A fringe-sect family crosses the street in Beit Shemesh.

Marina opens a very compelling feminist take on civil unrest in a religious Israeli town by writing, “As a Jew, a liberal, and a lover of the State of Israel, it is with great sadness that I reflect on what has transpired over the last few days in Beit Shemesh, Israel.” As a friend, I know that Marina and I share very similar feelings about Jewish identity and State of Israel – and despite differences in degree and flavor, belong to the same general tradition of Enlightenment liberalism. However, her examination of the situation in Beit Shemesh hints at a stark difference in the priorities of our different liberalisms.

Beit Shemesh presents a classic paradox for good contemporary liberals the world over: the row between ultra-Orthodox and secular Israelis is a conflict between an illiberal minority group and a basically liberal majority. Like many present-day problems of religion in society, this case puts the liberal sympathy for minority cultural preservation at direct odds with universal liberal values like women’s rights, freedom of conscience, and creativity.

From her treatment of the subject, it seems as though Marina privileges the relativistic side of the Beit Shemesh issue quite a bit more than I would. I’m writing to tell you why – amidst her very important argument – she misses the point, by partially forgiving the people who would much sooner throw rocks at her than thank her for defending their perspective on femininity.

I don’t mean to wax Manichaean: most Haredim, like most people of any kind, think that they’re doing the right thing and are perfectly pleasant on an individual level. But I have nothing for their community’s intolerance but equally sharp intolerance in return. I’m of the Christopher Hitchens/Ayaan Hirsi Ali school of liberalism (not at all neatly conterminous with American political liberalism), which is unafraid to privilege liberalism and its practitioners over the atavistic illiberalism of religious and cultural fundamentalists. Remember, neither side of this exchange between my friend and me would be possible in Beit Shemesh, or in Mecca for that matter. Nor would this magazine’s publication. Point being, I’m not ashamed to say that our culture is superior to theirs.

If there’s one good thing about the degree of religious polarization in Israel’s Jewish population, it’s that most non-Orthodox Jews would probably agree with my assertions – at least in private. I implore them to go public, as some have begun to in the streets of Beit Shemesh and Jerusalem. More critical to Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state than conflict with Arabs beyond the Green Line or unequal birthrates within it is the threat posed by a Haredi minority growing in size (thanks to massive government welfare for large families), political influence, and disregard for civil behavior.

In a society where atheists constitute about a quarter of the total population, the Haredi political parties manage to wrest absurdly illiberal concessions from the government, like the closure of public transportation on the Sabbath, the removal of women’s images from billboards in the nation’s capital, and the toleration of de facto modesty laws for women in select neighborhoods. It’s no wonder that secular protestors have taken to chanting, “This is Israel, not Iran!”

And as their community leaders have repeated time and again, Haredim hope and expect to take over Israel within a few generations. Never mind wondering how the state would earn its keep (sympathetic right-wing Russian-Israeli oligarchs in gated Tel Aviv suburbs?) or maintain its massive defense infrastructure (African mercenaries?) – a Haredi Israel would become a place highly hostile to Arabs, women, gays, foreign laborers, and ordinary secular Jews like Marina and me. It’s hard to imagine either of us continuing to identify as ‘lovers of the State of Israel’ if the Jewish state were to join the ranks of Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Marina is right to note that the West is far from blameless in its routine objectification of women as sex objects. But let’s not rush to draw equivalencies: in Israel, as in all Western countries, women are expected to govern their own affairs, make their own decisions about sexuality and family, and dress however they damned well please. This rarely comes without a small dose of paternalistic flak, but the notional equality of women finds support in every corner of liberal Western society.

I don’t for a second buy the Haredi rationalization (or other religious conservatives’ rationalizations) of protecting modesty as a means to liberate women from Western objectification – it’s a cheap ex post facto argument crafted for the ears of gullible liberal relativists. A matter of anthropological fact: from time immemorial, fathers have been shutting their daughters up in towers, draping them in veils, suffocating them with corsets, and cauterizing their genitalia in order to signal possession, chastity, and restriction of movement. The invocation of the Abrahamic god in the matter changes nothing. Because conservative religions create an air of forbidden sexual mystique around femininity, women walking the streets of north Jerusalem and Cairo in modest clothes face notoriously worse harassment than women walking the streets of Stockholm and Sydney in ‘immodest’ clothes.

