Murdered Women Real Legacy of U.S. "Freedom"

Written By: Robin Mathews
Date: 2006-09-11 00:18:18
<a href="/article/19131823-murdered-women-real-legacy-of-us-quotfreedomquot">Article Link</a>

Perhaps in view of the U.S. role in Guatemala where innocent women are being murdered daily under U.S. eyes, the Afghanistan argument about the rights of women should be scrapped. For how can the U.S. ache for the rights of women in Afghanistan when it approves – to put the matter bluntly – of innocent women being brutalized and regularly murdered, now, as I write, in Guatemala?

Put simply, the U.S. is the dominant power in Guatemala. Violent death in that country is rising. 97% of murders of all kinds there go unpunished. Under U.S. eyes.

75% of the population lives in extreme poverty. Women work seventy hours a week in factories located in zones of foreign operation (maquiladoras) where they earn next to nothing. They work, moveover, without labour laws.

Guatemala’s chief trading partner is the USA.

Writing of women in a Guatemalan city near the Mexican border, Poala Ramirez Orozco-Souel says they are “beaten, tortured, mutilated, violated and finally killed…. 2,200 of them have been murdered since 2001, of whom 299 were murdered in the period since January 2006.” (Le Monde diplomatique, Sept. 06 8-9)

The writer continues, saying that all the rights of Guatemalans are wasted in the face of “delinquency, the drug traffic, organized crime, and corruption”. Despite the conditions described, the U.S. has pushed hard to see Guatemala win a seat this September as a member (non-permanent) of the Security Council of the United Nations.

Having manipulated Guatemala into a fully puppet government position, the U.S. was pleased when the Oscar Berger government approved “without debate” the signing of a Free Trade treaty between Guatemala and the USA in March 2005. Foreign enterprises can exploit Guatemala’s resources “without constraints”. All public services and social services may be owned by private corporations. A strike following the acceptance of the Free Trade pact was violently repressed.

Clearly the U.S. is in the seat of power in Guatemala, and – clearly – the lives of women, indeed of all Guatemalans, are worth nothing.

The long, long U.S. devastation of Guatemala is a well-recorded story. Reformist governments emerged in the late 1940s. And in 1954 the freely elected Jacabo Arbenz government was overthrown by a U.S. organized and armed coup. Arbenz had pushed reasonable agrarian reform and social policy. He confiscated land the United Fruit Company (a U.S. banana company) wasn’t using.

From that point on, the U.S. has been the brutal puppeteer running Guatemalan affairs. From 1960 to 1996 the famous twenty-six year war was conducted in Guatemala – in which 200,000 Guatemalans were killed. Government forces and paramilitaries were responsible for more than 90% of the human rights violations during the war. When the war was over, interviewed retired generals made clear they followed U.S. policy and orders. In fact, the U.S. used an (originally) humble police training institution to organize and train personnel to assure continuing repression of Guatemalans. The U.S. government directly supported Guatemala’s army with training, weapons, and money.

Guatemala’s Truth Commission asserted that “intentional genocide” was practised during the war.

All Guatemalans – but especially Guatemalan women – are being treated worse than slaves, now. The U.S. is largely responsible for their treatment. At the same time (along with its fawning Stephen Harper Canadian government) the U.S. is claiming that its army in Afghanistan (whether dominating NATO forces or acting as U.S. army) is there to bring peace, democracy, security, equality, and – above all – freedom for women.

Canadians should look very carefully at the long history of Guatemala under U.S. domination, the oppression of Guatemalans in order to support U.S. private corporations there, the present almost incredible brutalization of women for the profit (and what else?) of U.S. enterprise in Guatemala. Then Canadians should look carefully at the propaganda and indoctrination they are subjected to about the high-minded, liberationist purposes of the U.S.-managed war in Afghanistan.

And Canadians should draw their own conclusions.

[Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on September 13, 2006]

Everytime I read that the war is about women going to school and not wearing burkas and being protected I am repulsed by the lie. This war is not, has never been and never will be about empathy of any kind for women, children, old persons, or humans of any gender or age. So when someone uses that as a guilty-stick to hit others with I know they use it thinking it the ultimate defence for something so corrupt and defenceless. It does not wash because it's more like rape and exploitation.

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"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music." Friedrich Nietzsche

Perhaps Robin should ask Malalai Joya (the anonymous female parliamentarian that he quotes as attending the NDP conference) if she prefers living under an imperfect system where she gets to rail against the warlords and corruption and which has the promise of further improvement or if she preferred living in the system in which the Taliban would never have lent her this voice to begin with. 
 
Perhaps Jack Layton should ask Malalai Joya if she thinks the foreign troops should be pulled out (her bodyguards include foreign troops btw) instead of hailing her as a voice of freedom and then waiting for her to leave his convention to make his case against Canada's involvement. But I'm sure he wouldn't have wanted her to rip him a new one in his own house for being such a hypocrite. What she actually said was that Canadians are not doing everything correctly and many of their actions are done to indirectly support the corrupt elements of the Afghan government. 
 
