NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana, 7 August 2004 — It’s hard to write about US foreign policy and stay a lady.
US Vice President Dick Cheney and US Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz are wearing out my asterisk key.
Why are they cursing on the record, all of a sudden?
Maybe because they’re rumored to be on their way out of the Bush administration, and can dispense with diplomatic discourse.
Or maybe it’s the feminists in their lives.
Last month Cheney, married to a staunchly feminist writer who balances politics with saucy novels, notoriously used what is quaintly called “the ‘F’ word” to provoke a US senator.
And US Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, reportedly “dating” Shaha Ali Riza, an Arab-Muslim feminist “gender expert” World Banker and “civil society” analyst (whatever those occupations really are), recently used “the ‘B’ word” to describe the objects of the neoconservatives’ doctrine of pre-emption.
Which are now neither states, nor terrorists, but “tough, ugly bastards.”
Or men, as feminists define them.
Bush, renowned for loyalty to subordinates, denies he plans to ditch Dick even though he could win re-election by picking US Secretary of State Collin Powell as his new running mate.
Wolfowitz may be leaving because the whole Iraq invasion was pretty much all his idea, and things have not gone at all well.
Significantly, Bush has not jumped up to quash rumors of Wolfowitz’s imminent departure. Instead, Bush sent Powell to Iraq last week while Wolfowitz stayed home.
Change may be in the works.
Does Bush plan to cut the neocons loose after the election if he wins? A better question may be, can Bush win with the neocons still on board?
A mere two years ago, The Economist crowed that Wolfowitz’s “influence” on Bush “seems to grow by the day.”
Right after Sept.11, with all eyes on militant Islamists in Afghanistan, Wolfowitz spoke menacingly and open-endedly of “ending states (which) sponsor terrorists.” Powell immediately contradicted him, but soon found himself pushed into limbo, allowed into daylight only to squander his international reputation and good offices justifying Wolfowitz’s planned invasion of Iraq.
Bush’s belligerent post-Sept. 11 State of the Union speech, heavily influenced by Wolfowitz, left no doubt about Powell’s growing estrangement from the president to whom he had lent so much of his own legitimacy.
And neoconservatism’s most striking feature (in contrast to traditional conservatism), its slavish adherence to Israeli foreign policy and interests, featured in Bush’s startling, full-fledged embrace of Sharon’s Palestinian solution. But the Iraqi insurgency, Bush’s inability to contain it, and Israel’s assassination of Arab leadership on a scale and style usually associated with Mafia hits, soon proved neoconservatism an ineffective, discredited ideology.
The UK Telegraph’s leaking of Wolfowitz in love seems no accident. It uses Wolfowitz’s romantic Muslim feminist liaison to medivac him from that “small cabal of Jewish neoconservatives driving a blindly pro-Israeli policy in the Middle East,” and thereby save Wolfowitz’s career.
The Telegraph’s argument is, how can Wolfowitz be a genuine neocon, let alone a good Zionist, if he is, uhm, “dating” a Muslim Arab feminist?
“Dating” is an American euphemism used to describe various relationship stages that, in the Middle East, would usually involve marriage.
Or maybe they just sit around, reading Spengler to each other.
But the Telegraph’s contention is that Wolfowitz, far from being a neocon “cheerleader,” is a feminist-sensitive intellectual whose career is worth saving because he pillow talks with a Tunisian Muslim divorcee.
It’s an interesting argument.
Wolfowitz divorced in 2002.
It’s unclear how long he and Riza have been “dating,” but her feminist influence on Wolfowitz is undeniable.
Pre-emption’s true purpose, Wolfowitz now explains, is not to protect states from terrorists, but to punish leaders who are “tough, ugly bastards.”
Not necessarily terrorists.
No.
Just nasty guys.
Nasty, bad men.
Who talks like that?
Feminists, mostly.
“Pre-emption” used to mean hitting first in the face of substantial threat, and never asking questions unless some concerned citizens insisted, making their congressmen form commissions.
But under the new, feminist, gender-correct new neocon paradigm, presumed enemy states need not even raise a hand or gnash teeth, let alone unleash weapons of mass destruction, to invite the full wrath of military invasion and indeterminate occupation.
Ideally, it’s better if the “tough, ugly bastards” have weapons of mass destruction, but it’s not a feminist, gender-correct new neocon requirement, no.
Wolfowitz now avers Bush claimed Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction merely “for bureaucratic reasons” to justify invading Iraq “because it was the one reason everyone could agree upon.”
The new neocons.
Feminized, freshened up, and ready to take out the “tough, ugly bastards.”
Let the male makeovers begin.
— Sarah Whalen is an expert in Islamic law and taught law at Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans, Louisiana.