For the sake of women, Israel, and the forward march of human progress, we must not fall into the trap of relativism – which privileges group norms over individual opportunity. This is not an easy commandment: to be sure, it’s against the basic nature of liberals to be uncompromising. But let’s be proud to admit that an open, liberal society is the best kind of society – lest we be outbred by people who think otherwise.

Lauren Rothman and Christina Wilkie, writers for The Huffington Post’s political style column, “The Fashion Whip,” have aptly noted that Bachmann’s image evolution over the course of the campaign comes off as fake: she “closes out the year looking less like a normal person and more like a product of full-time stylists and make-up artists, with little left of the Minnesota mom who captivated the GOP’s conservative base in 2010.” Bachmann’s fashion choices mirror her ambitions and influences. She dresses how she imagines a president would dress, leaving her congressional seat and her natural hair color behind.

But if Rothman and Wilkie are correct in charting Bachmann’s development, they ignore the similarly contrived picture Mitt Romney is presenting. His calculated shunning of ties, meant to cultivate his image as a down-to-earth everyman, has received infinitely less coverage than Bachmann’s eyelashes alone, even though his sartorial strategy is obvious enough that Representative Barney Frank has called Romney out for changing up both his look and his political stances.

Such oversight is both sexist and empowering. Sexist, because the majority of media coverage belittles Bachmann and Palin as mere clotheshorses: society expects these women to look attractive and trendy and serious instead of being able to coherently describe their platforms.  Even the articles that don’t explicitly condemn dressing femininely still fixate on details of clothing, luxuriating in an itemized list of which woman wore what.

What is empowering is the knowledge that, if reporters were taking female candidates seriously instead of deriding them, it would be astoundingly clear that the women of the 2012 election race are better at dressing themselves than the men are. Bachmann simply does business casual better than Romney. Palin’s red power suits are more iconic and digestible than Perry’s over-the-top Texanity. And everybody’s blazers are better tailored than Ron Paul’s.

So why are fashion and fashionable women so denigrated? Writer Greta Christina postulates, “It’s a subtle but definite form of sexism to take one of the few forms of expression where women have more freedom, and treat it as a form of expression that’s inherently superficial and trivial. Like it or not, fashion and style are primarily a women’s art form. And I think it gets treated as trivial because women get treated as trivial.”

It is quite true that Rick Perry’s current fondness for combining excessive jewelry with even more excessive ostrich-skin boots has little bearing on the man’s plans and policies, and I fully believe the media should prioritize reporting what candidates say during debates, not what they wear to them. That being said, what a politician chooses to wear reveals how he views himself and how he wants to be viewed by the American public. The best dressers are conscientious of details and the overall image they present, undeniably the hallmarks of skillful public officials. Most importantly, fashion is a daily exercise in judgment—when to be restrained and when to put on a show.

At a time when unemployment is soaring, careful styling is also an indicator of a candidate’s economic savvy as well. It’s interesting that, while wealthier men like Huntsman and Romney are dressing down in gingham and rolled up sleeves, trying to appeal to their idea of the average American, their efforts are clumsy. Michelle Obama manages to have all the glamor and poise Americans have come to expect from prominent individuals, even when she outfits herself in clothes from mass retailers like J. Crew and Talbots. The takeaway here is that the price of clothing matters far less than how it is worn and who wears it.

Political media sources are doing a disservice to the American people by failing to look into the fashion choices of male politicians while simultaneously overanalyzing how their female counterparts are dressing. We should care about Gingrich’s pleated pants and Santorum’s sweater vests—if only for the fact that they tell us how much a candidate cares about himself.

Diana Henriques is a senior financial writer at The New York Times. She has been a Pulitzer finalist and was granted the first interview with felon Bernie Madoff upon his incarceration. She has authored four books, including “The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and The Death of Trust.”

Harvard Political Review: How did you first get interested in journalism?

Diana Henriques: I became involved at age 13 with my first newspaper with a local student group. I came to love the newsroom environment and my love for journalism followed. In college, I was a campus journalist at The George Washington University Hatchet in the late-1960s, which were exciting times to be a journalist in Washington. I eventually made the shift into financial journalism at the Philadelphia Inquirer and have worked for The Times since 1989.

HPR: What obstacles have you had to overcome to get to the bottom of investigative financial stories?

