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U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meeting with a Saudi royal. No doubt deeply engaged in discussing "The Feminist Mystique".
Hillary Clinton recently had some choice words for Mideast regimes: "The United States will stand firmly for the proposition that women must be included in whatever process goes forward. No government can succeed if it excludes half of its people from important decisions."
She was speaking in reference to the interim governments of Tunisia and Egypt as both nations transition to democracies. In both cases, regrettable, women's presence in the interim cabinets has been unrepresentative. Clinton wanted to pressure both regimes to include more women or else, as she put it, "no government can succeed if it excludes half its people from important decisions." Well put.
Clinton's words are morally right, but the sentiment coming from a U.S. official is off. First of all, Clinton was diffident about Tunisia's revolution, to say the least, and also never called for democracy in Egypt until after Mubarak stepped down. Until then she settled for nebulous rhetoric in favor of "reform", i.e. "reforming" a dictatorship.
So she is in no position to now seek to lecture both nations and peoples about their democratic transition as she played no part in it or supported the revolutions. This is just a transparent after-the-fact effort to save face due to America's initial indifferent to freedom in the region (her administration even cut funding for democracy promotion in Egypt).
But what about those words? All well and good, but does she not recognize the absurdity of pressuring Egypt and Tunisia, both nations which already have established some measure of women's right and the latter especially so commensurate with Western nations; while not saying anything about Saudi Arabia?
Saudi Arabia - the royal family and Wahhabi clerical establishment - are the very image of Clinton's statement: "No government can succeed if it excludes half of its people from important decisions."
Forget about "important decisions" by the corrupt royals, but women in Saudi Arabia are excluded from driving, intermixing with unrelated males, and forced to veil as if to further exclude their identity even in public.
Spare us the lectures in Tunis and Cairo, and go and inform your Saudi clients about their abysmal misogynistic treatment, nay subjugation, of women. Then you'll have credibility again.
