Don't Know Your Enemy

She's daft, folks.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that she raised the issue of Saudi Arabia's lack of female politicians with Saudi government officials on the last stop of her Mideast tour. ...

She met with the king Wednesday and with several members of the Shura Council, an unelected advisory assembly named by the king, on Thursday.

Asked if she had discussed the lack of women on the council, she told reporters, "The issue has been brought up in our discussions with the Saudis on this trip."

Simplistic little feminist. Questioning Saudi Arabia about mere equal representation for women is like an oncologist treating a pimple instead of what lies beneath. What point is it to have women in high office if you also have women in pits, being stoned for adultry? Instead of pushing for women in government, why not push for women in driver's seats, or in marriages of choice, or in professional studies programs at universities? Why not ask the king and Shura Council what they think of honor killings?

And with all due respect to women, why not discuss Saudi funding of Wahhabist "schools" (cells?) throughout America, the West and the world, where the most radical, most jihadist branch of Islam is preached?

And here's another thing they didn't discuss ... thank God:

Pelosi, the first woman House speaker, said she had not discussed King Abdullah's recent criticism of the U.S. occupation of Iraq ...

"Occupation?!" What would NanFran have discussed? The criticism, or the fact that it's not an occupation, but an action designed to make Iraq strong enough that it doesn't need foreign troops on its soil.

If our actions in Iraq are an occupation, why are we training Iraqi soldiers and police to take over for us, and allowing them more and more control? Why are we defending a government and giving it time to solidify if our intent is to occupy?

The correct word, NanFran, is "the U.S. protection of Iraq." We are there as protectors, not occupiers. Germany occupied France in WWII; we liberated it. Russia occupied eastern Europe during the Cold War; we crushed their system so they were forced out.

Hot on the heels of her attemts to legitimize the thugocracy in Damascus ("The road to Damascas is the road to Peace," she said! Blech.), now she's making a laughing stock of us in Riyadh.

If the AP reporter had more on substance and consequences and less on the fact that NanFran wore a lavender pant suit instead of a repressive abaya, this could have been a useful article. And if the Speaker of the House spoke of principles -- solid American principles of rights and respect -- instead of speaking in mere slogans, this might have been a fruitful trip.

But I'm asking too much of both the reporter and the Speaker. They are who they are and the trip was what it was.