Linking Laura Bush with Egyptian Female Protesters
Today, the WaPo has an editorial where Eugene Robinson links Laura Bush’s visit to the region on behalf of women’s rights with the beatings that occurred on the 25th in Cairo during a national referendum.
The heart of the editorial is:
U.S. involvement in the Middle East deepens every day, as the Bush administration struggles to push autocratic regimes toward democracy. Ultimately the moral responsibility to ensure that women are liberated along with men falls upon the president. But I’m hoping the first lady doesn’t forget that she now has personally invited women in the Arab world to dream forbidden dreams.
If she had stayed in Cairo a few more days, and seen police allow pro-government thugs to pummel anti-Mubarak demonstrators in the streets, she might have noticed, as reporters did, that the goons singled out women for especially rough treatment. That’s the challenge that the president faces — and that I hope Laura Bush now feels she shares.
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The reason to post this is that many in Egypt’s activist circles have questioned if they mismanaged the symbolism around the First Lady’s visit (she departed the day before the referendum vote).
Tomorrow when the demonstrators, clad in black or with white ribbons, take to Cairo’s streets again we will see if Washington is watching.
If more violence rules the day and tame comments follow from Washington, then we will know that Laura Bush’s women’s rights rhetoric is as empty as her husband’s regarding supporting democracy and freedom in Egypt.
Categories: Egypt, US policy.
I’m glad the Post is not allowing the problem of Egypt to go unnoticed in the States. But I think the editorialist gives Laura Bush’s role way too much importance. So she went around the Middle East talking about how the US supports girls’ education and women’s freedom and “calling” for all sorts of things. Diplomats, UN types, autocrats and first ladies “call for” the moon every day, and it doesn’t mean squat. It’s pure rhetoric. She hasn’t raised Arab women’s hopes or offered tangible US commitments to them (has she?).
Yeah, I totally agree with SP, the article comes off sounding really paternalistic and condescending towards Egyptian women. What do they think? Egyptian women saw her on Sesame Street talking to Khokha and were so inspired they all went out to protest the referendum and got themselves manhandled? Give me a break.
Ok perhaps it is a bit Over the Top in its causal relationship that her words led to female protesters, which existed previously.
Yet, the fact that Laura Bush was in the region talking about women’s empowerment and then women were targets of humilation in Egypt still is important.
It highlights the vast difference between Washington’s empty rhetoric and regime action in the region. This needs emphasized - just perhaps in a different way that Robinson choose to do so.
Yes, Josh, I do see your point. I just keep getting irritated at the US press - as I have lived abroad for so long - at how navel-gazing they seem. Sigh. Also the article does not mention how she basically signed on to the “democracy cannot come all at once and Egyptian people are not erady yet” old autocrat’s excuse thing that Nazeef had been articulating while she was in Egypt. A lot of Egyptians did not feel she called for enough. Her saying it has to be slow and that Mubarak is “wise” to take it slowly is not really a great call for change in the mind of a Kefaya person. She sounds like she’s reading from Mubarak’s script.
Most annoying of all is the line about “dreaming forbidden dreams,” as if women’s rights were the most important issue when a region where practically nobody has real rights.
The “dreaming forbidden dreams” and women expressing themselves BS is all the more ironic coming from Laura Bush, who is a self-confessed “Republican by marriage” and who gave up her career to be a nice wife for her good-for-nothing drunk husband.