From <a href="http://www.900chml.com/news/news.cfm?dir=national&file=n0908113A&n=1">http://www.900chml.com/news/news.cfm?dir=national&file=n0908113A&n=1</a> 
 
"She earned a standing ovation from NDP delegates when she said in a speech that "no nation can donate liberation to another nation. . .Contrary to the propaganda in certain Western media, Afghan women and men are not 'liberated' at all." 
 
Unlike the NDP, Joya wants Canadian troops to maintain a presence in southern Afghanistan, but she wants them to withdraw their support of the current government." 
 
That is her cause - to purge the Afghan government of the corrupt and the old guard that includes many warlords (a just cause indeed - and one we should be helping her with - without somehow becoming embroiled in the Afghan political scheme). She works with President Karzai and has worked with him to dismiss ex-Taliban and warlords from parliament. But she never said she wanted the troops out or that she thought that the Afghans would be better if we never invaded. So I think you should find another Afghan poster child for your cause du jour.

We made crooks and liars 'legitimate' to the non-thinkers by crowning them as a democracy. And to think that they will somehow just change their ways is just plain stupid.

When you start with an unrepentant crook, you end up with the same.

We aided the Mujaheddin to get rid of these people in the past, and now we support them and call them democratic. I'd laugh if it were not true.

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If there was ever a time for Canadians to become pushy - now is the time - for time is running out on this nation called Canada.

Michael;

Jack Layton proposed withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. He did NOT suggest that Canada should withdraw its support for freedom for the Afghan people, including the freedom to choose their own government.

Frank

It's all fine to say you support something. It's so much more difficult to actually put skin in the game. Even Malalai Joya doesn't want the troops to go. She knows, firsthand, that a withdrawal means death for her and many like her. It means a return to a repressive regime with no chance of change. It means a return to the civil war that ravaged Afghanistan for more than 10 years. We leave, and her death, her blood is on the hands of every one of you that advocated the pullout. If she dies while we are there, at least we tried to protect her and hopefully others like her can stand in her place to push for change in her country, spurred by her example and protected by the coalition while they attempt to create a working government.

I can try to atone for death that we cause or that we could not prevent (such as civilians caught in the crossfire, or inadvertently targeted). I cannot however stand by and watch death happen because we did nothing. Without security, there is no development, no aid, no growth, no future for Afghanistan. That is what you advocate.

Well Michael I suppose instead of watching death happen you would rather our soldiers imposed it. For every person we kill the number of enemies increases.
How much blood are you willing to spill to save her?

How much are you willing to allow to be spilled while you do nothing but spout off and say that these people have your support and it's terrible that they are being butchered? Spare me your crocodile tears.

and you Mikey, spare us your worn out platitudes and preachy 'What have you done?s'

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We have met the enemy and he is us
Pogo
A mind is a fire to be kindled, not a vessel to be filled.
Plutarch

"If she dies while we are there, at least we tried to protect her and hopefully others". So if these people are killed anyway it doesn't really matter because we "did our part"? Sounds like a good liberalish answer,ie. it says nothing but is so "nice" . "Hopefully" is a good one by itself ... sort of like those "leftists" [the neo-cons claim to hate soo much] who believe dictatorships are okay for some people because their "culture is different". Har-de-har-de-har ...

You would seem to think that the Taliban dictatorship was just fine since you want us out so bad. Sounds more like you are in bed with the dictator than I.

<blockquote>"Everytime I read that the war is about women going to school and not wearing burkas and being protected I am repulsed by the lie. This war is not, has never been and never will be about empathy of any kind for women, children, old persons, or humans of any gender or age. So when someone uses that as a guilty-stick to hit others with I know they use it thinking it the ultimate defence for something so corrupt and defenceless. It does not wash because it's more like rape and exploitation."</blockquote> You are of course quite right. Anyone with a memory that spans a few years will recall positively that we were told that we had to invade Afghanistan ONLY because of 9/11. We were told that Bin Laden, who was decreed without evidence to be the evil master mind behind the attacks, was being protected by the evil Taliban. We were told, that somehow Afghanistan was full of underground terrorist complexes - <a href="http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/2002image/netherpopup.gif">such as the imaginary one depicted here</a> - and we were told that the only way to ensure a 9/11 type of attack would not happen again, was to A) invade Afghanistan, B) free the flower tossing people, and C) install a happy-go-lucky "democracy" run by <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0610/p01s03e-wosc.html">a former employee of US oil company Unocal – one of two main oil companies that was bidding for the lucrative contract to build an oil pipeline from Uzbekistan through Afghanistan to seaports in Pakistan</a>. There was absolutely NO mention of protecting womens rights, and all that other falsified bullshit we're now hearing about!