

But it doesn't look to me like the Iraqi people are better off as a result of this war.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

It's an outrage among a million outrages, and it is being used as one more excuse to perpetuate the war, apparently on the theory that since it didn't work the last thousand times, we'll try again. Nothing will bring back the young woman, and the only thing I know of that is likely to heal the society is to educate the women. Come to that, educating women worldwide is, I think, one of the best things we could do as a race.

Oh, gods, I am spitting mad over this war all over again. The waste--!

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I hesitate to describe a culture as evil. But that act, and the part of the culture that leads to it--that is evil.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

I hate the act and I wish it was outlawed worldwide; the sooner that aspect of that culture lands on the junk heap of history, the happier I will be. (I don't use the word "evil" much anymore, partly because it's often used to justify such acts.) But I fear the attitude which says that some particular "evil" is unique to any culture and that therefore we are justified in attempting to exterminate it.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I don't think it is unique to that culture. But I don't feel like "evil" is too strong a word for an idea that encourages men to murder their female relatives.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Oh, not too strong--"junk heap of history" is not exactly mild language, after all. I think talking about "evil," though, plays into the hands of the holy warriors, the Crusaders and the Jihadi, and so on, so I look for other strong words. All the justified criticisms of the Arab/Islamic treatment of women were trotted out as reasons for the war in Iraq, after all, when just about everyone with any compassion had been screaming about the Taliban in Afghanistan for over a decade, and been ignored by the warmongers.

Those holy warriors--when they go on the war path, they do so because they are secretly making war on themselves, or on something in themselves which can never be extirpated. And they never admit it; the evil is always somewhere else, always someone else. Think of all the anti-gay activists who turn out, after all, to be gay. So these people can always find more evils to fight, and they can keep on fighting evil and avoid their own shame. But for myself, I will look for other strong words.

[min0taur.livejournal.com]

"Honor killing" makes about as much sense as "holy war" -- and to the same (alleged) mentality. The so-called "war on terror" was/is mostly an excuse to impress the hometown jingoboys with how rich we are/were and how fearsome our fancy toys are, so they'll pony up for more and keep the punish-the-foreigner show going; none of it actually impresses the nutbags and the desperate or shellshocked-and-god-awed-full who follow them.

I think what this thing has always been is a problem in global mental disease. A mind virus that blinds the mind's eye, whether aggressive male or identifying-with-the-aggressor female, to the fact that there are two basic biological ways to be a human being and that both are fully human -- deserving of the dignity that one truly sentient being accords another.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I think it has to do partly with a human tendency to pigeonhole and label people. We are very good at picking out patterns (to the point where we will pick out patterns that aren't there, hence superstitions of all sorts), so we start to assume that everyone will fit those main patterns. So we say to ourselves men are strong, brave, agressive, proud; women are weak, gentle, timid, humble, and we separate ourselves into two groups, and punish those people who don't fit one group or another. Then something convinces us there must be a heirarchy between the groups, and when one group is agressive and the other isn't, the agressive group winds up oppressing the not-agressive group.

I think of civilization as the gradual realization that that oppression, and even grouping, is not right, and not necessary. I see it as partnering the growing distaste for violence that has been swelling in our worldview for the last 150 or 200 years or so. People who embrace change are more likely to have a lower tolerance for violence, and a stronger belief that oppression of anyone is wrong (probably because they don't tolerate the violence that is necessary to oppress people). That's my guess anyway.