DH: My initial reaction was to say that actually financial journalism is easier, and here’s why. When I first covered government issues for different New Jersey newspapers, it was the era of “shmooze” reporting where you gathered information for political coverage by shmoozing with politicians and for crime stories by shmoozing with cops. I was a young woman, and it was a time when a young woman reporter had to navigate the landscape rather carefully. In contrast, next to the bureau where I worked was the county hall of records. I learned how to trace land records, ownerships, and deeds, and I started to get good stories about, say, county commissioners who were planning highway routes past land they had just purchased. This was my first introduction to document-based reporting, and I quickly realized a document doesn’t know if you’re a woman or a man. I started to focus on avenues of reporting where legal papers were the skeletons of the stories, and it was a breakthrough for me.

The financial corporate world is an intensely difficult place to develop sources. The document landscape is wonderful, but the source-building landscape remains the most challenging I have ever worked in. The current environment with so much hostility aimed at corporate America has intensified that challenge.

HPR: How did you establish such a strong level of trust with the Madoff family?

DH: The goal is to put the interviewee enough at ease so that you can see the real person and communicate that to your readers. Why Bernie agreed to talk to me is a mystery, but I have to assume that the only reason he would agree to talk would be that he had an agenda. He ignored my interview requests for six months and, finally, in August 2010, two months before my book was due, I got to sit down with him and witness his personality in person. You hear people say how charming and convincing he was, but if you haven’t met him, you haven’t seen it fully. The visit was not particularly factually helpful, and I was able to catch him in lies because of my preparation. But what I never could have prepared for was his ability to drift seamlessly between truth and lie, which is truly a master act.

My relationship with Ruth has been a little different. She is not a professional public figure and lived her life entirely as a private woman and, in dealing with people like that, any responsible journalist will tell you that it’s a different game. You’re dealing with someone who may not realize the power of the published word, and I think that in such a situation any journalist has an obligation to take care, and I did.

I felt that if I could help Ruth feel at ease then I could help the public see something remotely resembling the real Ruth Madoff. My aim was not to decide how the public viewed her but, rather, to say this was as close as I can get to showing you Ruth Madoff, and then let the reader decide whether she is a sympathetic person or not.

HPR: What advice would you give to females looking to pursue a career in journalism?

DH: I think women entering the field of journalism have a much easier path than they once did. They’re walking through doors that my predecessors chopped down with brute force and lawsuits. I think that to the extent that I succeeded in what most times was a men’s world was because I kept the chip off my shoulder. Anger is not a useful tool, diplomacy is. But if it’s really what you want to do, you’ll find common ground with the men for whom it is their dream job, and that’s really how I’ve been able to navigate.

The views expressed in this interview are those of Diana Henriques and do not necessarily reflect the views of The New York Times. Simon Thompson ’14 is the Interviews Editor. This interview has been condensed and edited.

Freest—in the Middle East

At Columbia University in 2007, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad infamously claimed that there were no gays in his country, setting off a global firestorm. Yet what he said next might seem equally puzzling: that Iranian women were among the freest in the world. By Western standards, Ahmadinejad’s declaration may seem a stretch. However, Iranian women, though not the freest in the world, enjoy more liberties than most women in the Middle East. Iranian women are permitted to drive, and, while Saudi women just received the right to vote and run for municipal councils this year, Iranian women have been speaking through the ballot box since 1963. Two women have been vice presidents: Masoumeh Ebtekar from 1997 to 2005 and Fatemeh Javadi from 2005 to 2009. The 2010 Gender Gap Index, which measures equality between men and women in the 134 nations, gave Iran an overall score of 123, compared to Turkey at 126, Saudi Arabia at 129, Pakistan at 132, and Yemen at 134.

As Arzoo Osanloo, an expert on the Iranian women’s movement and professor at the University of Washington, told the HPR, the relative success of women in Iran might be attributed to the fact that “Iranians are the least religious of people living in Muslim-majority societies.” Osanloo points to the nation’s “high ratio of female literacy, education, and women in the work force.” Iranian women are also more involved in politics than their counterparts in other states, perhaps because of what Osanloo describes as a “long history of public activism for rights going back to before Iran’s Constitutional Revolution,” and an Iranian desire to be “well-versed in the language of democracy, equality, and civil liberty.”

A History of Action

The advances of the Iranian women’s rights movement spring from a variety of factors. The movement began at the inception of the twentieth century and grew steadily more prominent over the next seventy-five years. Focusing on education, specifically the literacy rate of Iranian girls, activists expanded in number and achievements, relatively unhindered by the government restrictions that hampered similar movements in other Muslim states.

