When a few Iraqi women strapped on bomb belts and decided to be among the last to die for a lost cause, the mainstream media treated it as a bona fide trend. Op-eds, such as Lindsey O’Rourke’s “Behind the Woman Behind the Bomb” in the New York Times began popping up in major papers. This is, of course, part of the tactical benefit of deploying female suicide bombers. Your average homicidal martyr doesn’t even merit a headline these days, and Islamists have familiarized themselves enough with Western media to know that there’s a “news peg” in self-exploding women. Predictably, the liberal media found enough material in the few examples to make a vague case that these “phenomena” were further evidence of misguided American policies. Consider this, from the above-mentioned Times piece:
In the long run, decreasing female suicide attacks depends upon an American strategy that minimizes the presence of United States troops in what Iraqis consider their private sphere, while simultaneously providing material support that will improve the quality of life for all Iraqis. For now, however, given the strategic desirability of female attackers, we’re likely to see an increasing number of Iraqi women killing themselves and their countrymen in an effort to end what they see as the occupation of their nation.
In that op-ed O’Rourke laid out a few lines of defense against female suicide bombers. But she missed the one now being taken up in Iraq: the incorporation of women into the Iraqi Police force. Major newspapers are sure to miss out on the significance as well. This is from the AP:
The recruits-a mix of Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds-are told to place sectarian perspectives and politics aside and put their country first. The women recruits say it will be up to their individual stations on whether they can carry weapons, but many hope they can.
Some are widows whose husbands were killed by militants. Others have disabled husbands and relatives who can’t work after being wounded in violence since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. All need steady paychecks to support their children.
Abdalla’s husband was kidnapped in 2006 in Diyala. She never saw his body but was later told he was killed.
“I must support my daughter, because I don’t have anyone to take care of us,” Abdalla said. “But I want to also prove that we have the right, as women in the society, to work as policewomen.”
Under Saddam Hussein, there were no women police on patrol.
That last point should be of particular note to all those who like to sneer that Saddam’s “secular” Iraq embodied some kind of blessed exception to the Islamist mistreatment of women in the region. Now we have women of varying sectarian backgrounds defending their infant democracy from nihilistic extremists. But the American Left will still probably call it a failure because, after all, women who shoot guns are objects of derision–right?
