No Way To Treat Saddam's Ladies

Ifeminist.com proprietor Wendy McElroy has an interesting column at Fox News about Saddam Hussein's brutal treatment of women–and of organzied feminism's reluctance to comment on it. This is especially odd, given that some of the same groups were among the first to publicize the Taliban's retrograde ways.

McElroy points to an often-unacknowledged dynamic at work in both the anti-war and pro-war camps: Their positions on invading Iraq may have less to do with geopolitics than domestic partisanship. As McElroy writes (in a sentence that when excerpted takes on a number of other possible meanings):

Several reasons may underlie this apparent reluctance [by feminist groups to publicize women's mistreatment in Iraq]. A condemnation of Saddam may be viewed as an admission that Bush is correct on Iraq. And hatred of Bush runs deep in most feminist circles.