Until the 1979 Iranian Revolution, women had improved their opportunities in employment, especially in politics, family law, and education, supported by initiatives from groups like the Women’s Organization of Iran. The revolution nonetheless reversed several of these advancements. A 2007 article for the Journal of International Women’s Studies by Iranian author Majid Mohammadi showed that the revolution saw representation in parliament drop from 7 to 1.5 percent; employment of women diminished by 4.3 percentage points to 6.8 percent, and the legal age of marriage plummet to nine years old from the previous sixteen. Interestingly, women may have benefitted from the revolution in other respects; Osanloo suggests that conservative families “felt they could let their female kin enter public fora,” given the new dress restrictions, perversely giving feminists a greater voice.

Regardless, circumstances have improved since reformist Mohammad Khatami’s presidency from 1997 to 2005. Though the laws of the 1979-1997 period imposed greater limitations on women, especially those advocating for more rights, the movement survived and evolved into its modern form, despite the turmoil that exists in Iran today. Said Osanloo, “Although the last eight years have been difficult for women’s rights advocates, it has been equally difficult to turn back the social, legal, and political reforms that have given women greater voice, visibility, and status in social life.” Her words echoed those of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Shirin Ebadi, who stated in a 2006 interview that Ahmadinejad “cannot actually reverse the rights that women have achieved, because the feminist movement inside Iran is very strong. Women will resist any attempt to reverse their rights.”

Calm Before the Storm
The widely disputed presidential election between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi in June 2009 sent Iran into political convulsions. But before countless cell phone videos were capturing the hundreds of thousands of protesters, Iran had already experienced surprising reformist strides, aiding the women’s movement.

Though past campaigns, including Ahmadinejad’s, neglected the issue of women’s rights, Mousavi’s embraced the subject. Where Ahmadinejad expanded the role of the morality police during his first term as president, Mousavi pledged to disband it outright, while speaking to female supporters in Tehran in May 2009. “We should reform laws that are unfair to women,” he added. Mousavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard, exhibited a similar form of tenacity, surprising political analysts by vocally campaigning alongside her husband in a display atypical of most spouses of Iranian political figures.

The volatile post-election fervor further catapulted women to the forefront of Iranian news. Pictures of protests disseminated via Twitter and Facebook showed women at the front-lines of the demonstrations, marching not behind men, but alongside them. The unprecedented visibility of Iranian women, from the artist and politician Zahra Rahnavard, to the world-renowned martyr Neda Agha-Soltan, may have signaled a long-awaited shift in Iranian politics.

“[B]oth in symbolism and content, the tenth presidential elections [in 2009] signified considerable progress in gender politics in Iran,” Nayereh Tohidi, Chair of the Gender and Women’s Studies Department at California State University, wrote in a 2009 paper. But the sudden burst of progress, she argues, was not spontaneous. It was the result of years of slow but persistent activism, including the work of numerous feminists and feminist organizations—the most famous being the One Million Signatures Campaign against discriminatory laws—that persisted despite state repression and threats.
Exporting Feminism?
Even if the protests had highlighted the active role of women in Iranian politics, the dedication and vitality of the women’s rights movement over more than a century of activism remains of interest more broadly. Indeed, the experiences of the women’s rights movement in Iran illustrate how social movements can survive even the most repressive regimes. After all, Iranian women represent a prime example of organized yet effective protest. Today, through film and Facebook, television and Twitter, they have managed to make their message compelling and their work incessant. Through their dedication and persistence, the Iranian feminists have become the inspiration for protesters in not only the Middle East, but around the world.

On November 8^th, Mississippi voters will encounter this initiative to amend the state constitution. The measure would “ban virtually all abortions, including those resulting from rape or incest” and “bar some birth control methods, including IUDs and ‘morning-after pills.’” Both the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor have endorsed the amendment, and it very well might pass. Pro-choice advocates should be mad, but pro-lifers should be madder.

The initiative, if passed, could recast the national abortion debate and turn into a major strategic blunder for the pro-life camp. It risks reversing the gains made by pro-lifers in the public relations war over the last couple of decades.

A recent Gallup polling report reveals a trend toward the pro-life stance since the mid 1990s. 33% of respondents in 1995 believed abortion should be legal under any circumstances, compared with 26% in 2011. 15% of respondents in 1995 believed abortion should be illegal in all circumstances, compared with 20% in 2011.

