Better

This is from Ayaan Hirsi Ali whose voice has been forgotten recently. I take this moment to note that Obama, in his engagement of the War for Libya, has not given us any transcendent matters to consider - not even his own ideas about rapproachment with 'global Islam'. And thinking about this reminds me how very much like GWBush he has become in that he takes no inspiration from anyone but himself and his own judgment. Odessy Dawn is a pragmatic moment and Obama takes the pragmatic path, and yet there is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a figure whose life lessons might have been incorporated into Obama's strategic vision.

Ali says:

Here is something I have learned the hard way, but which a lot of well-meaning people in the West have a hard time accepting: All human beings are equal, but all cultures and religions are not. A culture that celebrates femininity and considers women to be the masters of their own lives is better than a culture that mutilates girls’ genitals and confines them behind walls and veils or flogs and stones them for falling in love. . . . The culture of the Western Enlightenment is better. (italics in the original)

Better.

 

Oh yeah and this:

“They say that we are all Libyans and we are one people,” said the woman, who gave her name as Eman al-Obeidy, barging in during breakfast at the hotel dining room. “But look at what the Qaddafi men did to me.” She displayed a broad bruise on her face, a large scar on her upper thigh, several narrow and deep scratch marks lower on her leg, and marks from binding around her hands and feet.

She said she had been raped by 15 men. “I was tied up, and they defecated and urinated on me,” she said. “They violated my honor.”

She pleaded for friends she said were still in custody. “They are still there, they are still there,” she said. “As soon as I leave here, they are going to take me to jail.”

Better.