Makes me rethink whether to vote for Hillary, if I knew it would annoy some village Elder in a backwater like Afghanistan that a woman is the leader of the most powerful country on earth. And whether Old Blue would fess up to his elders that his boss was a woman if she were to be elected.
Back when I was still watching “60 Minutes” they did a feature on an Air Force officer who was a woman and served some time in Saudi Arabia. She was an officer, for god’s sake, and had people reporting to her and flew the big expensive airplanes and everything.
The 60 Minutes report was about how her military superiors made her kowtow to Saudi expectations for women, including wearing a black sack everywhere she went, having to have a man accompany her everywhere, and not being able to drive her own car.
The disgust and revulsion in her voice as she talked about both the Saudi’s and her superiors was enlightening. And her body language when the 60 Minutes person asked her to try on the abaya for the camera was also instructive. She flat-out refused to do so, and gave him an “are you KIDDING?!” look.
She served in the Sandbox pre-9/11. For all our contortions to be understanding and caring about their society and its mores, the Saudi’s turned around and gave us 9/11 in return. I just don’t see how stepping on that woman pilot or refusing to let a female soldier do her assigned duty because it will offend some groaty old dinosaur is going to be helpful to any cause, any where, any time, any how.
Like we say to an immature teenager, “Deal with it.” It’s life, it’s the way it is … deal with it.
I like Cannoneer’s list of things we want them to do. It’s much more basic than the things I was thinking of like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, equal pay for equal work, and rule of law, although it would be nice to introduce “the elders” to those concepts, too.
BTW, I strongly agree with the idea that American soldiers in these swamps are very good role models, and something both Muslim adults and their children learn to aspire to be. I don’t agree, however, in lopping off 50% of the role model potential because someone thinks it may be the polite thing to do.