More striking are changes in the percentages of people who identify as pro-life and pro-choice. Between 1995 and 2011, the percentage of respondents who identified as pro-life rose from 33% to 47%. In the same time frame, the percentage of respondents who identify as pro-choice declined from 56% to 47%.

Public perception about abortion matters, and these hard-won gains are important. Though the Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of abortion disputes, public opinion has a substantial impact on Court rulings. Harvard Law School Professor Richard Fallon often reminds students that the Court operates “within politically constructed bounds,” and these bounds are frequently set by public opinion. This trend toward pro-life beliefs could eventually translate into a pro-life ruling from the Supreme Court.

Now, however, pro-life activists in Mississippi are threatening to squander the moral high ground. I wouldn’t be the first to ask: would taking a “morning-after pill” be murder? If so, could women who take such a pill face the death penalty in Mississippi? Would a doctor be prohibited from terminating a pregnancy that threatened the mother’s life? The absurdity of these questions could easily provoke an exodus of Americans who aren’t particularly passionate about abortion issues from the pro-life side. If the pro-life cause veers into the radical, the morally burdensome choice facing average Americans would become easier. Americans would likely increasingly choose the pro-choice side, the reasonable side, the side that doesn’t want to jail women for taking the “morning-after pill” or force women to die from pregnancy complications. What could be morally wrong with that? It doesn’t matter that amendment supporters probably don’t seek such radical consequences; the amendment would still stoke public fears and outrage. By putting forth such a simple, vague amendment, supporters handed potential PR gold to pro-choice advocates.

The amendment, if passed, would “almost surely” be ruled unconstitutional by federal courts anyway. It is, then, just a gesture—a poorly conceived, crude, counterproductive gesture. Some worry that if ensuing litigation reached the Supreme Court, the Court could hand down less restrictive abortion regulations. The Court’s shift to the Right since Roe v. Wade means such a ruling would be surprising, but the danger of redefining the pro-life movement with the amendment is real, especially since pushes for similar initiatives are developing in Florida, Michigan, Montana, Ohio, Wisconsin, and elsewhere.

If the amendment passes, look for public support of the pro-life platform—and with it the chances of reversing Roe v. Wade—to decline.

Photo Credits: American Family Association Online; LifeSiteNews

On October 26, Mario Zucconi, Lecturer in Public and International Affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School came to Harvard to give a speech about how the recent events in the Middle East, especially the Arab Spring, affect the diplomatic relationship between Turkey and the European Union.

The first thing Professor Zucconi mentioned was the incompatibility between Islam and democracy. He outlined four major obstacles to democratization for Arab States. These include the fact that different social and economic conditions bring about different outcomes, little experience with democracy, the past authoritarian regimes, and the difficulties in gaining acceptance into international organizations. The Islam itself is not an obstacle, but rather the history of these Islamic regions.

All these difficulties explain why so much present attention is given to Turkey. During the last few years, Turkey’s actions have been followed and scrutinized throughout the Arab world. The most obvious reason is that Turkey successfully democratized as an Islamic country, but there is more to the story.

A New Leader, A New Movement

Since their election in Turkey’s November 2002 elections, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) rulers, especially the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, took on various roles that contributed to their attention from the Middle East and changed the perspective of the Arab world on Turkey.

Turkey has always been looked by hostility in the Arab world. The hostility rose to a great level after the conflicts World War I and when Ataturk abolished the Caliphate, the official leadership of the Islam world, in the name of secularism in Turkey. Moreover, the respective military coups, particularly the coup of 1980, reinforced Turkey’s undemocratic character in Arab eyes.

After the election of the present leaders, the Justice and Development Party that was led by former Islamist leaders, the relationship between Arab nations and Turkey took a rapid turn. This was especially evident when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan burst out of the Davos World Economic Forum in 2009 after repeatedly asking to speak and saying “one minute”. Thousands of people all around the Middle East, especially in the Gaza Strip, went out in the streets with Turkish flags and pictures of Erdogan, cheering for the “One Minute.”

Erdogan’s popularity increased with the fact that Arabs view him as a leader who was democratically elected, unlike their own dictators. Erdogan’s popularity increased each time Turkey had an election: He raised his vote from around 35 percent in 2002 to 50 percent in 2011.  The idea of democratic reelection reinforces the image of Erdogan as a strong leader in the Middle East.

Throughout all of these diplomatic ties, Turkey’s Islamic character plays a significant role. As an Islamic country, Turkey stands as an example of a country which achieved democratization and liberalization of economy. When Arabs see Turkey as a country which can have both democracy and an economic boom, they point they fingers and say: I want that too.

From 2003, the average economic growth in Turkish Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was 7%. In the first quarter of last year, it was 11%, even higher than China. Many review this as a spectacular economic accomplishment, and Turkey has been called the “China of Europe”.

“They are one of us!”

Turkey had been the major stabilizing factor in the region for the last decade. The relationship between Turkey and Iraq, as well as Turkey and Syria was appreciated greatly in the Arab world as Turkey contributed critically to the diplomatc stabilization in those regions.

Some argue there is the idea that Turkey can solve the problem that the US was not capable of solving: the Israel problem. The main argument is that now, Turkey is not only one of the most influential countries in the region, but it is also one of the countries he Arab World trusts the most. One journalist expressed the sentiment as: “No matter what, they are part of us.”

In 2002, Arab public opinion was highly negative on Turkey. In the region, statistically Turkey had the third lowest scores among the general public, only after Israel and the US.  In 2010, 85% of the population had a strong positive opinion on Turkey, among the highest in the region. These numbers, even though their reliability is debatable, demonstrates the major influence of Turkish politics on the Middle East.

The Turkish Model

Turkey is the successful model of Islam and democracy. Some even called the process in Turkey “The Turkish Model”. The rising society in the Arab Spring wants to see their country modernize and enter the Modern World. This is a new sector of people, a new generation who want modernization. They desire economic development and democratization. Turkey is a powerful validation of their stand for the direction of their country.

For these reformists, Turkish experience is the best combination of Islam and democracy, because according to them, only an Islamic country with a developed sector which can ascend to power without a catastrophic fear of falling apart can stand still in the violent atmosphere of the Middle. Besides, Turkey is the only exemplary for the Arab world for democracy right now, especially considering the existence of democratic elections, women rights and the extent of civil rights.

However, should the Arab States imitate the Turkish model? Turkey is still not a fully modernized country. Sixty-four journalists are in jail in Turkey now, more than in any other country; violence against women is among the worst in the world; and the last elections led to a huge parliamentary crisis in the country. Turkey is not a perfect nation, but it is the best model of an Islamic democracy that the Arab States have now.

A Just War?

Ten years ago, American and British armed forces and the Afghan United Front launched Operation Enduring Freedom, with the goals of ousting al-Qaeda and creating a democratic Afghan state. Steven Bloomfield, Executive Director of Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, told the HPR that there was very little public outcry against the sudden war because of the immediacy and shock of 9/11. “It was a retaliatory movement. There was such surprise and shock and trauma that there was a sense that lashing out was legitimized.” By contrast, Bloomfield argues, “That was never, ever legitimized in a war like Vietnam.”

Timothy McCarthy, adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, adds that the media failed to critically question the justification and rationale for the war. McCarthy asserts that members of the U.S. media were emotionally connected to the events of 9/11, potentially explaining their reluctance to challenge the morality of the conflict. Indeed, Bloomfield says, “It was the foreign media and the rise of Al Jazeera and some European news sources who brought more incisive questions to what was the accepted standard of American and European foreign policy.”

Recently, the U.S. media has become more critical. However, most questions today focus on either the possibility of victory or the justification of spending taxpayer dollars on war during a domestic fiscal crisis. McCarthy maintains, “Those are fine questions to ask. But they miss the point. The point is that, should we even be there?” Indeed, under a Just War framework of a morally sanctioned conflict requiring a both a just cause–like defense against aggression or protection of the vulnerable–and a just manner of action–including targeting only combatants and the proportional usage of force—the case for Afghanistan seeks week indeed. New media coverage increasingly reflects this analysis.

Afghan Women in War

The media’s portrayal of Afghan women further contributed to the popular justification for intervention. McCarthy notes that in the midst of the wars, “Laura Bush and a number of other people talked about the way this was helping to free the women of Afghanistan…that the war was some kind of feminist enterprise designed to liberate women from an oppressive culture.”

Kathleen Foster, director of the documentary, Afghan Women: A History of Struggle, adds that despite horrendous human rights abuses directed against women in Afghanistan, “Afghani women have been extremely active and for decades been fighting for their rights.” Groups like the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan organize against fundamentalist leaders, including those established and supported by the United States. The mainstream media rarely addresses this side of women’s rights in Afghanistan, however. McCarthy adds, “It plays very well into the rhetoric when you see a poor Muslim woman that we’re trying to save.” By inaccurately cloaking the conflict in Afghanistan with the women’s liberation movement, the media strengthens the perception of the just cause for war.

Media Coverage

In 2006, Sherry Ricchiardi of the American Journalism Review called Afghanistan the “Forgotten War.” Her article noted that only a few major news outlets consistently placed reporters in Afghanistan, despite the conflict’s import. Ricchiardi joined a growing chorus of voices criticizing the lack of consistent coverage of daily battles and engagements in Afghanistan. The Obama administration’s newfound focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2009 led to a shift in coverage, with Ricchiardi asserting that, as fighting increased, “more of our troops were being killed in Afghanistan and it was a hotter war zone.”

Nonetheless, the Pew Research Center nevertheless reported that 2010 coverage of Afghanistan constituted less than four percent of total news coverage. Beyond periods of intense interest in surrounding events like Wikileaks’ release of related documents, mainstream media sources have focused comparatively little on the war in Afghanistan. Ricchiardi observes that from 2003 onwards, the Iraq War was simply more interesting than Afghanistan because more troops, firepower, and action made it more exciting, while post-Iraq public weariness has contributed to a lack of consumer interest in war-related stories.

Reporting in Afghanistan

Marvin Kalb, former Harvard Kennedy School Professor and co-author of the recently-published book “Haunting Legacy: Vietnam and the American Presidency from Ford to Obama,” notes that reporters in Afghanistan enjoy significantly different roles than their predecessors during Vietnam. Then, reporters would fly from Saigon to the battle zone, take pictures and mingle with soldiers, and fly back in the evening.  At 5 PM news conferences every day, U.S. officials would present their version of the day’s events. According to Kalb, “That generally contrasted with what the reporters were reporting.” This divergence created a credibility gap, and Kalb notes that, “the public ended up not quite believing the government.”

In Afghanistan though, news organizations and the Pentagon have arranged for journalists to become “embedded” with troops. Some criticize embedded journalism, arguing that it allows military officials to manipulate the news produced by reporters. Kalb disagrees, maintaining that the Afghanistan war gave “a whole generation of reporters who had no military experiences their first contact with American troops at war.” Nevertheless, the government has released conflicting reports. For example, in 2009, NATO’s reported that a military operation had killed nine armed insurgents, but later Afghan investigators revealed the casualties were innocent civilians. The close relationship between the military and the media may thus undermine reporters’ primary goal of uncovering the truth.

Media Coverage and Anti-War Activism

During the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of students mobilized to protest Vietnam. Helen Garvey started working for Students for a Democratic Society the day after she finished her final college exam, even helping to organize the 1965 ‘March on Washington for Peace in Vietnam’. Garvey notes that in 1964, “no one had heard of Vietnam. But then on other campuses, there were a lot of people being drafted.” Most Americans had a family member or friend in Vietnam, and media coverage of the conditions and fruitlessness of the fighting led to widespread resistance to the draft.

In contrast, the past decade has seen minimal anti-war mobilization, and public outcry against the Afghanistan War was muted until very recently. Now, even the national Occupy Wall Street protests have taken up the rallying cry, “End the wars, tax the rich!” Will renewed public consciousness about the wars result in increased large scale anti-war protests? Media coverage may determine the answer.

Photo Credits: Flickr (familymwr, The U.S. Army)

Read the full article at the Harvard Political Review.  ]]> http://hpronline.org/harvard-talks-politics/jessica-stein-on-the-vicious-cycle-of-girls%e2%80%99-unequal-access-to-school-and-jobs/feed/ 0 http://hpronline.org/world/an-introduction-to-tahrir-square-and-egyptian-solidarity/ http://hpronline.org/world/an-introduction-to-tahrir-square-and-egyptian-solidarity/#comments Tue, 28 Jun 2011 20:55:45 +0000 Giacomo Bagarella http://hpronline.org/?p=11302

Protests in Tahrir Square on May 27th.

On Friday, May 27, I went to Tahrir Square for the so-called “Day of Anger” protests around noon.As Professor Noam Chomsky observed, whereas the Wisconsin protests were centered on impeding the loss of workers’ rights, the Tahrir uprising aimed at securing democratic rights previously nonexistent in Egypt. However, both cycles of contention (against the state and the State) had solidarity as one of their core principles. If in Wisconsin the protesters gathered as public employees virtually representing all those in the country, Egyptians embodied the politically disenfranchised of the Arab world. Now that the regime might be transitioning, however, Egyptians did not rest content of such symbolic actions, but are taking tangible initiatives to help some of their neighbors.

Tahrir Square, ironically, is a large roundabout. On one side sits downtown Cairo with its large colonial buildings, giving parts of the city a Paris-like look. At the opposite side, a large bridge leads across the Nile, guarded by two colossal lion statues lying at its head. The Arab League headquarters, an anonymous white concrete building, are but a stone’s throw away, located at the periphery of the square closest to the river. The construction site of the Nile Ritz-Carleton hotel separates the Arab League offices and the Egyptian Museum, a large rectangular red building topped with a dome. The museum is visible several hundred meters from the square, on the road that leads to the northeastern neighborhoods of the city. Next to it were the National Democratic Party’s headquarters. This building, which hosted the central offices of Hosni Mubarak’s hegemonic party, no longer has windows and bears black scars on theoutside, evidence of the destruction caused by the fire protesters set  just three days after the uprising began on January 25^th. A gray, Soviet-like building, which hosts part of Egypt’s large bureaucracy, lies diametrically opposite, neighbored by a small mosque partially hidden from view by some trees.

Barriers blocked traffic to the square along the many roads that lead to it. Protester volunteers stood at the barriers to ID, frisk, and search those who entered. Males searched males and females and females. A series of ambulances awaited on standby near the entry of the square. Even though protesters do their best to keep the gatherings “selmiya” (peaceful in Arabic), accidents – or simply sunstroke – can still happen. The police presence outside of the square was negligible; there were only a few soldiers a block away, but they were standing guard to a building and were not directly involved with the protests. Once inside the square there were several nuclei of people, mostly focused around three stands where individuals were giving speeches or chanting. Later in the afternoon, the attention shifted to an expanding set of posters and pictures related to Palestine, and a set of large sheets where people were signing a petition to ask the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (the transitional authority currently ruling Egypt) to uphold its promises of reform and to abide by the requests of the revolution(aries).

To me, the most evident concrete initiative the people in Tahrir were undertaking to transform solidarity from a word to goal of collective organizing was their planning of an aid convoy to Gaza. The Egyptian government had suffocated its citizens’ true feelings towards a nearby foreign policy situation for decades, and finally Egyptians could act collectively to aid Palestinians. As things are, Egyptians have enough troubles of their own: continuing military rule, corruption, controversial upcoming elections, unemployment, macroeconomic problems, and so on. Yet they are organizing collectively and one of their first causes is to help their neighbors still under siege in the Gaza Strip. But this is not, in my opinion, a general effort of re-igniting conflict or voiding the 1978 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. I believe this is a movement aimed at rejecting the biased and remote-controlled foreign policies of Mubarak’s Egypt in order to implement something closer to what the people see the country’s role in the region should be: one that does not turn its back to the real needs of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and that diverges from Washington-mandated positions to reflect the genuine will of the people.

The atmosphere was one of oneness. Taking on one of the revolutionary chants “yidd wahda” (one hand/fist), people were carrying signs with crosses inscribed in crescents. From the larger stage a man gave a speech arguing that Christians and Muslims were not from two different religions, but they are one and belong to one religion. He advocated respect, tolerance and unity in the common fight of the Egyptian people against the former regime and its remaining elements. Therewere plenty of women, donning burqas, veils, or “Western” garb, and they would also speak from the stages at times. People were singing and chanting, though at times the protesters probably struggled to avoid their high spirits being diminished by the monotony of the announcers on the stages. Though harassment of women still occurs often on Egyptian streets, and though the Egyptian Christian community has been the target of violence recently, these groups can now join the crowd at large as one in advocating for a new country.

In order to assist the formation of a new Middle East after the momentous events of the Arab Spring, the new rulers – and involved Western nations – cannot use a “divide et impera” mentality. Playing religious groups against each other, supporting a patriarchal social structure, pitting real or imaginary Islamists against stability and development, toying with Arab countries to create a satrap-centered balkanization has proven the wrong path in shaping this region. Only solidarity, both intra- and inter-national will foster a more peaceful, rights-based, and forward-minded region. Very close to where the ancient pharaohs’ golden mummified remnants rest in the Egyptian Museum and to where the dictator’s torched tower stands, the Egyptian people has begun to look for a future devoid of absolute rulers, advocating for solidarity, and acting on it.